If God were Alive Today: Remembering Maisie Shaw and Berny Cameron

Posted by on . No comments.

A Christmas Reflection to be read, if possible, in every Catholic and United Church service across Canada

 

It’s well into the night here in Nanaimo, and although the cold rain beats incessantly at our home, the fire inside is roaring. Carol is asleep next to me on the couch and my stomach is filled and warmed with good cheer. And yet my thoughts are far from my cocoon of peace, as they have been every Christmas Eve for the past nearly two decades.

Her name was Maisie Shaw, and she would have turned eighty this year. Instead, she died a young teenager at the bottom of some concrete stairs an hour’s drive from here, on Christmas Eve in 1946.

A Christian killed Maisie with his angry boot: a man named Reverend Alfred Caldwell, who died peacefully in bed years later after being officially honored as a “true man of God and a servant of the aboriginal community” by his United Church of Canada, and handsomely pensioned.

But on Christmas Eve of 1946, Alfred Caldwell ignored Maisie’s small corpse at the bottom of the stairs, according to the other young girl who saw the murder. He walked away from his crime, and sometime later that night he wished all the still-breathing girls and boys at the Alberni Indian residential school a happy Christmas after they’d sung songs about the gentle newborn named Jesus. And then, later, Alfred Caldwell raped another one of those little children in his room, or two of them at a time, like he did almost every night he was Principal there.

The boot that erased Maisie Shaw wiped out a whole bloodline of unborn souls who would have sprung from her.

Somehow I see their many faces as I gaze just now out my warmth-fogged window, knowing that their spirits will linger among us only as long as someone cares about who they might have been. I even imagine that one or two of their spectral images might tonight visit a reclusive United Church official or Prime Minister with a name not unlike Ebenezer Scrooge, and pull back another one of them from the brink of their own selves. But such hope is for fairy tales told in comfortable rooms, and very soon all of their lost and betrayed faces ripple and fade away into the cold night.

What persists for Canadians is not the battered and bloody end of a little girl named Maisie, but the warm fact of our fireplaces and our full stomachs. And so ultimately I understand all the others who feel the fullness of their lives and so must deny the incomprehensible truth of what we have done and the filth that we all sustain.

I have told the world about Maisie Shaw and those like her for seventeen years now, ever since I learned of her fate; and Canada has been changed for it. And yet nothing has really changed.

Accused murderer of both Maisie Shaw and Albert Gray. Principal Rev. Alfred E. Caldwell (Ahousat, 1935-40, Alberni 1944-1953)

For just last month, another clergyman much like Alfred Caldwell got a medal from the Canadian government. His name is Bernard Cameron; and as a catholic priest in Cornwall, Ontario he was officially named in a National Citation as someone who has `”done a lot of good in the community and has made us all very proud”, according to his local Member of Parliament.

Bernard Cameron is also a serial child rapist, as his own victims have declared in public. But like Alfred Caldwell, Berny will never see the inside of a prison, and he will rape children until he dies. Canada and its churches, after all, know how to take care of their own.

If God were alive today, I wonder what would happen to Caldwell, and Berny Cameron, and all the others who officially do good? After all, since it’s the drive to make the world a better place by making other people different that has brought us to where we are today, then I figure that a Supreme Deity might have a different plan in mind besides doing good.

For if God were actually alive today, and not allowing the Caldwells and the Camerons to win all the time, maybe all that stuff attributed to Him or Her in the Bible might start happening. And wouldn’t that be pleasant for all of us, starting with our Official Do-Gooders like Alfred Caldwell and Berny Cameron?

But I wouldn’t hold your breaths.

I hear the Vatican is working overtime these days to have child rapists re-classified as “non-offenders” under psychiatric and statutory laws around the world. And the Harper government recently changed the law in Canada requiring only a one year mandatory sentence for child rape. So I guess Canada’s medal to Berny Cameron isn’t so unusual, after all: most likely, it’s the wave of the future.

Things are probably better this way: Berny Cameron gets his medal and the rest of us keep trying to do good within easy reach of our fireplaces. And Maisie Shaw stays moldering in her unmarked and forgotten grave.

After all, are you prepared for the alternative?

Merry Christmas.

Not if it isn’t true

Posted by on . No comments.

Being Christmas, this is the season of lies; so it’s a good time to talk about healing and reconciliation.

Canadians, especially, seem obsessed with those two words these days, and prattle on about them with the kind of hopeless desperation displayed by parents who keep insisting to their maturing children that there really is a Santa Claus.

Burying the hatchet is always a good thing for those with the bigger hatchet, much as the law is good for the man with property, and terrible for the one without it. But to speak of “reconciliation” as some kind of equally rewarding prospect for all concerned is just so much horse piss.

Take Indians, for example. As a group, they’re clearly holding the smaller tomahawk and will take anything they’re handed: at least, most of the ones I know. They don’t have much choice, after all. But their being reconciled to this big fish-little fish realpolitik called Canada is not the same thing as being happy with the arrangement, as much as they’re expected to do minstrel shows for the Big Massa.

All of us white folks, contrarily, are generally pleased as punch with all this healing and reconciliation talk of hatchet-burying with Indians, since we’re holding the bigger one.

Besides, all of this forced euphoria is just like talking about Santa Claus: a pleasant fairy tale designed to help us digest our turkey dinner and all the goodies that come with it. In truth, reconciliation between historical enemies like White Canada and what’s left of indigenous nations is about as common as a Christmas Eve manifestation of ol’ Saint Nick. How precisely does a lion get along with a lamb, anyway?

I doubt if I’d ever feel reconciled with the people who gang raped me or fed my little sister into a furnace one night along with her newborn baby. Nor would I expect the monsters who did this, or those who protect them, to “reconcile” with me or my slaughtered sibling, even if such a thing was possible, or desirable. What I would want would be to see the bastards go to jail, or a worse place.

Don’t misunderstand me. It’s not like I haven’t tried making up with my torturers, down the years, or offered a hand to those who I’ve wronged. But it’s always rung hollow. Both sides know it’s just for show, never alleviates the wrong or the pain, and is thereby a mere side-stop before the resumption of hostilities.

Richard Sawchuck was a demented eleven year old nearly twice my size who loved to chuck rocks at my head in the school yard for no particular reason, or spit gob all over the back of my head on the school bus each morning. The other kids would watch my ordeal and do nothing, or turn away with the kind of sick, vacant look of your standard not-so-innocent bystander. But after a week of Richard’s assaults I finally picked up a fallen tree branch one morning and smashed him over the head with it, which stopped him cold.

Nevertheless, my counter-attack caused both of us to be hauled in front of our Principal at Frontenac Elementary. The scowling custodian demanded that we shake hands and make up.

Richard grabbed my hand and squeezed it as hard as he could, and even while he mouthed an apology to me, his eyes blazed with the fire of vengeance. I said nothing to him, knowing that I would never trust him; but I shook his hand because I was expected to. And sure enough, Richard Sawchuck caught me the next day in an alley near my home, and I lost a tooth and some blood for it.

Richard and I have both moved on from that particular battlefield, of course, but only because of time and circumstance. Many other adversaries have taken his place. And with all the forgiveness and understanding in the world on my part, the blows have never slowed.

You can blame me, I suppose, for the conflict, which is the fool’s or the coward’s explanation. But all of that warfare with strangers aside, it’s the struggles closer to home that are in truth even more impossible for us to mend, for the simple reason that we are beings of love.

Our human heart, after all, is so infinitely gentle that one good whack at it will drive it into hiding for years, and sometimes for an entire lifetime. Like the Mohawk legend of Thunder Boy who is gifted to earth people until the moment that he encounters an angry word or a hand raised against him, and then must return to the heavens, our actual radiance endures in this world for about as long as the morning dew. And then, beaten or banished by stupidity, it flies away somewhere, never to find recovery.

Being an incurable romantic, which I suspect is another form of early onset dementia, I nevertheless still seek out the exiled radiance in every soul I meet, and I do see its traces in many of us, like the ghostly tail of sub-atomic particles.

An echo of our Eden-self resounds in some form in all men and women, fueling our best moments, and allowing us to somehow persevere in hell. But such a wispy spirit is woefully unable to construct the kind of active recovering and reclaiming that Official Lies call healing and reconciliation: words that are really just a politician’s ploy and a lawyer’s invention, not a living force to remake our rapidly decomposing world.

Coming apart as we are as a culture, it is preferable in these last days to leave all the blabber of reconciliation to the slogan-mongers and accept ourselves for who and what we are, as all dying people must. The heart outwears its sheath, and even love must rest, said Byron. This is not a time for more lies.

Whoever he was, the Just Soul called Yeshua had no need to overcome his murder and return in glory from the grave to his sad followers, in order to be One of God. For his life and sacrifice alone were enough to reconcile our hopes with the light he reflected from each one of us.

It is enough to be sifted and measured every day, in the heat of unreconciled warfare, and find in it all a reason to go on. If I am not healed, it is because I never was meant to be, but rather continue on that long journey not to recovery, but to transformation.

So grow up, Canada. Learn to face your end, and all that you have done to cause it. There are no cheap answers or apologies. There is just a final accounting, and the long arm of retribution and justice that reaches, yes, even you, for the purposes of heaven and earth and all of their people.

HURT ME WITH THE TRUTH

BUT NEVER KILL ME WITH A LIE

What’s Buried Next Door to Vancouver Island University?

Posted by on . No comments.

Crimes against Humanity in our own Backyard are Finally Surfacing

I was held in the Nanaimo Indian Hospital when I was a child, for seven years. I was used like a guinea pig in experiments. Lots of Indian kids died in there.

- Joan Morris, Songhees Nation, at a lecture at Malaspina College (VIU) in the spring of 2004

Just south of the VIU campus stands an overgrown piece of land behind stern barbed wire fencing: the site of the former Nanaimo Indian Hospital, run by the United Church of Canada and the federal government for over a half century.

According to Joan Morris and other Indians, this ground holds the remains of children who were killed after grisly medical experiments were conducted there for decades by military doctors.

This past week, Joan Morris’ testimony is helping to place Nanaimo in the news at international human rights forums in Europe.

Last Monday, the first evidence of crimes of genocide against native people in Canada went online , thanks to a Common Law court set up by lawyers and human rights activists in Belgium, Ireland and seven other nations. And in the docket of that court are testimonies of survivors of the infamous Nanaimo Indian Hospital (NIH), adjacent to the VIU campus.

I first met Joan Morris in the fall of 2003 and at her request, helped arrange a public forum on campus where she told her story to a small, shocked audience.

“My mother and I were both imprisoned in the Hospital in the 1960′s” she described.

“They gave me these horrible tasting drinks that made me sick. My cousin Nancy Joe had them too and she died later of cancer when she was only twenty two. I can’t remember a lot of things, but when I was older, when I went to a doctor in Victoria, he told me all the bones in my feet had been broken, and my uterus had been damaged. I know a lot of other Indians kids in there never survived. They were hauling out little bodies on that metal gurney practically every morning”

Documents held at Indian Affairs archives confirm that the Nanaimo Indian Hospital was funded jointly by the United Church of Canada, whose missionary doctors brought children to the facility, and the federal Department of Health. It officially closed in the mid 1970′s and has been a “training facility” for the Canadian military since the 1980′s.

Although some of the original buildings of the NIH were still standing when Joan Morris gave her talk at the former Malaspina College in 2004, within a few months of Joan’s talks, those buildings were bulldozed and destroyed.

And since, in the fall of 1999, Ottawa “officially sealed” all records of Indian hospitals across Canada held at its National Archives, a cover up of what went on at NIH seems to be in effect.

Esther Morris, a distant relative of Joan, was sterilized in her teenage years and had bones and a kidney removed when she was incarceretd at NIH during the 1960′s.

“The government came to my mom when I was five and told her I had tuberculosis, which was nonsense. I never had it. But they took me away and I was at the hospital for years. I lost track of time. I was strapped down in a weird device so I could never lie back or stand up, just held like that for months. I lost the use of my legs. These doctors kept studying me and giving me shots that made me sick. Later, I learned I couldn’t have children”

Nanaimo wasn’t the only place where such horrors were inflicted on local Indians.

Sarah Modeste of the Cowichan Nation was sterilized at the King’s Daughters Clinic in Duncan, BC in the early 1950′s by Dr. James Goodbrand. As Sarah describes on the online Common Law Court proceedings (itccs.org, November 5),

“Dr. Goodbrand said to me, ‘If you marry Freddy, I’ll have to do an operation on you’ … But Goodbrand delivered my first baby and afterwards I was all bruised and hurting inside. Later I learned I’d been sterilized … Goodbrand told me he was being paid $300 by the government for every Indian woman he sterilized”

Involuntary sterilizations and medical experiments are outlawed under international law, and are defined as crimes against humanity. Yet Canada and its churches have never been thus charged before any tribunal; and not a single person has ever been brought to trial in Canada for these crimes, or for the death of a child in these facilities and residential schools, where half the children never returned.

In the words of Joan Morris,

“All those little kids on the gurney are buried on the grounds of the hospital. My cousin Nanacy said she saw them being put in the ground, in the foliage up towards the mountains. I wish they’d be given a final rest”

Joan’s story has recently been removed from You Tube, without explanation.

As much as Canada has ignored and covered up its legacy of genocide, the world is not ignoring it any longer. The International Common Law Court of Justice, based in Brussels, has issued a Public Summons to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the heads of the United, Catholic and Anglican churches to answer these charges. So far, none of them have replied.

Nevertheless, the Court’s Prosecutor’s Office has commenced its case against Canada, which can be followed online at itccs.org .

If Canada and its churches are found guilty for crimes against humanity, Canadians are obliged under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court to not pay their taxes, lest they be found guilty of colluding in criminal actions.

The lost children of the Nanaimo Indian Hospital may receive justice yet.

A Love Letter to Greg Renouf from your Nefarious Enemy Kevin Annett

Posted by on . No comments.

Yes boys and girls, summer madness is in the air and the professional smear artists are gathering their crap to fling my way once again, especially now that we’re going after their bosses in a big way. So this is a fond note to one of them, from yours truly.
On a spring evening in 1958, Martin Luther King was quietly signing copies of his book “Stride toward Freedom” at a New York City store when he was stabbed in the chest with a seven inch long letter opener.

His attacker was Izola Curry, who screamed at him as she drove the knife home,

“I finally got you, you liar, you fake!”

King survived the stabbing. He did not press charges against Izola but asked that she “get some help”.

……………………..

Dear Greg,

It’s something of a thrill to be the subject of so much attention, especially on the part of someone like you whom I’ve never met or spoken to. Thank you, by the way, for all the free publicity! Like P.T. Barnum used to comment, I don’t care what you say about me – just don’t spell my name wrong!

But since we have never met, Greg – unless my 56 year old brain has missed something – and you do seem to nevertheless know a hell of a lot about me, I hope all your efforts aren’t misplaced – I mean, considering the amount of labor you’ve put in to learning all about “the REAL Kevin Annett”.

Ah, but what IS truth? asked Jesting Pilate. Or the elephant, to a dozen blindfolded people?

When one like me is talked about so much in cyber world, or in the foggy reaches of various fertile imaginations, I guess that any combination of truths is possible. And you do the combining so masterly, Greg. Whatever set you upon this quest of yours, to gut my reputation, is for you alone to know, Greg, and others to endlessly ponder. But your continual expression of public passion towards me does afford me a chance to reciprocate, and express with equal ardor my true feelings towards you.

But first, let me see if I follow your reasoning about me.

I’m really a fraud, according to you, based on some unnamed people I’ve “harmed” and some undisclosed evidence you can’t mention. Well, you’re in good company when you make that kind of unsubstantiated claim, because the churches and government do that all the time, too. Maybe you know some of those guys who spout the same line about me? Like RCMP Inspector Peter Montague, a.k.a. “Our specialty is smear campaigns”?

You don’t know Pete? Well, that surprises me, because that bit of “insider” knowledge you have about me – my “nefarious” past as a (brief) member of the (gasp!) International Socialists when I was in my early twenties – was only known by a few people in the world thirty five years ago, starting with the Mounties.

I guess you move in some pretty exclusive circles, Greg.

Then there’s all the hullaballoo you’re making about my mom and brother’s (equally brief) ownership of Western Canada Water. Yes sir, back in the 1980’s they were water exporters – well, they tried to be. I never swam in their effort. In fact, I told them I didn’t want anything to do with the bulk export of water from Canada, on principle. So I never owned a share in their company or made a cent from it.

Mom and Bill got booted out of WCW in a hostile takeover, by the way. Again, a long time ago.

Right. So what does all that have to do with anything, besides some odd notion by you of guilt by association? The world wonders.

But let’s get down to basics, Greg. If we’re to believe you, and the clique of smear artists whose ranks you’re joining, I have perpetrated the following “nefarious” (you  really like that word) deeds:

Besides being a general “con artist” and a moral degenerate, I have financially ripped off Indians (presumably, all those homeless ones I work with); used their testimonies without their permission; “harmed” elderly or struggling native people; forced them to make up atrocity stories that aren’t true; drugged eyewitnesses (I love that one); fabricated documents; made several Indian women pregnant and even messed around with a prostitute in a radio station at night (again, one of my favorites); beaten people up; exaggerated everything; and even, according to one of my more delusional detractors named Helen Michel, actually worked in an Indian residential school (presumably before I turned sixteen in 1972, by which time many of them were closed or closing).

Did I miss anything? You might want to consult the Montague File.

Well, none of it’s true, Greg. But in your world, apparently, I deliberately destroyed my ten year marriage, lost both of my children, sacrificed my livelihood and career, and have endured blacklisting, harassment, public ostracism and poverty for two decades simply so that I could do all that “nefarious” stuff and in return, endure the tender mercies of people like you.

Just one bit of advice, Greg. It’s not a smear, actually, to tell a man like me who’s 56 that he has the sexual prowess to do all night orgies with hordes of women. It’s called a compliment. So I wanted to ask if you actually have any spare copies of that alleged videotape of me getting high and engaging in flagrant delecto with that unknown and unnamed woman one summer night in 2010 at Vancouver Co-op radio?

I guess that it’s just coincidental that such a tale about me started circulating soon after I was unceremoniously canned and banned from that station after ten years as a programmer when I spoke on the air about eyewitnesses who saw RCMP officers taking native women out to the Pickton snuff film farm.

Maybe you can check with your buddy Inspector Montague about that one.

You see, Greg, life’s really a comedy posing as pathos, and the basic problem with you is you take it all way, way too seriously. Maybe that’s your handler’s fault.

After all, I know the Mounties have one of the highest professional burnout rates of any cop force on the continent because they have no union or grievance procedure. Female Mounties like Catherine Galliford in Vancouver get raped by their male colleagues if they get too mouthy about what they know – especially about the missing women. So it’s a stressful work environment to say the least, and I’m sure a low level flunky like you has to bear the brunt.

So it might be best if you change your approach to your work. Try doing like your fellow smear artist Lydia Whitecalf, when she took up an alias and started posing as a disgruntled “former supporter and admirer of Kevin who now sees the truth about him”. It’s a more convincing line, and you might garner some sympathy to boot.

But all that aside, let me say that I don’t bear you a grudge. I’ve seen your type come and go. And mostly go. And to quote Jack Palance’s cowboy character Curly remarking to a city slicker,

“I’ve crapped bigger than you, son”

Don’t take it personally, Greg. I never do.

So, drop the letter opener, brother, and get some help.

Yours affectionately,

 

Kevin