Canada Day

Socially distanced masked Canada Day celebrants lined up for the Toronto Island Ferry.

I've forgotten why I restarted my subscription to the Globe and Mail. Between the CBC, the Toronto Star, the National Observer and all the myriad other publications pushed to me by my newsfeed, I really do get more news than I can -- or should rationally want to -- read in a day.

I do want to remember, though, why I cancelled my subscription this week. What's driving this decision is not the Globe's half-hearted stab at noticing climate change, or its kludgy journalism, or the fact that it employs plagiarists. It's this, from its Canada Day editorial:

As we have written many times before, Canada is not just a fact. It is an act – a perpetual act of creation, maintenance and improvement. Canada was created by people of many faiths and races who had to find a way to bridge their differences and create a transcendent, common citizenship. That’s what the Fathers of Confederation did in the 19th century, when the gap that threatened violence and dissolution was French-English and Catholic-Protestant. In different forms, it is something that every generation since has had to wrestle with, as old fissures close and new fault lines are revealed. [emphasis added] 

To resort to "founding father" jingoistic bullshit in the age of reconciliation with First Nations is at best tone deaf and at worst an affirmation that we should celebrate that Canada was founded on genocide.

I'm sure that this latter thought never crossed the minds of the editors of the Globe and Mail when they wrote their editorial.

And that's why I cancelled my subscription.

Thanks for reading!

Stay safe and stay cool!

Karen

A national monument to the real heroes