On Jan. 31, Dr. Michael Mahon, president of the University of Lethbridge, cancelled a talk that Dr. Frances Widdowson was scheduled to present. Like all scholars, Dr. Widdowson has nuanced views on many issues, and she was going to speak on “How Wok-ism Threatens...
BILL 64 is dead. There is little doubt that many Manitobans were delighted when interim Premier Kelvin Goertzen tolled its death knell. Instead of dancing around the bill’s funeral pyre, government members need to seriously review the Manness/MacKinnon commission...
Was there a cultural genocide in Canada as claimed in the Truth and Reconciliation Report? Mass graves at residential schools? An interview with Professor Rodney Clifton, co-editor of “From Truth Comes Reconciliation: Assessing the Truth and Reconciliation...
Country singer Kenny Chesney’s lyric “Everybody want to go heaven, but nobody want to go now” is perhaps an apt metaphor for the current debate over Bill 64, the Education Modernization Act. Everybody knows that Manitoba students underperform academically, but when...
At the time of Confederation, Canada’s Plains Indians were in a desperate situation. The same European-introduced guns and horses that resulted in a briefly glorious golden age for them had also resulted in constant inter-tribal warfare and the rapid disappearance of...
Political attacks on the Indian Act are back in the news, and that is a good thing. However, Canadian politicians, including First Nation politicians, need a credible plan about what to do before we pull out the champagne. Attacking the Indian Act is not a big deal...
The cultural war has been in full bloom in U.S. education for at least five years. Now it has spread to public schools in Canada. This war pits left-leaning liberal teachers, administrators, parents, and school board trustees against right-leaning conservatives. The...
Tom Brodbeck’s opinion essays (Winnipeg Free Press, July 28, 2023), rightly points out that in Winnipeg, at least, there has been “a breakdown of accountability measures to monitor the mistreatment” of residents of personal-care homes. Obviously, the physical and...
“A government’s most basic function is the protection of its sovereignty.” – Simon Schama Internal attacks by our political and judicial elites against the sovereignty of our country’s federal, provincial, and territorial governments are placing the existence of...
In a recent op-ed (Winnipeg Free Press, May 2, A7), my colleague from the Faculty of Education, University of Manitoba, John Wiens, argued that Bill 35, The Education Administration Amendment Act, goes too far. He claims that “it begins to look like just one...
The Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission was styled after the South African Commission which was the first commission ever established to sort through claims and counter-claims in an attempt to get at the Truth. The South African TRC was established in 1996 by...
Everyone knows that Canada is in trouble. Like other countries, this country has been racked by various waves of COVID-19 for almost two years. But COVID-19 is not the most troubling issue. Let me explain. Remember at the beginning of the pandemic, we didn’t expect...
As you read the title of this article, your mind probably flashes to a few negative media stories. Perhaps you think of a young Indigenous woman’s bad experience with a Winnipeg taxi driver. Or you think of Joyce Echaquan’s suffering and death in a Quebec hospital and...
Over the last six weeks or so, popular newspapers in Canada and around the world have been filled with reports and commentaries on the discovery of 215 graves on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School and an increasing number of graves at other...
Dedicated to the thousands of people –both Indigenous and non-Indigenous — who were good and honourable servants to the children in Canada’s Indian residential school and hostels.