For Shawn on his 42nd birthday

Happy birthday my darling,

I missed your 25th by a couple months, but in person or, less often, in spirit, I've been with you for all the birthdays since.

I like birthdays more than you. You balance it out by thinking my obsession with birthdays is funny.

I maintain birthdays are the best day of the year. Especially yours, because you were born; and you and me became we.

For 16 of your birthdays now, you and me have been we.

Us.

A package deal.

It doesn't seem nearly so long a time 'til I look back at the stretch of life already lived. The road behind and the road ahead are of similar distances now. The road behind improved dramatically when you arrived.

The road we've travelled has some rocks and bumps, deaths and debts, school and career changes, sickness and surgery, recoveries and renovations. Thank you for being there through it all. I can imagine what that road would have been like alone. To that end, thank you a hundred times over.

And thank you for the best times, the exciting times, the good times, the every day times, and the lazy in pyjamas times. All the joys in this world are made better because I witness them with you. They are the brightest of lights that illuminate the road ahead.

You are my partner in life, my companion in all adventures. You are my heart and my soul, and as brief absence so clearly demonstrates, you are, unequivocally, my home.

Free markets, as a dumbed-down fairytale

Martin Shkreli in his new office  Photo: Universal News & Sport (Europe)

Once upon a time in the early 20th century, we, as a people, became inflamed by the gospel of the free markets. This lasted until such times as we fell into utter ruin and cried no more! We have nothing to fear but fear itself and no house of commerce shall be too big! Then we legislated the hell out of the markets to make sure it never happened again. 

There was some civil rights and union stuff too, you know, interesting things if you give a shit about people, but as it turns out, completely irrelevant to the story. So carrying on.

Once upon a time in the late 20th century, we, as a people, became inflamed by the gospel of the free markets...

For whom the dog whistle blows

Photo Credit Flickr s_sultana06

I've noted some anti-Muslim sentiments flowing through my Facebook newsfeed over the last few days. An uptake caused in no small measure by the Conservatives pledging to reintroduced measures to ban niqabs at citizenship ceremonies within 100 days of reelection, but also by a less than critical assessment of the worthiness of that argument and a basic ignorance of the provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

According to the Conservatives, banning the niqab means they are standing tall for women's rights against an anti-woman culture. They are doing so by forcing a woman to do something she doesn't want to do in exchange for something. In terms of women's rights, both modern and historically, think about that for a minute.

They are also making a really big deal about it, despite the fact that Muslim women make up 1.6 per cent of the Canadian population and only a tiny portion of those women wear niqabs. In a country of 35 million, it's an insignificant number. 

It's especially insignificant when compared to bigger problems, like the nine per cent of Canadians who live in poverty, a disproportionate amount of whom are single mothers and Aborigines. As of 2012, over 1.3 million of our children live in poverty, worse still, one in four of our indiginous children live in poverty, yet a veil worn by a fraction of one per cent is worthy of a federal election platform? 

This is where critical thinking needs to be applied. If you respond favorably to Conservatives dog whistle about the niqab ban, you’ve just become Pavlov's dog. Just as the dog drooled when the bell rang in anticipation of food, you’re putting support behind an insignificant policy expressly designed to divert attention away from actual issues that affect large portions of our population, like poverty, just because it coinsides with your beliefs. You are for whom that dog whistle blows.

Whilst we dabble in the cultural minutiae of win-at-all-costs election politics, we have more children living in poverty than when the Canadian government made a pledge to end child poverty 26 years ago.

Which brings me to the last bit: ignorance of the Canadian Charter. The Charter guarantees all of us

"(a) freedom of conscience and religion;

(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;"

While the Charter recognizes the supremacy of god and law, it does not specify a particular god. To do so would violate our individual right to religious freedom and freedom of expression. 

If interpreted as such by the woman wearing it, a niqab is an expression of religious freedom. That's how beliefs work. You believe in something and that something becomes your belief. It may just be a belief you don't like. To that end, there’s plenty not to like in any given religion, but the Charter does not discriminate. Religious freedom under the Charter means a woman can cover her faces during a citizenship ceremony if her religious belief call her to do so (FYI once they become a Canadian citizen, that woman, like any other Canadian citizen, need never show their face to cast a ballot again, even after the Fair Elections Act). Heck, wear a pasta colander on your head and a hula skirt of wet noodles if the Pastafarian movement is what gets you through your big day.

It’s your Charter guaranteed freedom to worship or to not worship as you see fit, but don't for a second think your Charter given right to freedom of religion and of free expression gives you the right to dictate the beliefs of another, just because you like yours and you don't like theirs. It’s not your call, because that's not what the Charter sets out. 

If you don't like the niqab and you feel women are oppressed, rather than persecute the tiny segment of the female population that thinks differently than you, challenge the Charter that permits it in the first place. Seriously, pursue it like it's the last cubic metre of of air to breathe in the whole country. Just know that when you do so, you need inject those same feminist values, that same pro-woman culture, as a requirement into all other beliefs, expressions, policies, and laws in Canada. 

You do that and I will be your biggest cheerleader.

The day the war began

Photograph: Reuters

With the photo of a little boy dead on a beach, Canadians saw the real cost of the war in Syria today.

The news this morning did not draw our attention to the latest images of the atrocities of ISIS. Those fanatics in black devising ever more venal and gruesome killings to smear across the internet. To be sure, they are monsters to the very last man.

The images weren't of the horrific aftermath of a suicide bomber. The dead, the maimed, the traumatized. Another monster beyond all reason and humanity, intent on inflicting the greatest harm.

Our hearts were not engaged by the before and after photos of temples and monuments of the ancient world reduced to so much rubble. Over 2000 years of history, destroyed by monsters in hours.

No one hugged their child a little tighter after viewing an angry mob of foreign-looking refugees demanding to ride a train. These people are not monsters, but it's easy to imagine them as such.

Today we saw a dead little boy on a beach, washed up like refuse with his dead brother and mother. In the boneless way of youngsters, he looked like he was sleeping. His parents wanted to take them to Canada. Instead, his father is taking them back to Syria for burial.

It is easy to turn away from monsters. It is easy to vilify a people by reducing them to the worst of their people. We don’t just do it abroad, stereotyping and bigotry are alive and well on the home front. It is not so easy to turn away from a dead child. To cast a blind eye to all that hope and promise extinguished.

To that I say, publish all the refugees photos. Show us those suffocated men, women and children in the back of a refrigerated truck. Inundate us with hundreds of bloated bodies on the beaches and the bellies of ships. Go into the refugee camps and take their pictures, write their stories, tell us what they've endured and what they've lost. Rain down on us their suffering and their pain. Above all else, show us their humanity.

 

Do it over and over again and maybe, just maybe, we'll keep seeing real cost of war. 

The war that began today.