Category Archives: Freedom

I love the Winnipeg Free Press

Fascism, Freedom to Read, World of ideas

Just to let you know that I am proud to be a subscriber to the Winnipeg Free Press. I have been a life-time subscriber and every year I appreciate the paper more. At the same time, I can see it is doing its work with less and less. That is a pity. In this age of untruth we are learning how important journalism is while newspaper readership declines.  That’s a shame. We need it and we need the Free Press.

 

Recently, I noticed Niigaan Sinclair a Winnipeg Free Press columnist, who frequently writes on issues involving his indigenous community, was named columnist of the year. I am not surprised. I love to read his columns. He has done much to educate this poorly educated white guy from Steinbach about indigenous issues of which I learned nothing about in 7 years of University. I hope he keeps up his good work for a long time.

 

Recently it also published a brilliant short editorial, on reading the tea leaves of trash. Wow. It really brilliantly written by the editorial writer(s).  I keep telling my friends to read the paper, but I don’t know how many listen to a fading old man sliding into decrepitude.  Actually, I do know. Very few.

But there are gems in this newspaper for anyone who looks. And nothing helps better in the struggle against fascism than a free press. We are lucky to have one. We should cherish it.

 

Universal Language Part I

Authoritarianism, Freedom, Movies

 

Recently, I reviewed all 10 films nominated for Best Picture of the Year by the Academy of Arts and Sciences.  I saw some great films in the process, and some that were less than stellar.  Now I want to talk about the film I thought was the best film of the year, but it was not on that illustrious list. This film was called Universal Language and it was made by a Winnipegger Matthew Rankin. Can you believe it?

 

It was selected as the Canadian entry of the Academy Award for the Best International Film at the 97th Academy Awards earlier this year, but it was not chosen by the Academy for the nominations. It did receive 13 Canadian Screen Awards and won 6 of them including best Director.

 

Rankin was originally from Winnipeg and his father was Laird Rankin a long time executive director of Canada’s Historical Society. I think it was a very funny film when I watched it in Victoria earlier in the year.  Let me acknowledge however, that although my friend Ralph Friesen and I giggled throughout the film, but not that many other chuckles were heard in the room. It was an “off-beat comedy.” The film is set in Canada, but one very different from the Canada you know. It is a Canada in which Farsi is the main language. That is the language of Persia or Iran. The comedy takes place somewhere between Tehran, Quebec, and mainly Winnipeg. It tells two stories that eventually converge. One is between Negin and Naxgol who find money frozen in the ice in Winnipeg and try to claim it. The second story is about a tour guide who brings a group of tourists from Iran to Winnipeg.

 

The Winnipeg they see is unlike any Winnipeg I have ever seen. Understandably, the tour group is constantly confused, but largely obedient to their guide. Added to that, is the tale of Matthew (our Matthew Rankin) who quits his job in Quebec to come to Winnipeg to see his mother. Amazingly these stories do actually merge together to make some semblance of sense.  A semblance is all you get and that is enough.

 

In the opening scene an image of a school on a cold winter day in Manitoba where students are running wild in a French emersion class, for Iranian students, because the teacher is late.  He arrives and runs as fast as he can into the class and is really angry with them, but he is particularly angry that they do not have “the decency to  misbehave in French.” He reminds the students that he is not like other authority figures they know. “I wear an ear ring. And a turtle neck sweater. I’ve played my electric guitar for you more than once. And still, you behave like brats. I have devoted my life to making you better human beings. But look at you now.” The students are clearly rebels. And who doesn’t love rebels? The authorities of course hate rebels, in Iran, or in Canada.

 

 

One student in the class is dressed like Groucho Marx.  He is sent to a closet where he can still hear the teacher. The teacher stands beneath a portrait of Louis Riel the Metis rebel. Another student incurs his rile because he claims to want to be a tour guide when he grows up.  The teachers says, “in this town.” Another student wants to breed donkeys. The teachers says all the students will fail because of “REALITY.” The teacher says, “When I look at you I see little hope for humanity.” The students must say, in unison, “We are lost forever in this world.” Now they are not rebelling, they are following instructions from their authoritarian teacher.

 

He tells all the students in the closet even though they obviously can’t all fit.  It is their problem, not his. He expels all the students from class until the one student who could not read his notes from the class figures out how she can see the blackboard.  Arbitrary punishment for an arbitrary non-existent crime.  There is no justice in this Canadian autocracy. He lights a cigarette in the class room. After all he is the lord in the classroom. All-in-all as absurd as any authority figure.

 

As the students go out to play in the snow, in perfect order, they encounter another authority figure—their fellow student in a Groucho mustached and glasses.  He directs traffic to the one swing. Students line up and each get 3 swings. No more. then they must go back to the end of the line and wait again while each student has their turn. No questions allowed. Everyone must follow the rules in this authoritarian regime.

Meanwhile, a “real tour guide’ shows up, holding a small white flag, so his 3 tourists, in the middle of a yard of snow, can see him clearly, even though there are no other tourists and white might not be the best colour for the flag.   The guide who is the next authoritarian leader tells the tourists  if they don’t follow him they will miss the “jewel of the Grey district.” It is the Centennial Parking Pavilion in the winter. Nothing else. They stand in in the snow in front of a bare grey cement wall. Is this the best thing to see in Winnipeg? But the authority says it is the highlight of Winnipeg. And thhe must be right. Not? He has to end the tour, but he has hired students to re-enact “the Great Parallel Parking Incident of 1958.” What could be greater or more interesting than that? One tourist asks, “since when is a parking lot of great importance?” Well, of course, since the authority says it is.

Teh authorities must be right. Just like authority always works. Even in Winnipeg.

 

[to be continued}

Freedom

Critical thinking, Freedom, Vaccines

 

The first word Carol Off tackles in her book At a Loss for Words, is the word I immediately thought of when I realized what her subject was. Off like me was appalled at how the word “freedom” has been repeatedly hijacked by diverse groups in their own personal interests, at the expense of truth. The one group that came top of mind to me was Canada’s truckers’ convoy and their allies around the country, including Steinbach. To them the word “freedom” has come to mean the capacity to do anything one wants no matter what the consequences to others. Any restraint, no matter how rational is considered an affront to freedom.

 

In Ottawa and across the country the truckers demanded release from the tyranny of government-imposed vaccine mandates, even after those mandates  had been largely eased, while they forgot about the fact that millions of lives had been amazingly protected by those vaccines from a novel virus that was threatening them even though the problems with the vaccines were miniscule to minute compared to the substantial benefits for the vast majority of people.

 

As Carol Off said, “They’ve attempted to repurpose the word for a political agenda that seeks to exclude anyone outside their tribe. For those who have truly escaped the iron hand of oppression, these freedom chants smack of privilege and historical revisionism.”

 

I think she nailed it.

 

Romania Breaks out from Communism

2025 Cruise up the Danube River, Free Speech, Freedom

 

This is a photo of 5 Canadian tourists in Romania who I think all came to love that country.

I have loved our visit in Romania much more than I could ever have imagined. As I said before, I never had desire to visit Romania, but here I was and now I know better. The people were great. The country was beautiful. The history was fascinating. The food was excellent. But it has had some wicked problems.

 

Our guide, Vio told us something that surprised us. He asked us who we thought was the greatest man or woman of the twentieth century.  Then he told us who he thought was the greatest man of the twentieth century.  I paused wondering who he would say.  Before I could come up with an answer he said, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. That seemed like a remarkable choice, but Vio had a good explanation.

 

Gorbachev was the last leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to its dissolution in 1991. Ideologically, he at first adhered to Marxist-Leninism, the official doctrine of the Soviet Union, but he gradually moved towards social democracy by the early 1990s. He, not Ronald Reagan, as so many Americans believe, was the driving force behind moving The Soviet Union and its satellites, such as Romania, away from Communism and ending the Cold War too.

 

To Vio however, the reason he admired him so much, and was the greatest man of the twentieth century, was because as a result of him, Vio believed, he was able to speak his mind freely in Romania. Because of Gorbachev, he was free to answer the question I had posed for example about whether Romania was a genuine democracy.  Before the time of Gorbachev, it would have been very dangerous of me to ask such a question, and much more dangerous for him to answer it truthfully, since he lived in Romania, which was part of the Soviet empire. Vio called him “a gentle dictator.” That is what social democracy is too—gentle socialism.

 

As we were driving down National Highway No. 1 of Romania, which Vio said was the only national highway, he warned us that at times under Original Democracy it would become, the “National Parking Stall.”  Of course, we in the west are very familiar with this concept too. Often freeways become the “no free way.”

 

Romania is now part of the European Union which means that it must meet some minimal standards of democracy. Like Hungary which is also a member of the EU, Romania has its own currency.  Their own people acknowledge it is not much of a currency.  They openly call it “funny money”. No other country accepts it, but people who travel through it, like people who work on this boat we were travelling,  will accept Romanian money since they can us it when they sail through it. But few others accept it. According to Vio, this is a product of Original Democracy. Cock-eyed in other words.

 

Since Romania joined the EU, its people must be free to live and work elsewhere. Many of them have taken advantage of that privilege. It used to have 22 million people, now about 5 million of those people now live abroad. They prefer real democracy, or perhaps just better economic benefits than that offered by Original Democracy. Original democracy did not sound very appealing.

 

But now people can speak their minds. And that is worth a lot.

 

To know the future you must know the past

civilization, Freedom to Read, Truth Seeking

 

Both libraries and archives have an inevitable leaning towards the future. They preserve the past for the benefit of the future. As Richard Ovenden said,

“Every collection, every library is actually about the future. Every archival institution is about the future. How can we know where we are going unless we know where we are from. How can we chart a path to the future without thinking of where we are from?”

 

We need the knowledge of the past in order to look at the past societies with fresh eyes and new ideas and to inspire the future and protect the path to the best future.

As John Stuart Mill so wisely told us, we cannot hold a valid opinion unless we allow it to be challenged. We must permit all ideas to be challenged. Even our most sacred beliefs must be challenged or those beliefs will wither. This is for our benefit and for the benefit of the future. We must consider  and reflect on opposing views. We must not hide them in closets. We do our children no favours if we protect them from contrary views. Their own views will become stunted and weak without challenge. Coddling them from uncomfortable views as so many conservatives, like those in Florida, now want to do, is doing a great disservice to the next generation. Few things help us challenge our own views better than reading the strongest of the challenges to those views.

Where better to go for that than a library?

 

A Champion for Freedom

civilization, Freedom to Read, Truth Seeking

 

John Stuart Mill was the author of On Liberty and a champion, perhaps the greatest champion, of freedom of thought and expression. Richard Ovenden in his lecture at the Toronto Library took note of one of his famous ideas: namely John Stuart Mill’s insistence in On Liberty, that only through the diversity of opinion is there in the existing state of human intellect the chance of fair play to all sides of the truth.”  Often this seems hopelessly optimistic in this day of increasing polarization and decreasing tolerance for a diversity of ideas, but it is still the main hope for lovers of freedom of thought and expression.  Frankly, I have found no better idea.

Societies have a hard time achieving this goal. How can libraries then do it too? Richard Ovenden thought they could be up to that task. He pointed out that it is a fundamental aspect of their role. Libraries work in collaboration with each other and work within networks with each other. They have allies in their momentous task. They can do it! Often if you need to read something they don’t have in their own collection they are quite willing to help you to find it elsewhere and bring it to you.

Libraries take very seriously their job of serving their communities, Ovenden said. And I know this from my own decade of serving on a local library board. The people their love to serve the needs of their reading public. And they are darn good at it.

As Ovenden said,

“What gives us pleasure at the end of the day is thinking that they have helped someone solve a problem or better understanding of some issue. That task is entirely possible and we need to support those institutions and the individuals who work in them and give them the freedom to do that job.”

And they are darn good at it. They can do it if we just give them a chance. And it is one of the most important jobs there is.

 

 

Are Libraries asked to do too much?

civilization, Freedom to Read

 

Around the world libraries are being asked to do things or provide services in many new and interesting ways. In some places they act as shelters for the homeless. In places they act as food banks. In some they dispense health services and professional advice. They act as knowledge resources, community spaces. In Indigenous terms they are like knowledge keepers.  They are expected to reflect the diversity of opinion and to be welcoming of one and all. We also expect them to be, as Nahlah Ayed said, “bastions of free expression.” And then, as if that is not enough, we ask them to uphold democracy for us. All of this leads to the important question: are we asking too much of libraries?

Richard Ovenden had a good answer to this question.  He said, “Society is asking too much of libraries if we don’t resource them adequately to do all of those tasks.”

Libraries that were able to help many a person to make life choices are increasingly under pressure to do less, or even disappear entirely. That is most unfortunate. Particularly when libraries are faced with immense challenges of dealing with an analogue past and digital present such libraries may be unable to do all that is demanded of them. Ovenden said,

“Libraries have become aware of their role as social infrastructure. The have been incredibly adaptive. They’ve been innovative. They have seen how they can make a difference for their communities. We should entrust them to do those things their communities need the most and resource them properly.”

Yet we always ask them to do more. And therefore we must do our part too.

 

Libraries as temples

civilization, Freedom to Read, Truth Seeking

 

 

Richard Ovenden talked about excavations in ancient communities in Iraq and Syria of which I was not aware. He said that in ancient places, librarians often worked in temples!  5,000 years ago, librarians catalogued books. They had clay tablets of course rather than paper bound books, but they worked  in temples. He said “the librarians and archivists were priests!”

 In the France during the Middle Ages, the French national archives, the Trésor des Chartre,  were located in Sainte Chapelle. Only sacred chapels or cathedrals were good enough for libraries. That is how important they were considered. The archives were considered so precious they had sacred connotations.  We have lost some of that reverence  for libraries, for sure since then. Perhaps this is a sign of the decay of civilization in fact.

In the digital age we are surrounded by facts or false facts but libraries are hardly considered precious or sacred. Those days are largely gone. What a shame.

Nowadays, knowledge is abundant but still, we must never forget, fragile and can be easily disrupted disturbed or even maligned. We see that all around us.

It wasn’t long ago that the idea of librarians spending time on going through long lists of books for potential banning or “correction,” as happened in Florida, would have been considered ludicrous. Today it is rather a sad reality. Sometimes, I think, we live in the age of barbarians, or at best, the age of fools.

We have taken ancient liberties—such as the freedom to read or the freedom to think—for granted. To see them besmirched as they have been is deeply disturbing. Is there any chance that there can be galvanizing forces to buck up our resistance to tyranny? Or are these incidents or premonitions of our civilizational decline?

Libraries are truly treasures whether national, regional or local. We must learn again to understand that.