October 2022

Residential Schools for Canadian Indigenous People; the Controversy

Octrober 27, 2022

Today is a venting day, triggered by a conversation with friends. I expressed my view that when the residential school system for indigenous people started in Canada in the late 19^th century; it was the accepted philosophy to assimilate indigenous people into the Canadian way of life. And the residential school system was going to do that.

Adolphus Ryerson, a respected educator, and head of the school system in Ontario in the late 19^th century, designed the residential school system. Who was going to challenge him? And the U.S. and Australia were doing the same; trying to assimilate their natives via residential schooling.

Current opinion holds that the Canadian government was cruel in “kidnapping” children from their homes against the wishes of their parents and relocating them into “residential schools” to teach them Canada’s official languages and provide them with education to enter Canadian society. Some people believe now it was cultural genocide.

My friends argued we were cruel to the natives and that we owe them huge reparations for the injustice that we did to them. The “we” included me sitting at the table. That was the trigger point. I said I have never done a thing against Canadian natives, including first nations, the Inuit, and Metis, and I, personally, owe them nothing.

I have never worked in a residential school as a teacher or staff. I have never lived up north where many reserves are. I have never had commercial or other transactions with any of these schools. I have never known anyone who worked at these schools.

I arrived in Canada when I was sixteen years old with absolutely no knowledge of the indigenous people here. My knowledge of them, that I had, came from reading the German author, Karl May’s books popular in Europe, in which he wrote detailed adventure stories of the young chief, Winnetou, and his white friend, “Old Shatterhand”. Although May had never visited North America, he had done meticulous research on the Apache’s life and wrote vivid stories of their wars against the “pale-faced” whites taking over their land.

My impressions of North American natives were formed by May’s glowing descriptions of the courage and leadership of Winnetou. (May sold over 200,000,000 books, translated into thirty languages, and is the most prolific German author).

I was in my thirties when I met indigenous people for the first time. I discovered the poor and often drunk natives on the streets of Saskatoon, Regina, and Winnipeg. That discovery did not jive at all with my impressions of the proud natives I gleaned from May’s books.

Then I worked for the federal Indian Affairs Department, where I visited reserves and met and worked with indigenous people.

I learned why the situation of indigenous people is dire: many live in remote locations with harsh climates in small bands of not more than a few hundred people; they do not speak Canada’s official languages and there are few employment opportunities. But the incentive to leave the reserves is low since they find comfort in living in their communities, speaking their language, living together with their families, and following their traditional lifestyle.

Democracy in Action

October 23, 2022

On August 24, municipal election signs sprouted in Ottawa faster than flowers in the spring. Like overnight. They set the election for October 24. The candidates heavily sprinkled all major street intersections with signs in assorted colors. And there were a few humongous signs, noticeable from a distance; the candidate probably thought a few large signs are as good as numerous small ones.

I have followed the candidate debates in the media and in person, and I attended a meeting with the local ward candidates organized by my community association. My local candidates avoided arguing with each other at the request of the moderator, making it less of an interesting meeting except for a few eruptions when one candidate threw mud on another one.

Then I attended a larger, ward-wide meeting with all the local candidates, which attracted up to a hundred interested, and polite residents. I could almost read the attendee’s priorities from their comments – they were homeowners wishing for no property tax increases. As well, they expressed concern over densification via high-rise development and attendant construction with all the mess that comes with it. So the key issue to these attendees was to conserve the single-family residential character of our ward by preserving the R1 zone.

Although lip service was paid to affordable housing, the attendees had only a passing interest in the subject. They were homeowners.

Judging by the age of the participants – many retired, with a car at home – better bus service, or the construction of the light-rail transit (LRT), serving downtown were of mild concern. Especially considering that direct access to the LRT will be very limited for most residents of Ward 9.

Most candidates seemed to echo the attendees’ sentiments, hoping to garner support.

But these local objectives within wardscreate hard choices for the mayoral candidates who must deal with housing and transportation issues. For example, ridership pays for only forty-five percent of the city’s transportation budget. Should fees be raised? One candidate proposes to provide free transport for all people under seventeen years of age; that would create additional costs for the city’s transportation budget.

The two leading candidates have published detailed plans for housing, transportation, the environment, the economy, and the growth of Ottawa. With few exceptions, I found a large overlap between the two candidates’ proposals. For example, there is talk about net-zero buildings, electric buses, and the LRT in the campaign literature of both candidates. The differences are in the way the proposals would be implemented.

The leading mayoral candidate in this very close race is a two-time councilor who calls herself “they”, and proposes to increase the city’s budget by ten percent, which includes a plan for a 250-million dollar build-out of a bicycle system for Ottawa. Considering that Ottawa is not a bicycling town for six months of the year, this is a questionable proposal at best.

The other leading candidate has never been a publicly elected official, comes from a business and media background, and promises to keep the property tax to the two to two and a half percent annual increase. And he proposes a “balanced” transportation budget, improving streets and addressing the inadequate bus system.

I believe the choice between the two leading candidates comes down to additional spending versus fiscal discipline. And I think your voting preference most likely wouldfollow your stage in life. If you are young and live in an apartment with limited resources and starting a family, then you would be interested in affordable housing and bicycle paths, and good urban transportation. If you already have a house and a backyard for your children, or are an empty-nester and maybe retired, then you would be interested in keeping property taxes at current levels.

And again, there are the candidates ’personalities and backgrounds that may be important to voters. One is a Centretown activist whose platform reflects the values of downtown residents (either single, childless, and most likely apartment dwellers), who have also declared that they (she) would accept no donations from developers. The other leading candidateis a family man and marathon runner with a long history in the volunteer sector who has yet to disclose his donation list.

There is a real choice for Ottawans between two candidates in this election. One is a “progressive” leaning towards additional expenditures for city services while the other one is more to the middle, leaning towards fiscal discipline. I believe demographics and voter turnout may be decisive factors in who will win.

Chance Encounter Triggers Memories of Life in Natuashish, Labrador, Canada

October 17, 2022

I walked into Costco wondering how long it would take to find “natural vanilla extract”. Kathy told me it costs upwards of $40 and is located with the spices. I searched all around the spices unsuccessfully and looked for someone working there to help me. I noticed a woman loading a flatbed trolley with boxes of goods and thought she may be a worker, but she proved to be a buyer for a grocery store in Iqaluit, near the arctic circle of Canada (Iqaluit is the capital of the Canadian Territory of Nunavut).

That encounter triggered my memory of the volunteer work I had done for the Innu tribe in Natuashish, at the north tip of Labrador and Newfoundland, in 2009.

After I retired from the government in 1995, I volunteered with the Canadian Executive Service Overseas (CESO). My first project was to assist the Mushuau Innu First Nation. We took a small single-engine Otter from Goose Bay, Labrador, to Natuashish, with two stops (a distance of 300 kilometers or 160 miles). The pilot opened the door for the half dozen passengers, including myself, to get in, and we took off. That is how my adventure began with the tribe.

The Mushuau Innu lived in Davis Inlet in Labrador until 2002, when they moved with government assistance ten miles away into Natuashish. In Davis Inlet, the tribe members abused drugs, and the children sniffed glue. This dire situation led to many requests for help, and when help was slow in coming, the tribe escalated their demands via protests to the United Nations. The resulting embarrassment for Canada led to moving the entire tribe into a newly designed community in Natuashish.

The new community was inland, with a population of under a thousand people, and there were no job opportunities except hunting and fishing in the surrounding lakes. The government built a few hundred houses and three miles of roadway. The only access year-round was by air, or by water, during the summer months. I, along with a small team of experts in different fields, would assist the tribal council with governing. My field was public works: roads, hydro, and water/sewer systems.

The tribe housed me in a trailer and advised me to lease a truck from one of the tribal councilors. They also told me to park it alongside the trailer in such a fashion that the gas-tank cap would be inches from the trailer wall so that nobody could siphon the gas out of the tank; either for their use or for sniffing, I thought.

They brought in all the food from the south; the climate and soil would not permit any agriculture. And we could eat at the central dining hall that typically provided prepackaged food. There were no vegetables, and even after one week, I found the food repetitious and boring.

The government built a repair garage and brought in qualified car mechanics to teach the Innu how to service the Ford 150s they brought in by ship during the summers. I helped them set up a financial system for charging for repairs so that the locals could earn some money. Trouble was that they spoke a local Innu language, and I needed a translator to develop simple forms in their language. Another problem was that they were not used to working in a nine-to-five Western economy depriving the garage of steady, continuous employment.

Each Innu received a mining royalty of CD$5000, in 2009, because they had ownership of the land on which the mining company was located. Besides, the Innu received free services from the RCMP (policing), Health and Welfare Canada (health provision), and the government also built a school (kindergarten to grade twelve). They recruited all the teachers from the South with an interpreter in every class. There was only one high school graduate in the entire community.

The motivation for work was low; why work when housing, schooling, healthcare, and policing are provided free and cash payments given to all residents by the mining company?

Alcoholism was still a problem (brought in by air) despite the council’s outlawing the use of alcohol in the community. I heard stories of men who used to beat the women who retaliated by beating the men when the latter were drunk.

And many Innu destroyed the houses that the government built for them by cutting down the walls for firewood. Nobody took pride in their homes, given freely to them; they wanted money from the government for cleaning up their yards.

The Innu lived by straddling two cultures. One was their fishing and hunting way of life, and the other was a Western culture with snowmobiles, trucks, guns, and modern homes, not being in either of these cultures fully.

The experience in Natuashish firmed up my opinion that the government should take away the subsidies. I believe that the government should assist with their assimilation into western culture. Let them be entrepreneurs and let them move to cities where jobs are more available. Some of the native tribes have done well economically.

These memories of mine snapped back vividly, talking with the buyer for the grocery store in Iqaluit. And she knew exactly where the vanilla extract was.

The All-Candidates Meeting

October 10, 2022

I walked into the community center hall and found a chair in the back row joining a couple of dozen white-haired folks. They were the burghers of Ottawa West, homeowners, of course. Five of the seven candidates showed up, vying to become Councilor at the upcoming election for Ward 9, in Ottawa.

What I would learn at this meeting would not change my voting since I had already voted in the advance poll. I came to hear the candidates in person; I had already heard them and their pitch on one of the news channels

Although I looked forward to a lively debate, the moderator cautioned us to be civil with each other and have respect for all opinions, even if we strongly disagreed. OK, no fireworks.

On the way in, they told me to wear a mask and offered one, but I always carry one with me. I thought we were beyond masking, but according to the organizers; we protect each other by wearing one. This was a relevant notion considering the age of the audience.

Most of us were over seventy years of age and retired – who else would attend a political meeting? Interest in local elections tends to be low; at the last local election, only forty percent of people voted.

The President of the local community association opened the meeting by thanking the Anishinaabe tribe for letting us use their land (I understand all of Ottawa is on unceded tribal lands). It has become de rigor to remind us of the natives’ goodwill by letting us use their lands. I think it is an attempt to express our guilt for past injustices meted out to natives in Canada.

This recent custom has never failed to u irritate me no end since I had never heard of the Anishinaabe until a few years ago. And when I bought our house, nobody told me I would live on the unceded territory of the Ashininaabi or explained what the implications were, if any.

I consider I own the land on which the house is, and that I paid for the land when I bought the house. What does it mean that I live on unceded land? Does this situation call for a resolution? And, if so, who is working on it?

After we masked up and paid homage to the Ashininaabi, the moderator asked the audience to state in a few words what their issues were. Not in any order of priority, people identified; housing shortage, especially affordable ones, thru-traffic, transportation, taxes,the environment, and police transparency. I called attention to the residential twenty-five-storey high-rise proposals springing up that, in my opinion, do not fit into a single-family neighborhood.

Now we were ready to listen to the candidates, who each had three minutes to describe their priorities for Ward 9. The one common theme from all of them was that they will represent and work hard for the community. An original notion!

But then they distinguished themselves: one emphasized that he would work with all levels of government and the community collaboratively. Another brilliant notion: I ask you, is there any other way to work on the City Council? He did not seem to have a vision or substantive ideas on what exactly we should be doing in our community, except that we should work together.

Another candidate distinguished himself by admitting he has no community activist experience and said that if we want a community activist on Council, then he is not the one to vote for. An honest but perhaps not a winning strategy.

The next candidate focused on the debt the city had accumulated and explained that his financial and business experience will help him on Council to curb this outrageous spending that quadrupled the debt in four years.

The remaining candidates were “community activists” and have been presidents of their local community associations, a highly desirable experience for this election in their views. I may have missed it, but the community activists had not described their achievements during their service to the community,

A firestorm erupted when one candidate accused another one of informally associating himself with ten other councilors to vote as a block, should they all get elected. The implication was that this candidate may not take his cue from the community serving local interests but vote with his allied partners. Further, the accuser called his competitor a leftie and suggested the city would end in never-never land with even more debt if that woke group of councilors get voted in. The discussion had become heated and loud with angry words being exchanged, not only by the candidates but included audience participation. The moderator interrupted by raising his voice, calling for quiet; he ordered the candidates to talk about their platforms and forbade them to attack each other. I thought I gained additional information by listening to the accusation. And I enjoyed the interchange as well as the raw emotions that was demonstrated, showing strong opinions.

The next kerfuffle began with an environmental expert asking if the candidates would support the city’s $60 billion-dollar environment plan, which, in his opinion, was untenable and unrealistic; for example, by calling for forty square kilometers of a solar panel farm. He also argued the federal government has jurisdiction in this area and the City’s role is limited at best. Some in the audience called the speaker a climate-denier and told the speaker to shut up and sit down, while the speaker insisted on his right to speak. The moderator had to step in again and first drew attention that the speaker had no mask on,well, he was speaking, and that he had enough time to expose his thesis.

According to one candidate, the city has responsibility to at least provide generators for emergencies such as the derecho this Spring and the hurricane a few years ago. I thought that was a good suggestion; we lost a freezer full of meat this Spring when the derecho came with no electricity for over a week, an expensive experience.

The protection of R1 zoning was probably the most important issue for this audience. R1 zoning refers to single-family housing that occupies most of our community. The candidates hemmed and hawed and the American dream of a house with a backyard where the children can play was brought up. But the candidates also talked about a housing shortage and the only solution is densification and intensification recommended by the City’s planners. That was pure political posturing. There is no room in our community for additional housing except by demolishing existing homes to make room for multi-family development.

According to the City’s planners, the only alternative to densification is urban sprawl, a decisively bad option creating costly infrastructure extension and additional traffic, generating pollution. Urban sprawl is an anti-environmental solution. As a city planner, I wondered why nobody considered a third option: “new towns”, such as those built in Britain as well as in the US. Why could we not grow our surrounding communities, such as Kanata, Stittsville, and Manotick, and attract residential development to satisfy future housing needs?

No, instead of developing new towns, we will destroy established single-family residential areas by allowing high-rise towers with their attendant traffic congestion. Our community is zoned R1, called “exclusionary zoning” now, intimating it is an elite zone where the poorer people cannot afford to live. Since when was single-family housing considered elite? Forty percent of Ottawa is occupied by such housing so how can this be elitist? You draw your conclusions.

I came away from the meeting feeling threatened by a future that will encroach on my community with high-density development. Developers have already submitted applications to the city for twenty-five storey and higher buildings So far, the developers seem to have the upper hand. The city planners do not seem to have the gumption to scale back the high-density development proposals despite strong local opposition; I attended many zoom meetings on “site plan approvals” submitted by developers for high-rise towers. The planners recommend “densification” to allow for the additional 400,000 people projected to occupy Ottawa by 2050. I do not know how the projections were made, since current population growth numbers do not justify the projection. But this set of candidates did not question the planners’ proposals.

In Praise of Small Towns

October 6, 2022

It would be nice to live in a small town, Kathy commented when we drove through Elgin, Ontario, on the way home from the cottage. Yes, I thought, there is an aura of quiet peace and stillness in the air, one could live a pleasant life here. You do not find ostentatious houses resembling Italian castles on postage-sized lots, as you see in Ottawa. In contrast, you see simple, functional houses here of modest sizes where one can bring up a family without being afraid of huge heating bills. And, yes, we have met many people with no pretensions and who had done work for us without feeling they overcharged. Would it be a way of life for us to live here?

We came from our cottage, which is a boat ride, and then an 8-kilometer car ride from Elgin. According to Wikipedia, Elgin has a population of 300 people but grows by thousands more during the summer, who come from Ontario and the US. Elgin is a crossroads of two major streets and a few spurs. But the town has a grocery store, two churches, a bank, a pharmacy, a library, and an appliance store. It has a regional high school and a public school as well.

The town has everything for basic needs, except a gas station; there was one, but not anymore. The owner may have retired or sold out. But the gas station was a place where you could return beer bottles. The same situation happened to a place for refilling propane tanks. Now I have to drive a few miles to the next little town. And Abe, who ran Emmons Lumber, retired as well.

Abe came out to our cottage to give us an estimate for our windows that needed a replacement a few decades ago. In a leisurely conversation with us, he said with a smile on his face, his lumber business thrives on the summer cottagers. While his boys were measuring up the windows, Abe settled down with us and discussed life in Elgin. Our encounter was nothing like contractors we dealt with in Ottawa where a young man, while giving us an estimate of window replacements in our house, sat by his computer and generated the estimate in ten minutes, and then left.

When I needed someone to expand our decking, I called on Chuck (not his real name). Chuck came to see us and, like Abe, had a detailed conversation on what we wanted to do. We staked out the deck and then did a quick calculation of materials and labor and that was the estimate. We never signed a contract. And the job turned out very well.

Country folk have a practical turn of mind and get things done. I like that. And there were many other situations where we found problems solved with no fuss. For example, when our son visited us and ran out of diapers for his baby on a Sunday, the pharmacy was closed. A phone call to the marina where we dock our boat resulted in having the pharmacist open up the store so we could buy diapers; what a demonstration of goodwill!

People know each other in a small town. More than that, they know each other’s families going back generations. This closeness often leads to relationships in the community as we found out that the family running the marina has a family member married to the owner of the grocery store and another family member works at the appliance store.

My thoughts returned to living in a small town driving through the industrial east end of Ottawa with heavy traffic. It is much more peaceful in a small town than in a thriving city. But, and there are always buts, you do not find in a small town a choice of restaurants, community centers with programs such as bridge, and a multiplicity of events from classical music to rock concerts. Most importantly, could an outsider fit into a tightly-knit community where most people know each other? Would they accept newcomers?

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: