Radicalism and Diaspora in Canada
January 15, 2010 § 2 Comments
Yesterday, the ring-leader of the Toronto 18, Zakaria Amara, apologised to Canadians for his role in plotting to blow up U-Haul trucks outside of the Toronto Stock Exchange, the Toronto CSIS HQ, and a military base just outside the city. It is worth noting that the Toronto 18’s goal was specific, to convince the Canadian government to pull out of Afghanistan. Amara said that he “deserves nothing less than [Canadians’] complete contempt.” At least according to The Globe & Mail, he went onto to explain how it was he was radicalised in suburban Mississauga.
Starting off by quoting the Quran, in hindsight, [Amara] said his interpretation of Islam was “naïve and gullible,” and that his belief system made worse by the fact he had “isolated himself from the real world.”
Today he told the court he has been rehabilitated by his time awaiting trial in jail – mostly through his interactions with fellow prisoners who challenged his hate-filled ideology. He promised he would change from a “man of destruction” to a “man of construction.
He also apologised to Canada’s Muslim community, noting that he had brought unwelcome attention and scrutiny.
The Globe also reports on Amara’s accounting of his radicalisation in suburban Mississauga, a multicultural locale with a population larger than all but a handful of Canadian cities (Toronto, Montréal, Vancouver, and Ottawa-Gatineau), one that sounds not all that dissimilar than what Marisa Urgo describes in Northern Virginia, a suburb of Washington, DC. As she notes, Northern Virginia has produced a fair number of radicalised young men. Mississauga, on the other hand, has not, other than the Toronto 18. In Mississauga, Amara isolated himself from all but a small handful of radicals, and they fed off each other.
In prison, Amara claims to have seen the light, befriending a former stock broker who worked at the very exchange Amara had planned to blow up. He, a Sunni Muslim, also befriended both a Jew and a Shi’a Muslim. In his radical era, Amara had nothing but contempt for Jews and Shi’a. But now, he says, he’s seen how wrong he was.
Amara’s psychiatric examination in prison suggests that he became radicalised as a means of escapism, the drudgery of life, of having had to drop out of university to help support and raise a daughter, as well as the pain from his parents’ divorce.
One thing that strikes me the most, though, about the discourse surrounding the Toronto 18, is this horror that Canada might have produced radicalised terrorists from a diasporic community. Canadians seem genuinely befuddled that this could happen in his multicultural nation where immigrants and their progeny are generally welcomed (not that there isn’t racism in Canada, there is. A lot).
But, this is where being an historian is kind of fascinating. As I have argued over at the CTlab, historians get to take the long-view, we see context, and depth. We don’t, or at least we shouldn’t, engage in knee-jerk reactions. And so, I would like to point out that this isn’t the first and only time that diasporic radicals have trod on Canadian soil.
Indeed, the neighbourhood I study, Griffintown, here in Montréal was once one of the hottest of hotbeds of radicalism, in the 1860s, 150 years ago. Then, it was the Fenians, a group of Irish nationalists who were always more successful in the diaspora than in Ireland itself. Indeed, their plan wasn’t all that different than that of the Toronto 18. The Fenians in the United States and Canada dreamed of seizing and conquering Canada and holding it as ransom against the British in return for Irish independence. And Griffintown was the centre of Fenianism in Canada.
The Fenians met secretly around Griffintown and Pointe-Saint-Charles, plotting how to act as a 5th column when their American brethren invaded, and how they would then take over the country. The Griffintown Fenians were also the ones responsible for the first political assassination in Canadian history (there have been only 2 in total), that of Father of Confederation and Member of Parliament for Montréal West, Thomas D’Arcy McGee on 7 April 1868 on Sparks St. in Ottawa. McGee had been a radical in his youth in Ireland, a member of the Young Ireland movement there in the 1840s, but, after relocating to Montréal, he had become convinced of the Canadian cause, and during the particular contentious 1867 federal elections (the first Canadian election), McGee had outed the Fenians in the pages of The Gazette. Not surprisingly, this didn’t go over well, and the Fenians, acting, it seems, independently of their American counterparts, and Patrick Whelan shot him.
Then, as now, there was all sorts of anguish over the thought of terrorists (though this word wasn’t used for the Fenians) on Canadian soil. Anglo-Canadians couldn’t understand why the Irish would wish to carry their old world battles into the new Dominion, and they tended to see Irish-Catholics as a singular whole. Not unlike how Canadians in the early 21st century have responded to the Toronto 18, in fact. Not that this exonerates either the Fenians or the Toronto 18 as radicalised diasporic terrorists, but the long view is always interesting in and of itself.
Oh for the love of God
January 4, 2010 § Leave a comment
This is entirely off-topic, but: the Winter Olympics in Vancouver are coming up next month. And this is Canada. In Canada, we expect to win every gold medal on offer in international hockey. We do win a lot. Just not in men’s international hockey. At least not in the Olympics, with only 2 in the past 60 years (1952 and 2002). In 2006, Canada bombed out of the Olympic men’s hockey tournament in most embarrassing fashion. Anyway, I digress. For this year, Pepsi and Hockey Canada have teamed up to commission an “official” chant for the fans. Yes, that’s right, “they” want to tell “us,” the fans, what to chant at a hockey game. The chant, moreover, is so godamned lame it’s not even funny: “Eh! O, Canada Go!” It’s being test-driven at the World Junior Hockey Championships in Saskatoon right now. One word: Awkward, try saying it yourself. Go on. Seriously, an “official” chant for the fans. One coming from a marketing campaign. I can’t even begin to tell y’all how much that depresses me.
Remembering the Montréal Massacre
December 6, 2009 § 1 Comment
On 6 December 1989, a lone gunman burst into the École Polytechnique de Montréal, part of the Université de Montréal, and opened fire. He targeted women specifically. He was upset that “feminists” had ruined his life. For his delusions, 28 innocent people were shot, before he turned the gun on himself. In the first classroom he broke into, he separated men from women, then shot all 9 women, 6 of whom died. Then he wandered the hallways, the cafeteria, and another classroom, targeting women, shooting another 14 women, and 4 men. All 4 men survived, of the 24 women who were shot, 14 died. All this within 20 minutes.
I was 16, living in suburban Vancouver when this happened. I remember the shock. I couldn’t fathom then, and I still can’t, how someone could open fire in a school, let alone, to kill women for being in school. These 14 women died because they were just that: women getting an education. I have never been able to wrap my head around that concept. It doesn’t make sense to me. It didn’t in 1989 and it doesn’t in 2009. The Montréal Massacre is one of those transformative moments in my life, it is deeply embedded in my view of the world. It was a shocking, terrible event. And despite all of the school shootings since in both Canada and the USA, this is the one that is, to me, a horror story. Every 6 December, I remember watching the chilling news footage in the living room back in BC, I remember trying to understand why this had happened, my mother and I both horrified. And every 6 December, I find myself asking those same questions over and over. I still don’t have an answer.
But what particularly upsets me about 6 December is that the shooter’s name lives on, in infamy, of course, but nearly everyone of my generation, we were all affected wherever we were, know his name. I refuse to utter it, print it, post it, etc. I do not want to remember him. Diane Riopel, who taught at L’École Polytechnique in 1989, and narrowly missed meeting the killer, echoes this sentiment: “We have given him enough publicity. Out of respect for the victims, the killer should be completely anonymous.” I don’t think Hell exists, but when I think of him, I hope it does. I don’t think anyone can name all 14 women who died. I certainly can’t. They’re all agglomerated as “the victims.” The shooter maintains his individuality in death, but the 14 women he martyred lose theirs. All we seem to know is that they were engineering students. But what else about them? What were their dreams? What did they plan to do with their lives when they finished school? What books did they read? Where did they hang out with their friends? All of this, I wonder about every year at the anniversary. And I have no idea what the answers to these questions are.
These are the victims:
- Geneviève Bergeron (born 1968), civil engineering student, age 21.
- Hélène Colgan (born 1966), mechanical engineering student, age 23.
- Nathalie Croteau (born 1966), mechanical engineering student, age 23.
- Barbara Daigneault (born 1967), mechanical engineering student, age 22.
- Anne-Marie Edward (born 1968), chemical engineering student, age 21.
- Maud Haviernick (born 1960), materials engineering student, age 29.
- Maryse Laganière (born 1964), budget clerk in the École Polytechnique’s finance department, age 25.
- Maryse Leclair (born 1966), materials engineering student, age 23.
- Anne-Marie Lemay (born 1967), mechanical engineering student, age 22.
- Sonia Pelletier (born 1961), mechanical engineering student, age 28.
- Michèle Richard (born 1968), materials engineering student, age 21.
- Annie St-Arneault (born 1966), mechanical engineering student, age 23.
- Annie Turcotte (born 1969), materials engineering student age 20.
- Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz (born 1958), nursing student, age 31.
On the Mark
November 17, 2009 § Leave a comment
I’m not entirely sure where this site comes from, but The Mark is a new current events/news site heavy on the analysis, and staffed, it seems, by a group of scruffy urban hipsters. All power to them. This site is worth a read and following in the future.
At any rate, there is a section on The Mark that looks at the future of the city in the 21st century. It has become pretty much commonplace to refer to the 21st century as the urban century; the world’s population recently passed the tipping point and we are a predominately urban species now. Of course, in the industrialised west, this mark was reached in the 20th century. Canada, incidentally, was one of the first predominately urban nations in the world. The Mark’s section on the future of the city is hosted by former Vancouver Mayor, and Premier of British Columbia, Mike Harcourt, and has brought together a pretty impressive array of news and analysis on Canada’s cities, as well as analysis on our collective future. Worth checking out.
UAVs and Privacy Issues
November 17, 2009 § Leave a comment
[cross-posted at Current Intelligence].
Kenora, Ontario, has become the first urban centre to make use of UAVs in police work. Kenora is a town of 16,000 located in the northwestern corner of Ontario, on the Lake of the Woods, 200km east of Winnipeg, 600km northeast of Minneapolis, or 1850km northwest of Toronto.
The Ontario Provincial Police force there has been using UAVs for crime-scene analysis and forensics in August 2008. The OPP is limited to using the UAVs within crime scenes only, due to Canadian air traffic laws, according to Const. Marc Sharpe of the Kenora OPP. UAVs currently exist outside of the regulatory framework for air traffic here in the Great White North:
Issued by Transport Canada, the “Special Flight Operations Certificate” (SFOC) that must be obtained for any type or size of “non-hobby” unmanned flying machine dictates a number of operational procedures and restrictions. There is no doubt that the current legislative hurdles are the main reason more of these systems are not being used by civilian agencies.
Sharpe is very clear that the OPP, nor any other police force in Canada, has dispensation to circumvent federal law on the use of UAVs for observation purposes. Yet,
The fact still remains that no specific legislation has been written to cover the operations of any UAV within civilian airspace. It is an issue that Transport Canada must eventually invest significant resources in developing. Until that time however, we are continuing to develop safe and effective operating procedures that could very well set the standards and templates for the pending legislation.
Given the terrain of the territory covered by the Kenora OPP detachment, it makes some sense that UAVs would be useful for crime scene analysis. Kenora is a small city, but the detachment is also responsible for the surrounding area, which is largely wooded, and thus crime scenes are often more spread out than would be the case in the city. Sharpe points to several murder scenes where the UAV has been useful.
In carefully pointing out that the UAV cannot be used for monitoring purposes, Sharpe immediately raised my hackles. Whilst I realise that the question of cameras and monitoring is not a new one for our English readers, in Canada (and probably North America as a whole), the idea of the police having all sorts of new means of monitoring lawful (and unlawful) behaviour on the streets of the city is one that is rather alarming. The fact that UAVs fall under the jurisdiction of Transport Canada and not another department, like, for example, DND, probably means I don’t need to be quite so paranoid. But this does still raise the issue of UAVs flying over Canadian cities (and highways) monitoring the behaviour of private citizens. We are blessed with a relatively robust culture of privacy in Canada, bolstered by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, but issues such as these do appear to be something beyond the usual public discourse in this country.
(Cross-posted at Spatialities).
Layers of Diaspora
November 15, 2009 § Leave a comment
Perhaps as a means of avoiding my current research project, which is to turn my dissertation into a monograph, I have been thinking about my next project, the one that will examine diaspora and its multiple layers on the urban landscape. Really, this is a mobile project, can be fit onto any large city with multiple diasporas, but Montréal is where the idea came from, and Montréal appeals to me because of the bifurcated nature of the host cultures here.
Back in the winter of 2006, I taught the History of Montréal, an upper-level course at Concordia. I think this is where this idea comes from for me, I taught that course as an ethnic history of the city. I traced the history of the landscape that is Montréal through the various ethno-religious groups that have called the area home, dating back to the pre-Contact Mohawk populations in the St. Lawrence River Valley, right through to the Vietnamese and various African and Arab diasporas today. As we moved through history, we dealt with the aboriginals, the Contact era, the French colonial culture here, then the onslaught of the British. This set the city up as a multi-layered, bifurcated location, French and English, the aboriginals more or less marginalised on reserves that ring the Île-de-Montréal. French and English were equal but different, though the British were dominant, they being the conquering colonial power.
It was into this milieu that the Irish arrived, becoming the first immigrant group in Montréal. Whilst the other groups, including the aboriginals, arrived at the location, they had done so as colonisers and conquerers, not as immigrants. The Irish set themselves up, established a model of negotiating space for themselves on the emergent urban landscape of Montréal. They found a niche for themselves in the Catholic Church (indeed, it is due to the Irish that there is an Anglo Catholic Church in Montréal today), established various community organisations, etc. Other immigrant groups that followed the Irish to Montréal all copied this model: Jews, Italians, Spanish, Portuguese, African Americans (and Canadians), Arabs, Africans, South Asians, Southeast Asians, etc.
So I visualise these waves of immigration on the urban landscape of Montréal as successive layers building the landscape. I think of this as an archaeology of diasporic Montréal, not unlike Pointe-à-Callière, the archaeological museum down in the Vieux-Port (and, I might add, one of only a very few museums that can hold my attention). But it is not as simple as this, as each successive wave of immigration didn’t further bury the French and British (though aboriginal culture in Montréal seems to have gone further subterranean over the past century, though that is due more to Canadian government policy than immigration), as both have managed to establish and maintain their hold on the city’s culture and landscape.
But, as these immigrant groups are Montréalised, Québcised, or Canadianised (depending on your politics), there is a sanding down of their edges, of their distinct voices, as they are made more and more part of the urban landscape of the city. For some groups, this is a simpler process, like the Irish in the 20th century (before they re-discovered their separate ethnic identity in the mid-to-late 1990s), due to skin colour, language, and/or religion. For other groups, it isn’t so simple, for religious reasons (Jews) or skin colour (Jamaicans, Haitians), or language, or a combination of all three (Arabs). Indeed, of all the constituent elements of “Angl0-Montréal” throughout the last half of the 20th century, only the old-stock Anglo-Irish fully subsumed themselves into this identity/community. Other groups, most notably Jews, maintained their separate identity, in many ways due to the fact that they were never fully welcomed into the Anglo-Irish core of Anglo-Montréal. Nevertheless, there is a process of acculturation and Canadianisation going on here.
But, however one thinks of this process of immigration, retrenchment, and acculturation, I do think that the layer metaphor helps to make sense of the city and its myriad diasporic populations, and the ways in which they interact and influence each other on the urban landscape of the city.
Canada and Its Inferiority Complex
October 6, 2009 § 8 Comments
Last week, I published a review of Canadian journalist John Lorinc’s new book, Cities: A Groundwork Guide, over at the Complex Terrain Laboratory. As much as I liked and enjoyed this book, I found myself wondering, though, as I read this book, was what is with Canadians’, or maybe just Torontonians’, obsession with Toronto?
Toronto is mentioned more than any other city in the world in Lorinc’s book. More than London, Hong Kong, Sao Paolo; more than Nairobi, and New York. Toronto is mentioned more than twice as often as Canada’s other 2 major cities: Montréal and Vancouver. Moreover, Montréal is usually, though not exclusively, mentioned in a negative light. Not Toronto.
We are a nation with an inferiority complex, that I can accept. Toronto’s wiki page, though, is kind of sad, as it has to point out that: “As Canada’s economic capital, Toronto is considered a global city and is one of the top financial centres in the world.” It is indeed a top financial centre in the world, somewhere around 20th. Great. Who cares, really.
Why can’t we just stand on our own merits and not have to defensively point out that we can play with the big boys? I liked Canada more when we were an unassuming nation, proud to be what we are, but not a neighbourhood bully or the whiny little brother of the USA. This inferiority complex is getting out of hand.
And whilst Lorinc, on the one hand, is showcasing Toronto for the domestic audience, it is kind of sad that it has to come at the expense of Montréal and Vancouver, and that Toronto is mentioned more often than any other city in the entire world. Years ago, the Vancouver band, Spirit of the West, wrote a song about this, called “Far Too Canadian;” times have changed, though, we are no longer content to be the unassuming, quiet Canadians. Now we’re becoming a bunch of loudmouths. I like the old way better.
we’re #4!!!
October 5, 2009 § Leave a comment
the un released its human development index rankings today. canada ranks as the 4th best place in the world to live. not so bad, i suppose, to be ranked #4. it ranks after norway, australia, and iceland. but i find this kind of disturbing, really. norway, fine. i’ve got nothing against norway, nor really australia, either. but iceland? iceland is practically bankrupt, one of the hardest hit nations in the world during the current economic meltdown that we may or may not be recovering from. how that can be translated into a #3 rating is beyond me. but i guess the economy is only part of the hdi, but i do wonder what will happen to iceland next year. and to be fair, iceland did fall from 1st to 3rd this year.
meanwhile, canada. canada spent a long time atop the annual hdi. in 1992, and from 1994 right through to 2000, this was the best place in the world to live, at least as measured by the compilation of statistics by the un. but, hey, that’s not a bad thing. canada was the first dynasty of the hdi, which the un only began publishing in 1990. norway is the current dynasty, having been first from 2001-2006 and now this year, its reign only punctuated by iceland’s two chart toppers in 2007 and 2008.
and whilst canada is by no means a poor place to live, its measurement in the hdi has consistently ranked it in the top 10, most often in the top 5. but this slippage does get me worried in some ways. canada tends to fall down these rankings due to its poor record vis-à-vis the aboriginal population and the vast amount of poverty on reserves around the country, as well as the incredibly difficult circumstances aboriginals in urban areas tend to face. and yet, and yet…every government in the past decade has sworn to do better by the aboriginal population. and every government does nothing. last week, the globe & mail visited what it called “ground zero” of the h1n1 outbreak in canada, an indian reserve at wasagamack, manitoba. wasagamack is an incredibly isolated community, 600 km north of winnipeg, a trip made by air and water taxi.
wasagamack made headlines last month because health canada sent out 200 body bags instead of supplies to fight a possible outbreak of h1n1. this was a great insult, because death is taboo in aboriginal culture, death is not prepared for, death is dealt with when it arrives, but not beforehand.
at any rate, as the newspaper article shows, this nation lags on dealing with the very real threat against the human rights of canadian aboriginals. i have been on reserves in various parts of this country, and in some cases, conditions are appalling. and spare me the rightwing argument they only have themselves to blame. that is utter bullshit. reserves were created on marginal land the country over. traditional ways of life were discouraged by the government, languages were lost, and so on. when “modern” housing was promised, the results were disappointing. places like wasagamck have homes inundated with mould, improper sanitation, like no running water, broken windows, and sagging foundations.
this is a national embarrassment. i recall, back when i worked on aboriginal claims, canada 2000. i lived in ottawa, and i was working on a claim that involved the forced removal of several groups of inuit in northern manitoba and what is now nunavut to new locations. the government, in some cases, claimed it was due to the need for food. the caribou, which the southern inuit relied upon for food, had changed their migration patterns and were experiencing a dip in their population. but rather than let the inuit track their new routes south and west of their location, they were moved to churchill, manitoba, where they were put on the dole and disease stalked them. further north, the inuit were moved around the arctic like pawns on a chessboard for the government, as a means of shoring up canadian sovereignty in the arctic during the cold war (aboriginals and the arctic are two issues in canadian politics where politicians talk the talk but continually fail to walk the walk). and so here i was in ottawa in 2000, 40 years after these events up north. and all i could feel was revulsion at my country, that this was allowed to happen.
one civil servant at northern affairs canada argued, quite forcefully, that the government had done the right thing, that it knew better than the inuit as to how to survive. i was dumbfounded, i was astounded that this attitude still existed in the government.
and meanwhile, each successive government talks about improving the quality of life of aboriginals on and off reserves. and each government fails. even the current conservative government, with a minister of health, leona aglukkaq, who is an inuit from nunavut, has continued to fail. indeed, it was aglukkaq’s government which sent out the body bags to wasagamack.
The Wild, Wild West
February 24, 2009 § Leave a comment
On 14 October 2007, Robert Dziekanski was trying to immigrate to Canada. His mother already lived in the interior of British Columbia, so Dziekanski flew from Gliwice, Poland, to Vancouver. But things went horribly awry at the Vancouver International Airport. After a long, drawn out immigration process at Customs at the airport, Dziekanski was frustrated. For one, he didn’t speak English, so he needed help with the immigration process. Meanwhile, his mother, Zofia Cisowski was waiting for him in the airport at arrivals. But she could get no information about her son’s arrival, and at one point was even told by Canadian customs officials that he was not in the airport at all. Around 10pm on the night of 13 October, she gave up and went home to Kamloops, several hours away from Vancouver. She though Dziekanski had missed his flight.
Meanwhile, Dziekanski was increasingly agitated, and violent. He threw a computer and a table across the customs area. Staff and other passengers could not calm him down. No one could speak Polish. But, at the same time, no one thought to call airport maintenance worker Karol Vrba, who could. Indeed, Vrba even offered his services, but was told to go back to work. Meanwhile, the RCMP were called to deal with Dziekanski. Officers were told that he was “extremely drunk.” Toxicology reports show he hadn’t been drinking.
As anyone who has followed this story, Dziekanski was killed that night by the RCMP, tasered to death.
What scares me is that the testimony of one of the officers in front of the inquiry into Dziekanski’s death, we have been told that the four officers who responded all came individually in their own cars, and did not discuss a game plan as to how to deal with the situation, neither over their radios nor in person upon arrival. Indeed, Cst. Gerry Rundel reports that he felt threatened, “to a certain degree” because Dziekanski was acting in a “to hell with you guys” manner towards the police. No kidding. 10 hoursof being caught in a Kafkaesque purgatory at the Vancouver International Airport, refused access to his mother, and refused any comprehensive translation services, who wouldn’t be upset?
This is from Cst. Rundel’s testimony at the Braidwood Inquiry, as summarised by The Globe and Mail yesterday:
“One bystander pointed Mr. Dziekanski out to the constable, and another told him that the man did not speak English.
Constable Rundel said he did not discuss these insights with the other officers.
He described Mr. Dziekanski as unkempt, sweaty, “perhaps disoriented,” and in a state consistent with intoxicated males he had seen in his policing experience.
“I recall Constable Bentley asked Mr. Dziekanski a question to the effect of ‘Hi. How are you doing?'”
Mr. Dziekanski said some words “in a language I did not understand,” and gestured to his luggage, prompting Cpl. Robinson to say “No” sharply and gesture to Mr. Dziekanski to stay away from the items, Constable Rundel said.
The officer said he assumed Mr. Dziekanski’s response suggested he understood basic gestures, adding he did not think Mr. Dziekanski’s lack of English was a barrier to communication.
Mr. Dziekanski stood up and moved away, but he had a “to hell with you guys manner,” Constable Rundel said.
He said Mr. Dziekanski flipped his hands up and moved away from the officers in what was deemed to be “non-compliant” way.
“I recall his combative behaviour. I recall fearing for my safety to a certain degree.”
He said this was a situation in which his training had taught him a taser could be used.”
It was not Cst. Rundel’s call to use the taster, he was not the ranking officer there. But Dziekanski was tasered a total of five times. The most frightening thing here for me is that the RCMP seems to think that this is acceptable. That using the taser gun is a viable means of law enforcement. Ignoring study after study after study that suggests that the taser is not entirely safe, the RCMP (and other police forces across Canada, do a google search) have continued to use tasers, resulting in 16 deaths in Canada between 2003 and 2007. In many of these cases, such as Dziekanski’s, I find it hard to believe that police officers, who are supposed to be trained in such things, could not convince the targetted person to calm down. In Dziekanski’s case, there was one of him and four police. Surely four trained police officers could subdue one disoriented, upset Polish construction worker without tasering and killing him.
Finally, in February 2009, some 16 months after Dziekanski’s death, the RCMP has revamped its rules of engagement for the taser gun. While this is a positive development, I am left wondering what in the hell took them so long?
Matthew Barlow 