Montreal Riots 1

Mayhem in Montreal: A day in the life of a city in crisis,

by: Jonathan Montpetit, The Canadian Press,

 

MONTREAL—When Montrealers wake up these days, the morning calm of the city streets can make the previous night seem like a distant dream. Gone are the perpetual facts of life for anyone near the city centre each night: the rumble of low-hovering helicopters, the makeshift barricades, the riot police, the taunts and chants from the tide of thousands of marching protesters.

The suburbs remain quiet. Even the downtown core returns to the regular rhythm of most other urban centres — at least for another 12 hours. People seeing sensational images from Montreal, now being beamed on newscasts around the world, are witnessing only one small sliver from a day in the life of a city in crisis.


On the morning subway commute, bleary-eyed Montrealers flip through the free dailies answering questions they might be asking about the previous night’s events: How many were arrested last night? How many windows were broken? Some shake their heads in disbelief. Only a small minority of morning metro commuters will be wearing the emblematic red patch of the student movement.

Around noon, groups of co-workers might head out for lunch and catch the latest details of the strike from a 24-hour news channel on the TV hanging on a café wall. They will make quips about the government minister seen answering reporters’ questions. They will do the same during a competing news conferences from the student groups blasting Premier Jean Charest and the police. The day is still young.

In the afternoon, there is water-cooler talk about the lighter side of the protests. Some might be idle gossip about the key players — such as who’s better-looking: the mild-mannered Leo Bureau-Blouin, head of the college students’ association? Or the more strident Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, spokesperson for the hard-line student group C.L.A.S.S.E.?

Or, as someone tweeted Thursday: “You know the conflict has gone on too long when you notice that Bureau-Blouin got a haircut.” As the day drags on, the mood changes.

A bartender might see a thinner-than-usual happy-hour crowd, and wonder what’s in store for the coming festival season that in most years motors Montreal’s summer economy. Many commuters have been desperate to avoid the downtown core lately. By 8:30 p.m. it will be taken over by the nightly student march, which begins in the same park every night and whose unpredictable path winds onto the same streets, but at different times, in a different order.

Patrons in bars and restaurants might applaud as the march makes its way past. The process can last more than 15 minutes. While some stand to applaud, others will exchange furtive glances or stare into their plates and quietly mutter. Around dinner tables some parents will argue with children. Even friends will debate each other fiercely, on Facebook and Twitter, or over beers on one of Montreal’s many restaurant patios.

“Are you a red, green or white?” is one common question, referring to the colours that represent various positions on the strike. Throughout the dispute, protesters have thought up some novel tactics. The latest innovation, borrowed mainly from protests in the Spanish-speaking world, has been to organize noisy pot-banging processions in Montreal’s residential areas.

It has been dubbed the casserole-dish protest — from the Spanish “cacerolzados,” made popular in Chile in the 1970s. Every night at 8 p.m., even streets in quiet neighbourhoods will spring to life with the clamour of neighbours gathering on balconies, leaning out of windows and milling about on sidewalks — all of them striking various kitchen implements.

With the racket reaching an ear-rattling crescendo, one neighbour recently asked another in the Plateau neighbourhood: “How long are we supposed to do this for?” The larger march, meanwhile, will be rippling through the downtown streets farther south. It usually remains peaceful, if troublesome for anyone stuck in traffic.

But the crowd thins, leaving behind the more hard-line protesters. Many of them are wearing masks. Projectiles are thrown at riot police. They include stones, bottles, sticks and, on the rarest night, even a Molotov cocktail might be tossed onto the street. Commercial windows — particularly those of banks — will get smashed.

Tear gas is fired. Arrests are made. Sometimes police will exchange angry words with bystanders who gets too close, blast some with pepper spray, or shove them with a baton. The air in the downtown core, and the neighbourhoods near it, will vibrate from the sound of police and media helicopters rumbling so noisily that some people say they can’t sleep.

Eventually the gas clears. The broken glass is swept off sidewalks. The helicopters fly away. And Montreal gets ready to do it all over again.

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..........dear readers, I have included the above article by Jonathan Montpetit of the The Canadian Press, in my blog verbatim who so eloquently describes what 'Montrealers' are facing......and what could very well spread to other centres. With more than 2,500 arrested with several injured, we hear that streets in Montreal were paralyzed! Have these riot organizers not learned that when they call for violence, it only begets more violence inflicted on their followers, as evidenced by the 1,100 G20 folks detained in Toronto! So why have these same organizers called for a huge resistance in Toronto? Is it because Democracy is supposedly "messy" to these folks?

Is this what make charges against our Police egregious as a few stand accused of violating civil rights and using excessive force during the June 2010 meeting of world leaders that brought us scenes of mayhem, buffoons burning cars and shattering glass?

Didn't the G20 riot begin with televised riot leaders exhorting their followers to violence early on that fateful Saturday morning in Allen Gardens, well before private property was smashed, public property was torched and rioters were rounded up? Is it ludicrous for the McNeilly report to not even consider how the crowd was effected by these riot leaders; who, by the way were not wearing masks?

Why was Chief Blair's calm appeal, relayed in the media shortly after the violence commenced mid-Saturday for everyone to leave the area ignored? 

Canada's Criminal Code defines and prohibits both unlawful assemblies and riots but defines the latter in relation to the former, as follows, "A riot is an unlawful assembly that has begun to disturb the peace tumultuously." By inciting to riot, wasn't this law broken well before the G20 rampage began? Would the G20 riot not happened if this law was enforced, when the offense occurred? Does our Ontario Attorney General need to enact a new law to speed the issue of arrest warrants to enhance conviction to prevent a G20 riot repeat? These are just a few of my musings....

Loyal Companion Helps a Veteran Regain Her Life After War Trauma,

      
                                               Toronto EMS, Fire and Police on the scene!

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By: James Dao, NY Times, April 28, 2012

SAN DIEGO — The hovering aircraft was just a plain-vanilla traffic chopper, a benignly common species to Southern California skies. But its mere presence overhead was enough to make Tori Stitt stiffen.

More than a year ago, Ms. Stitt, a former Navy officer who did a tour in northern Iraq, might have made a beeline for her car, ducked under a table or broken down in panic merely from the chopping of rotors — a sound she still associates with combat casualties. But this time, she remained outwardly calm, breathing deep, while silently and strenuously massaging the ears of the service dog at her feet.

The moment was one more small victory in Ms. Stitt’s road back from war. Medications and therapy have helped her cope with, though not overcome, the depression,sleeplessness sleeplessness and anxiety caused by post traumatic stress disorder. But nothing has been more important to her recovery, she says, than Devon, the amiable golden retriever that has become her constant companion.

“It doesn’t matter what bad things are going on, I can pet Devon, give him a hug, and they turn around 180 degrees,” Ms. Stitt said.

Ms. Stitt is among the many thousands of veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan whose P.T.S.D. cases are considered chronic: so severe that treating the disorder into remission through standard practices — usually prescription medications and cognitive or exposure therapy — is expected to take many years.

It is not surprising, then, that many of those veterans are turning to alternative treatments like yoga, acupuncture, herbal remedies and massage therapy to relieve symptoms enough so that they can return to work, maintain relationships or simply function day to day. None have proved more popular than service dogs.

Organizations have sprouted up in many military towns to provide dogs at little or no cost to veterans with P.T.S.D. or traumatic brain injury. Businesses and nonprofit groups created to train dogs for the blind or autistic have shifted into veterans services.

And Congress has ordered the Department of Veterans Affairs to study the effectiveness of service dogs as P.T.S.D. therapy, with some lawmakers looking to require the government to help finance training, which can cost more than $15,000 a dog.

“America wants to take care of its veterans,” said Lu Picard, founder of east coast assistance dogs, which trains service dogs. “So it can be easier to raise money for a veteran than for a man who has a spinal injury spinal injury from a car accident.”

There is little scientific data showing that dogs relieve the symptoms of P.T.S.D., though several research projects are under way. And skeptics say that dogs cannot possibly treat the underlying disorder, where memories of traumatic events trigger potentially debilitating symptoms. But many P.T.S.D. experts say that there is much anecdotal evidence that dogs make veterans feel better — and that may be enough.

“If the point is to treat a person into remission, we have no evidence that service dogs can do that,” said Alan L. Peterson, a professor of psychistry at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio and director of Strong Star, a research consortium on P.T.S.D. “But in terms of just coping, they might help.”

Ms. Stitt, 31, grew up in Florida, attended Norwich University in Vermont on an R.O.T.C. scholarship and was commissioned as a Navy officer in 2002.

While working on a guided-missile destroyer, she was recruited to join an Army engineering battalion in Iraq because she was familiar with sophisticated electronic equipment. Her job would be to oversee the operation and maintenance of devices used to detect or jam remotely detonated roadside bombs.

She was excited by the prospect of joining a unit that would bring her as close to combat as a woman could get. But her very first mission outside the wire, in 2006, proved disastrous.

Her unit was returning from a patrol when a bomb exploded beneath a vehicle, injuring several soldiers. A firefight broke out, and within minutes helicopters swarmed overhead. Confused and terrified, Lieutenant Stitt froze, unable to react to orders or even get out of her vehicle when the fighting was over.

“The Navy did not prepare me to see that,” she said. “I was completely ineffective in that mission. I couldn’t do anything. I was powerless.”

She asked to be sent home, but her commanders said no. So for the next several months, she went on bomb-searching patrols almost daily. By the end of her tour, she felt toughened. But she had also seen more casualties. And she was racked by guilt and shame for having failed to prevent bombs from exploding and for breaking down emotionally in combat.

“I blamed myself a lot in theater for things that happened,” she said. “Even if I had no control over it.”

Barbara Van Dahlen, a clinical psychologist who works with veterans, said that while many troops feel guilt or shame about events in war, women have the added burden of overcoming doubts about their mettle.

“All soldiers fear that they will freeze up,” Dr. Van Dahlen said. “But women come into the military having to prove that they are as good as a man. There already is an assumption that she is not mentally as tough or physically fit.”

Ms. Stitt started having nightmares and sleeping problems while in Iraq. A year later, she deployed to Bahrain. Feeling alienated from other sailors and increasingly nervous around Arabs, she became a loner, drinking herself to sleep.

When the deployment ended, she stole a piece of furniture from the apartment where she stayed, an infraction that almost got her kicked out of the Navy. Back in San Diego, she drank more heavily than ever, and one night in 2008, she resolved to swallow a bottle of pills with her booze. “I felt so alone,” she said. “I was better off just dead.”

That night, she fed her cats, tidied up her apartment and called friends. One of them became so alarmed that she got her husband to talk to Ms. Stitt until she fell asleep. The next day she checked into the psychiatric ward at Balboa Naval Medical Center.

Alcohol treatment got her back on her feet, and she went through several months of P.T.S.D. treatment. But nothing quite clicked. “I was still dealing with nightmares, flashbacks, sleeping issues,” she said. “And I was still isolating. I needed another avenue to help me get out.”

Desperate for an answer, it dawned on her: “What about a dog?”

She applied to a local organization that charged her $3,000. On one of her first visits, she met Devon, a finicky retriever who had not bonded with other prospective masters. But he trotted right up to Ms. Stitt and responded to her initial commands. Devon, Ms. Stitt says, chose her.

Like other service dogs that work with veterans, Devon was trained to turn on lights, check rooms for unexpected visitors, guide Ms. Stitt through crowds or “block” people who come uncomfortably close. His most important task, though, is to give her emotional sustenance.

She says he can sense when she is nervous and responds by standing close or putting a paw on her lap. If she thrashes in her sleep, he licks her face to wake her. And by the mere fact of needing walks, he forces her to leave her apartment and, along the way, interact with people.

In 2010, she received an honorable discharge and six months later used her bachelor’s degree in psychology to get a job with a nonprofit organization, Interfaith Community Services, as a case manager working with veterans recovering from alcohol or drug addiction.

At work, she can sound like the Navy officer she once was, gently but firmly counseling clients, all of them men, to stick with their medications, attend therapy, stay focused on finding work or complete their studies.

Inside, she counsels herself as well. She sometimes forgets her medications and has been slow to resume therapy, complaining about the waiting list for individualized counseling at the San Diego Veterans Affairs health center. She has made friends, but is still something of a loner. Devon remains her touchstone.

“I would like to spend a little bit less time with him, be less dependent,” she said. “But it’s going to take some therapy to make that happen.”

Still, she is getting through most of her days. At a meeting of homeless men at an Interfaith housing complex, she patiently chided the veterans, many of them from the Vietnam era, to stop bickering, and she then had them clean their rooms in preparation for a weekend inspection.

It was at times tense, and during the session, Devon remained seated nearby, watching his master intently. When she finished and headed outside, he dashed across the grass and painted her hands with his tongue. Had she been nervous? A little, she said. But at this moment, she was laughing, and it was difficult to know as she stroked his mane whether she was the comforted or the comforter. 

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                    (dear readers, I have presented this article by James Dao, of the NY Times verbatim so that our soldiers as well as those in our emergency services will not feel so alone after dealing with the unthinkable! There are those around you who care! I am reminded of General Douglas MacArthur at the climax of WW2 as he presided over the Japanese unconditional surrender when he said, "No man hates war, as much as the soldier". I have dealt with many in emergency services and my most memorable comment came from a Toronto Police officer who told me that he "needed his friends outside the force more than his friends needed him." Regardless if it's a dog or a friend outside the force, it is important to reach out. God Bless!) 

reference: 

http://www.heavybadge.com/efstress.htm

Ontario....voter apathy = dangerous deficit of fiscal sanity??

In Ontario on Tuesday, the minority government of Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty,

Canada's Pinocchio of Premiers, dodged a quick election over his budget by agreeing to the NDP's demands to add more spending to the electorate's burden -- including the always-popular promise to tax the rich. The response? Standard & Poor's has dumped Ontario's credit rating outlook from stable to negative. Turn left for the road to hell. Disaster lies ahead.

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                 dear readers, I have provided the above excerpt from a Toronto Sun editorial about how the minority government of Liberal Premier Dalton McGuinty just increased our outrageous debt service costs, our third largest spending item, no less by agreeing to NDP leader Andrea Horwath's demands.

Didn't Andrea think to clear additional spending with the rating agencies, like Standard & Poor's, who subsequently dropped Ontario's credit rating outlook from stable to negative? Is it any wonder that when our leaders continue to confuse voters, they breed more voter apathy!

64th anniversary of Israel's independence!

In Ottawa, Ontario, Prime Minister Stephen Harper on April 25, 2012 issued the following statement to mark Yom Ha’atzmaut (Israel's Independence Day) celebrations:
"On this special day, I would like to extend warm wishes to those celebrating Yom Ha’atzmaut in Canada, in Israel and around the world. “On this anniversary, we remember all that Israel and its citizens overcame to achieve statehood and we celebrate all that it has accomplished in the past six decades. “As I said to Prime Minister Netanyahu during his visit to Canada last month, our Government recognizes it is an especially challenging time in the Middle East. Israel can rest assured that we will uphold its right to exist as an independent Jewish state as we continue in our efforts to promote peace and security in the region.
“Once again, Happy Independence Day!”

                                                         -30-

                     dear readers, considering continuing security threats Israel faces, Shimon  

Peres is quoted to have said at Yom Ha’atzmaut: "To those who are now threatening Israel I say: Don't repeat the mistakes of your predecessors." "You threaten out of a hunger for conquest. We defend out of an aspiration for peace. That wars, which Israel did not initiate, brought it unexpected gains, causing the aggressors unexpected losses."

Has the time come for young Palestinians, young Egyptians, young Syrians, young Iranians 

and young Israelis to commit to living peacefully together and turn their backs on those who won't?

Alison Redford and Alberta PCs defy polls, a dynasty endures!

Alberta PC Leader Alison Redford celebrates her win in Calgary on Monday.

A dynasty endured here Monday night. But never before had a Progressive Conservative government been elected in Alberta by confounding expectations. The party headed by Alison Redford, now guaranteed more than 45 years in power, has been many things to Albertans over the years, but never had they been the Comeback Kids. All the pols and the punditry, even the talk on the street from voters, had pointed to a breakthrough by the brash, plain-spoken 41-year-old former journalist Danielle Smith and her hard right band of Wildrose candidates.

But under Redford, a party which had trailed by 10 percentage points on the weekend before the vote somehow rose from the dead to win its 12th consecutive majority, casting a pall over Smith’s campaign headquarters at a country club here. The hurtin’ tunes started playing early and never really let up.In the immediate post-mortem, the instant analysis was simple. “What happened,” I asked one veteran of federal and provincial campaigns, who like most of the team around Smith are seasoned and shrewd political operatives.“Hunsperger happened,’’ he said.

That’s as in Allan Hunsperger, the pastor running for Wildrose who had condemned gays to life in a lake of fire, joined by Ron Leech, who said he was a better candidate than his opponent because he was white.
Smith was badly hurt by this outbreak of Tea Party-style, social issues foot-in-mouth disease. But she compounded her problem. She failed to fire either of the candidates, falling back on her libertarianism as an excuse to let them carry on, arguing freedom of speech. But in the campaign’s last week, she had nothing to offer, only playing defence on social issues and her view that the science of climate change remained a work in progress.

“You had a 41-year-old dynasty with a lot invested in hanging on,’’ said one Wildrose strategist. “They threw a lot of furniture at us in the last week.’’ Things shifted, a last-minute surge that pollsters missed. There did appear to be strategic voting, an almost total collapse of the Liberal party and a move to the PCs to block Smith. In essence, Alberta decided to move forward as Redford implored. They would not be pulled back to the 1950s where she said Smith would take them. “Tonight we found out change might take a little longer than we thought,’’ Smith told supporters.

“Am I surprised? Yeah. Am I disappointed? Yeah. Am I discouraged? Not a chance.’’ Redford told Albertans the entire country was watching, waiting to see what this province really thought of itself.
She told them the world was watching, too. She worried aloud about the future of the provincial, and national, economy if a “climate change denier” was trying to open new markets for the province’s bountiful resources.

She dared them to take the next step on the world stage, to show the world that this was a more cosmopolitan province, home to more than Stetsons and stampedes, with a diverse Calgary leading the way.
She had travelled the world herself and made an international reputation for herself. Smith had barely left Alberta. They listened and they clearly worried about Smith and a team of untested neophytes running the show. Redford appeared to head into election day playing a weak hand, looking at polls which showed Smith up to 10 points ahead of her.

She was trying to stave off significant “brand fatigue” after 41 years of PC rule. She was being accused of forsaking the party’s conservative base. She seemed to have missed a window last winter when, had she gone to the polls riding a wave of acclaim as the province’s first female premier, even Wildrose strategists conceded they could not beat her. But she waited, and as she did the problems piled up and she underperformed. Despite the odds, the premature obituaries written on her and her party, despite the national attention showered on Smith, despite the polls, despite the despair even heard from within her party, she prevailed.

Dynasties are hard to kill.

             
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               dear readers, I have presented this article written by Tim Harper, Toronto Star, National Affairs Columnist. Many 'polls and punditry' during the Alberta election called for a Wildrose victory, which makes me wonder if legitimate unbiased public opinion polling has changed to an art from a science? I suspect that some marginal pollsters counted on ignorance while others used dubious methods to test their research. Regardless, instead of being skeptical; which is what pollsters are trained to be, no less, are some just selling 'snake oil' because it's easy? At a time when many forms of science are being questioned; like medical and environmental science, i'm not really surprised that post Alberta election, many political pollsters are now feeling vulnerable but if we continue to confuse voters, we may breed more voter apathy!

McGuinty agrees to surtax the people who can afford a good accountant!

The wealthy will take a bath so average Ontarians won’t have to wallow through a spring election. “We will not be plunging this province into an election,” New Democratic Party Leader Andrea Horwath said, after cutting a last-minute, budget-saving deal with Premier Dalton McGuinty.

“We’re showing the people of this province that we’re willing to do everything we can to try to make a minority work. But we’re also showing them the sort of Ontario that we want to build.” The deal ensures McGuinty’s seven-month-old minority government will survive a crucial vote on the budget Tuesday.

The new tax, which could be in place by July 1, will slap a two-percentage point increase on income over $500,000 and raise $470 million a year. Only 23,000 Ontarians make enough to pay the tax but on average they’ll shell out $19,000 each.

Horwath had wanted the revenue from the surtax to pay for new spending on cheaper home heating bills, help for day cares and health care but the premier had different ideas.“The NDP want a tax on the rich. We want to reduce the deficit,” McGuinty said. “So under the deal discussed with Ms. Horwath a short time ago, the richest Ontarians — those earning more than $500,000 a year — will be asked to pay a 2% surtax which would generate $470 million next year, all of which will go into reducing the deficit.”

The surtax will expire when the deficit — now $15 billion — is reduced to zero, McGuinty said.
It’s not the only concession Horwath was able to wring out of McGuinty in exchange for saving his government’s skin.

She won small increases for Ontario Works and Ontario Disability benefits, a one-time $20 million for northern hospitals and a vague commitment to help the horse racing industry wean itself off slot machine revenues.

“We said we’re open to suggestions to improve our plan — not just because it’s necessary to do so in a minority parliament but because I think it’s important to be open to good ideas wherever they may come from,” McGuinty said.

Left fuming on the sidelines was Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak, who predicted last fall as the election drew close that Liberals propped up by New Democrats would inevitably raise taxes.

“I would like to say I am surprised by this deal but I’m not,” Hudak said in a statement. “The choice made by the Premier today leads us further down the same failed path we have been on for the last eight years.

“This is the path of more spending, more taxing, and no plan to create a better climate for private sector jobs. It tinkers with small change when what we need is big change.”

The NDP and the Liberals play give and take:

• Andrea Horwath asked for tax on $500,000-plus earners to pay for more health care
• Dalton McGuinty gave her tax on rich for five years to pay down deficit
•  
• Horwath asked for 1% increase in Ontario Disability Support Program benefits
• McGuinty gave her 1% ODSP and Ontario Works benefit increases
•  
• Horwath asked for more money to secure child care spaces
• McGuinty gave her $90 million, $68 million and $84 million over three years
•  
• Horwath asked for an 8% HST cut on home heating
• McGuinty said no, and Horwath dropped it
•  
• Horwath asked for help for horseracing industry
• McGuinty provided vague promise of transition support
•  
• Horwath asked for $100 million in health care funding
• McGuinty offered $20 million to support Northern Ontario hospitals
•  
• Horwath asked for $418,000 annual cap on public CEO salaries
• McGuinty said no to CEO pay cap.

                                                  -30-


         (dear readers, I have provided this article, written by Jonathon Jenkins, Toronto Sun, Queen's Park Bureau, Monday, April 23, 2012 verbatim about the end of the McGuinty dynasty, as we know it. To save his minority, has McGuinty turned his back on his political contributors when he agreed to Horwath's millionaire's surtax? Will major political donators cut off the 'cash spigot' now that McGuinty has done what he said he wouldn't do? Cut off from funds, the Liberals could be in mortal danger of following their Federal brethren into obscurity! Could this be Horwath's plan?)

Holocaust Remembrance - ‘to keep the promise’

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Statement by the Prime Minister of Canada at the 2012 National Holocaust Remembrance Ceremony in Ottawa, Ontario on April 23, 2012.

Six million. Six million innocent men, women, and children. We remember this number. It reminds us of the sheer scale of the Holocaust, but one aspect of its singular place in the history of crimes against humanity.
Above all, we remember the individuals included in this number. We remember that each one has a name – precious, irreplaceable, deserving of honour.

“Six million. “Six million innocent men, women, and children. “We remember this number. “It reminds us of the sheer scale of the Holocaust, but one aspect of its singular place in the history of crimes against humanity. “Above all, we remember the individuals included in this number. “We remember that each one has a name – precious, irreplaceable, deserving of honour. And so we gather as a nation on this solemn day.

Today we honour each and every one of the six million who were murdered in the Holocaust. We pay tribute to the courage and solidarity of the Jewish people in that time of gravest peril. We stand in awe of the Righteous. We give thanks for those who survived.

We especially give thanks for those who survived and found their way to our country, and who have enriched its life immeasurably. Ladies and gentlemen, today we remember not only a fact of history.
We rededicate ourselves to the promotion of human rights in our own time. We strengthen our resolve to defend the vulnerable, to challenge the aggressor and to confront evil. And we renew our vow: never again.
But to honour the victims and survivors of the Holocaust, it is not enough simply to remember. Truly remembering the Holocaust must also be an understanding and an undertaking. It is an understanding that the same threats exist today.

It is an undertaking of a solemn responsibility to fight those threats. We see it in the manifestos of organizations which deny the right of Israel as a Jewish state to exist. We see it most profoundly and clearly in the ravings of a ruthless leader who threatens to wipe Israel off the map, while violating his country’s international obligations and pursuing the development of nuclear weapons. We see it in the slaughter of Jewish children and other innocents, just last month, by a man born and raised in a tolerant, Western country.
And we see it here at home, every year on some university campuses, in the unconscionable slur that is the so-called Israeli Apartheid Week.

Ladies and gentlemen, while the Holocaust stands alone, it does not stand isolated. It is but the most hellish chapter in the long and continuing history of anti-Semitism. We must face this history unflinching.
Anti-Semitism is a sickness, a deadly moral sickness.

Anti-Semitism kills the lives and security of its victims, the consciences of its perpetrators, the integrity of those who fail to speak out, of those who counsel a false peace, of those who seek refuge in moral equivalence. As history and present controversies tell us all too well, anti-Semitism is a threat not only to the Jewish people. It is a threat to us all – a sickness that quickly morphs into a hatred and a desire to destroy anyone – anyone who is different than its perpetrator.

But most important of all, we remind ourselves, we remind ourselves in this moment, that we are neither hopeless nor helpless. This is the message of Yad Vashem, of the Canadian Society for Yad Vashem, and of all those committed to Holocaust remembrance and education. You take on the painstaking work of documenting and researching the most unspeakable horrors of which humanity is capable. But you do so with confidence that there is a moral compass to guide us surely away from such horrors. You do so with hope, believing in the power of education to foster tolerance, compassion and understanding. You do so with generosity, celebrating the heroes who chose good over evil, even at the risk of their own lives, highlighting the fact that these heroes include people of all faiths.

As a Canadian, as Prime Minister, I thank you for your noble service, your invaluable service, to our country and to the family of civilized nations.

Ladies and gentlemen, in a few moments we will hear the stories of three of the Righteous Among the Nations. It is natural on hearing these stories, not only to be moved and inspired, but also to reflect.
Why did the Righteous choose to do good, even under the most terrifying circumstances? What were the factors which influenced their number in any given place? And in so many places, why was that number not larger? At the end of today’s ceremony will be the launch of an exhibit from Yad Vashem, on Muslim Albanians who rescued Jews during the Holocaust. We have much to learn from their example.
Following Nazi occupation in 1943, the Albanians refused to turn over lists of Jews within their borders.
They gave false documents to Jews, to help them avoid detection. The country protected not only its own Jewish citizens; they welcomed an even larger number of Jewish refugees from neighbouring lands. As a result, almost all of them were saved. What is the reason for this magnificent example? It is Besa, a code of honour, the highest ethical code in Albania. Besa means literally ‘to keep the promise’ – to keep one’s word, to the point of being someone in whom a person in need can entrust his or her very life.

Ladies and gentlemen, we too must keep this promise. This is the culture of honour which we must all protect and strengthen, not only in our own country, but also in international forums and around the world.
Historian Sir Martin Gilbert reports that most rescuers believe that they did, and I quote, ‘the only thing a decent person would do.’ He quotes a woman whose father was honoured as Righteous, saying her father would have said, and again I quote, that he did ‘nothing other than any normal human being would have done.’ On this solemn day of remembrance, let us rededicate ourselves to spreading that decency, to making that statement true.

Let us push relentlessly the boundaries of tolerance and respect, until these values are realized the world over. Now can we achieve this, fully and forever? History tells us, sadly, that we should not expect to do so.
But it also tells us that we must eternally try.

This is the mission of Yad Vashem. And this remains the great challenge before us and before the world today.

                                                -30-

                 dear readers, well it is laudable for Stephen Harper to acknowledge the Nazi atrocity that infected Europe in the 30's, on this very solemn day, we should not forget our own culpability in the sad story of the SS St. Louis, a ship full of Jewish refugees that was turned away from Halifax in early 1939, simply because ignorance, call it racism or anti-Semitism or hate was rampant in official Canada, too. As Adolf Hitler began his brutish campaign to slaughter all the Jews of Europe, Canada’s highest officials turned their backs on those trying to escape. A handful might have escaped the Nazi killing machine if Canadian officials hadn’t been so rabidly ignorant.

On May 13, 1939, the St. Louis steamed out of Hamburg, Germany on her way to Cuba but when the ship arrived in Havana, the Americans refused to admit the Jewish refugees. The St. Louis sat in the harbour for days before being forced to head north along the eastern seaboard of the United States. The plan was to dock in Halifax, Nova Scotia and hope the Canadian government would agree to take them in but the St. Louis’ passengers were turned away again!

After the War, Ottawa was reluctant to apologize for the wrongdoings of those in power at the time, most notably Frederick Charles Blair, the head of immigration and notoriously racist who did all he could to block the immigration of Jews into Canada., and Vincent Massey, Canada’s high commissioner to Great Britain (and later Governor-General) who worked through external affairs to keep Jewish refugees out of Canada, according to Irving Abella in his 1982 book, 'None Is Too Many'.

In 1938, Frederick Blair wrote that Canada had fought to keep people out who had become stateless as a result of the First World War “for the reason that coming out of the maelstrom of war, some of them are liable to go on the rocks and when they become public charges, we have to keep them for the balance of their lives.” Frederick Blair did not lack for willing helpers. Thomas Crerar was the only member of Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King’s Liberal Cabinet to support Jewish immigration to Canada but even he fell in with his colleagues and supported the unofficial ban on letting Jews from Europe into Canada.

After the St. Louis was denied entry to Halifax Harbour, she returned to Europe, allowed to dock in Antwerp, Belgium, and several countries took her passengers in as refugees. However, The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum records that, “532 St. Louis passengers were trapped when Germany conquered Western Europe and just over half, 278 survived the Holocaust.”  

Today, more than 70 years later, at Halifax’s Pier 21, the very place where the ship would have docked, had Canada welcomed it, a memorial designed by renowned architect Daniel Libeskind has been be unveiled to commemorate this travesty; a steel memorial, titled The Wheel of Conscience which is part of a $500,000 project initiated by the Canadian Jewish Congress and paid for by Citizenship and Immigration Canada for it’s important to remember ignorance...so that it won't happen again!

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