Canada’s cur­rent, grotesque­ly incom­pe­tent Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment has embar­rassed and degrad­ed us again, by impos­ing sud­den visa restric­tions on vis­i­tors from Mex­i­co and the Czech Repub­lic. They claim that cit­i­zens of those coun­tries are “clog­ging” our sys­tem with “pho­ny” refugee claims. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the gov­ern­ments of both Mex­i­co and the Euro­pean Union have protest­ed this stu­pid action. In the case of the Czech Repub­lic, the fuss is about eth­nic Roma (Gyp­sies), who face vio­lence and social dis­crim­i­na­tion all over Europe, but espe­cial­ly in that coun­try. Their case may be dif­fi­cult to judge, since it does not quite fit our cus­tom­ary stan­dards for giv­ing polit­i­cal refugee sta­tus, but it is by no means “pho­ny”. I wrote to my Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, Bob Rae, who hap­pens to be the oppo­si­tion for­eign affairs crit­ic. Read more »

Almost every day, I walk past two spots of his­tor­i­cal inter­est on King Street, here in Toron­to. They are only a block apart, but they rep­re­sent the moral nadir and zenith of the city’s history.

The first is only a dusty bronze plaque mount­ed on the side of an old office build­ing. It marks the place where, in 1798, Toron­to’s first jail was built. Since it was known as the “old log jail”, we can guess the kind of pub­lic struc­tures that graced the streets of what was then known as “Mud­dy York,” and reclaimed its Iro­quoian name of Toron­to only in 1834. The plaque makes note of the fact that the first exe­cu­tion took place on Octo­ber 11th, 1798, when one John Sul­li­van was hung by the neck until dead, for the crime of steal­ing a note worth approx­i­mate­ly one dol­lar. Read more »