A little good in a year of bad
Chrystia Freeland: “We are where we are, where history has put us.”
Let›s honour the best people of 2017 - oh you know who you are - while admitting that this was not our species› best showing, shall we say. It was less of a moral light show than a mudslide, an Alabama sinkhole and other earthen metaphors. And that makes the lovely people listed below even more worthy.
Chrystia Freeland
I have written before about making my morning affirmations realistic. Survival (via Margaret Atwood) is one. “That column’s not going to write itself” is another. My disastrous habit of checking Twitter upon waking leaves me glassy-eyed and unable to read affirmations anyway. But my new one comes from Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland. “We are where we are, where history has put us.” Tape that to the wall. Each day, Freeland looks outward at a world of serial catastrophe while remaining diplomatic, patient and hopeful. If this doesn›t do the trick, I have a secondary Freeland quote: “Most people in the world are not as lucky as the least fortunate Canadians.” And with that, I am awake, also grateful.
Carol Off
I would have chosen Off, fine author and one of the CBC›s greatest journalists, even if she hadn›t ended up on the hit list of a convicted Ottawa triplemurderer. The lists were discovered in the killer›s home after he tried to asphyxiate a 101-yearold Second World War veteran. «Um, it›s something that comes with the territory,» Off told the CBC, «you know, being a public person, so these things happen.» Not how I would have reacted. She said she was pleased to be on the killer›s long list rather than shortlist, although it wasn›t great to come first. Well, Ms. Off, you are on my list of the most fabulous people of 2017, which is the best list of all.
Dr. Tracy Rogers
One of Canada›s leading forensic anthropologists, she studies what bones and ashes have to say to the living. Having worked on the Pickton serial killings, she remains meticulous, even physically entering the extermination chamber that Dellen Millard bought to incinerate the kidnapped Tim Bosma in 2013. She was searching for grains of a dead human to show in court. When I think of the Bernardo-Homolka serial killings, where a lazy autopsy of Karla Homolka›s little sister made the subsequent killings possible, I so value Rogers› intelligence and care. It continued in the Millard-Smich trial over the murder and incineration of Laura Babcock.
Paul Seesequasis
A Willow Cree writer, cultural activist and journalist, @ PaulSeesequasis tweets historic photographs from his research into Indigenous people in Canada - mostly from the 1920s to the 1970s - and how the government and churches took small children from their parents to torment and torture them in residential schools. I follow these daily photos in awe. Every beautiful young face makes me smile, with accompanying inner grief and guilt. Seesequasis›s photobook, Blanket Toss Under Midnight Sun, will be published next year by Knopf.
Daniel Dale
Of all the people most entitled to spend the year screaming, Dale is the one. I›m assuming he expected a stately respite in Washington after covering the late Toronto Mayor Rob Ford›s drunken stupors, but he went from a story of local squalor to the collapse of the American empire. Dale is a voice of sanity, meticulously listing Trump›s lies, providing a sort of database/medical file for voters. Dale, who wins my vote for the second year in a row, is best at putting American flesh on the Hateful Geezers ‹n› Gals state of mind. It›s a magic talent as they don›t open up to a whole lot of people. I follow Dale on Twitter, but he doesn›t follow me, I assume because I just retweet everything he writes, and he finds it tedious.
Hadiya Roderique
This lawyer and writer is a revelation. Her story in the Globe about how hard it is for a woman of colour to make a career among the whites of Bay St. was an intellectual triumph. Born to Caribbean immigrants, Roderique did her best to fit in. She went to U of T Law, dressed in conservative suitage, put on a cardboard face and personage, worked vicious hours and gave it all she had. But rich white lawyers can be as cruel as the kindergarten teacher who doubted Roderique could read. Roderique left the profession. What makes her story revelatory is her talent for fine persuasive Baldwin-esque prose. Many write about hurt; few write this well.