Dismissing history creates activism

Re: Gormley: In Trudeau land, maybe this really is post-national Canada (SP, Feb. 28)

In his recent column, John Gormley places the blame “for the growing activism, barricades and contempt for law” on Prime Minister Trudeau. In the same column, he, together with Jonathan Kay, laments the fact that “Canada’s identity has transformed to a country convinced that we are “a genocide state.”

Canadian media, academic and political elites, Kay rightly points out, are obsessed with the narrative that we are “an ugly scar on traditional Indigenous lands,” and the “whole vocabulary — settler, neo-colonial, appropriation — declares that Canada is garbage, hoping that an attitude of self-abasement would somehow lead us to ‘reconciliation.’ We forgot that when garbage talks, no one listens.”

I want to respectfully offer a different view. By so carelessly dismissing our genocidal and colonial history (and ongoing present), with phrases like “we forgot that when garbage talks, no one listens,” Kay, and those who share such a view, are just as, or more, responsible for the growing activism.

Canadians are increasingly uneasy with those who seek to deny the findings of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. And increasingly, Canadians are embracing and acting on the haunting and compelling words of Dr. Martin Luther King: “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”

Marc Spooner, Regina