Boreal
THE FRACTURED NATION INTERVIEWS
Boom-Boom Singh
When your white children first came into this country, they did not come shouting the war cry and seeking to wrest this land from us. They told us they came as friends to smoke the pipe of peace; they sought our friendship, we became brothers. Their enemies were ours. At the time we were strong and powerful, while they were few and weak. But did we oppress them or wrong them? No! Time wore on and you have become a great people, whilst we have melted away like snow beneath an April sun; our strength is wasted our warriors dead.
Shinguacouse, Ojibwa chief
Johnny[holding a sheet of paper] Good evening. Thank you for joining us tonight
for our third interview in the series of interviews that we are conducting
this week with scholars, experts and pundits as we try to pin down the
decision, or decisions, that led to the breakup of Canada ten years ago this
week; an event which historians commonly call The Fracture.
So far, we have heard from a respected economist and author Dr. Diane Frances Smith and her theory that it was bad economics – freeloader economics was the term she used – that caused the country to break up. Next we heard from the MAD Ayatollah himself, his Excellency Muhammad Abdullah Domeini and his view, at the risk of putting words into His Excellency’s mouth, that it was multiculturalism carried to its logical conclusion that made The Fracture inevitable and welcomed.
Today, we are going to talk with the Prime Minister of ACNA, the Asian Commonwealth of North America, the Right Honourable Dr. Tamil Boom-Boom Singh to get his views on what caused Canada to fracture the way it did.
If you watched the first interview you may remember that, because of time constraints, I had to end the interview with Dr. Smith before she had a chance to offer her closing arguments in support of her theory that it was bad economic policy, specifically the adoption by Canada of what she calls the freeloader economic model, which led to the country’s collapse.
I have since received a letter from Dr. Smith, which I will read on air, not only to make it up to her, but also because I believe our guest today may have something to say about her conclusions.
Good evening Dr. Singh, it’s a pleasure to see you again. Thank you for volunteering to appear on our show to give us your always insightful views on The Fracture.
Boom-Boom: Thank you. Happy to be here! It has been a while since we talked.
Johnny: Yes, it has been a long time, too long.
Boom-Boom: By the way, call me Boom-Boom everybody else does, and this doctor thing, it is strictly honorary.
Johnny: Boom-Boom it is then.
Boom-Boom: Johnny, if I don’t get a chance to say everything I want to say, before the interview is over, do I get to write you a letter or is it just the pretty ladies that get to do so [smiling broadly]? Just kidding.
Johnny: You can write me anytime; you know I’m a sucker for a pretty face.
Boom-Boom: [recoiling in mock horror] You’re not gay are you?
Johnny: No, of course not.
Boom-Boom: Not that there is anything wrong with being gay unless, of course, you live in Allahland. Did you know that while Islam claims that there are no gay Muslims and that Allah forbids homosexual relationships, the Koran would have you believe otherwise?
Johnny: No I didn’t.
Boom-Boom: The Koran calls them “boys of perpetual freshness” and “boys as handsome as pearls” which Allah will provide, if you get to heaven and perpetually fresh virgin girls are not your thing. What is your favourite verse of the Koran?
Johnny: I don’t have one.
Boom-Boom: Sure you do. In this day and age everybody does. Your life may depend on it. One day you will be walking down a dark, deserted street and a man will approach you, not to ask you for money, but to ask you to recite a verse from the Koran and your ability to correctly recite a verse from that book will determine whether you live or die. Tell me you at least know the Shahadah?
Johnny: Of course I know the Muslim Declaration of Faith. And yes, I can recite from memory a handful of verses from the Koran but I don’t have any favourites.
Boom-Boom: How can you not have a favourite? The one I like best or should I say I like the least is the one where Allah says he will replace your burnt skin: “Those who have disbelieved Our Signs, We shall surely cast them into the Fire; every time their skins are burnt, We will replace them by other skins, so that they might taste the punishment. Allah indeed is Mighty and Wise!” Not a bad memory for an old guy, eh?
Johnny: Yes, but…
Boom-Boom: This Allah fellow likes inflicting pain a little too much and is a bit too full of himself if you ask me. He is no Shiva. I have killed and caused pain in pursuit of my goals but never have I enjoyed it or reveled in it the way this Allah seems to enjoy inflicting pain and suffering and boasting about it.
Johnny: Interesting, but we are here to talk about The Fracture.
Boom-Boom: I am so sorry, I apologize.
Johnny: That’s alright. Would you mind if I take a few minutes to read Dr. Diane Smith’s letter? I think you may find some of the things she writes about interesting.
Boom-Boom: Go ahead and read the letter. Take all the time you need. I will try not to interrupt and I promise I won’t call you an idiot or an imbecile and all those other names your guest called you yesterday. What an unreal interview! If it had been me I would have taken out my kirpan [reaching for his ceremonial dagger but not taking it out of its scabbard] and showed him who was the imbecile.
Johnny: I don’t believe His Excellency meant to be unkind or injurious and I did demonstrate some insensitivity to Muslims and lack of proper respect and reverence for his Excellency and Islam.
Boom-Boom: I must admit that I almost choked on my curry when you referred to the Holly Alliance of Muslim Municipalities as the HAMM alliance. I laughed so hard I had curry coming out of my nose. Sorry [laughing] I just can’t help it, it was so funny. The look on your face when you realized what you had just said was, what do you say, priceless. Sorry [laughing].
Johnny: Yes, its one interview I won’t soon forget and it’s not because of all the e-mails, phone calls and death threats.
Boom-Boom: Speaking of e-mails, maybe you should get on with your reading of Dr. Diane’s letter.
Johnny: Thank you, yes, of course.
Diane's Letter
Dear Johnny,
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to present your viewers with my final arguments about why I believe it was bad economic policy that led to Canada fracturing the way it did. While I would have preferred being allowed to make my final arguments in person I am sure you will do a more than adequate job.
Our discussion ended with my contention that a developed country like Canada would not have tolerated a frontal assault on a system that provided Canadians with decent wages, usually through collective agreements; a competitive but not a dog-eat-dog competition for jobs; a relatively clean and safe work environment and so on.
To get the Canadian middle and working classes to support policies that were not in their interest, Mulroney appealed to the compassion of the Canadian people. This successful appeal to the compassion of Canadians would complete the descent to beggar economics for Canada or what I refer to in my book Freddy the Freeloading Country as the freeloading economic model.
To summarize the descent, it began with Diefenbaker redefining the vocation of the country as mainly a resource exporter when he cancelled what would be the last major high-tech engineering project that the country would undertake on its own – the Avro Arrow all-weather Canadian fighter/interceptor project. This was followed thirty years later by the Mulroney Conservatives putting the country up for sale by removing any protection against foreign takeover of Canadian companies.
During his second mandate Mulroney followed the sale of the country with the gutting of John A. MacDonald’s National Policy by having Parliament pass the first Free Trade Agreement which did away with MacDonald’s National Policy which had, until then, effectively protected the country from absolute complete domination of its economic interest for over one-hundred years.
These actions in themselves, while country destroying, would not necessarily have led to Canada adopting the freeloader economic model. I am not convinced, the historical record is not clear on this matter, that Mulroney understood the implication of his actions. I am also not sure that Mulroney understood that by making what amounted to business decision to increase profits for his mainly American owners and shareholders that he was going to make beggars or more accurately create a situation where Canadians would adopt an economic model that encouraged parasitical behaviour.
To increase profits he had to reduce wages and related cost. His government’s solution for putting downward pressure on wages and demand for improved working condition was to import cheap labour from the third world – lots and lots of cheap labour from the third world.
My theory about what brought about the almost threefold increase in immigration from poor countries during the Mulroney years is not universally accepted. I am fairly certain that your scheduled guest for Thursday, Maude Barnstone will take exception with some of the arguments I make here, including Mulroney’s motivation for almost tripling the number of immigrants Canada took in every year. I will let her explain it.
Prior to 1984, prior to the Mulroney Conservatives coming to power, immigration policy was made on the basis of what was good for the country and what was good for those who chose Canada as their home. Immigration policy was administered by impartial bureaucrats based on a formula that took into accounts the needs of the country in term of skills, the ability of the newcomers to start a new life here and the state of the economy.
With the coming to power of the Mulroney Conservatives all that changed. During the last year of the Trudeau government, Canada took in 84,000 newcomers. In the 15 years following the Mulroney initiative (the Liberals, when they returned to power, continued the policy of draconian immigration levels – an explanation for this is forthcoming) Canada accepted 3,035,615 immigrants, an average 202,000 newcomers a year.
To put this number into some kind of perspective, people who came to Canada during these 15 years constituted at least 20 percent of all who came during the past 150 years. In 1993 the last year of the Conservatives government, immigration levels reached an unheard of 256,000. Mulroney’s final poisoned gift to the nation, the gift that would turn Canadians into economic parasites was making the economy dependent on cheap labour.
With American companies deciding what Canada could manufacturer and when, with Americans business and government interest deciding at what price Canada would part with its resources, Canada became more and more dependent on this cheap immigrant labour to maintain a rapidly deteriorating welfare safety net.
Eventually Canada’s standard of living became completely dependent on a steady flow of cheap labour – not only to keep wages low and factory workers worried about their jobs but even cheap professional labour such a doctors and engineers, whom the third world could ill afford to part with.
The Canadian government gave the same reason for this plundering of the third world’s educated and skilled classes as it did for the poor less skilled immigrant – it was all done in the name of compassion. The fact that working conditions, if work could be found, were less than ideal, Dickensonian is some respect, did not seem to bother the benevolent government in the slightest. Canada, like the Roman Empire before it collapsed, could not survive as a nation of freeloaders.
Like the Roman Empire, the Canadian nation made the mistake of depending on outside assistance for its survival. To protect the integrity of its borders, Canada looked to its powerful military neighbour to the south – the Romans to mercenaries. For its economic survival it depended more and more on enticing people from around the world to come and provide it with the cheap labour or skills their freeloading economic model demanded.
Compassion was, in the end, the key Canadian trait that was perverted by self-serving, short-sighted politicians – in the case of Mulroney, for his love interest – that made The Fracture, in my opinion, inevitable. Enough said. Thank you, again for what you are doing for me, for my reputation. I hope reading this letter on the air will not adversely affect your career.
Yours truly,
Diane Smith
P.S. Call me.
Boom-Boom: Call me [smiling]. Are you and Dr. Diane, how do you say, friendly?
Johnny: Woops [laughing]. I don’t think I was supposed to read that line out loud. No, I just know her professionally.
Boom-Boom: She is quite beautiful and it’s easy to see how a man could be interested in more than her intellect. Speaking of intellect, she did provide an excellent and reasoned explanation about a situation with which I am not in complete disagreement.
Johnny: Yes, she is quite eloquent in defence of her ideas and you are quite the diplomat in expressing your, can I assume, your mild disagreement.
Boom-Boom: My Boom-Boom days are over. These days I much prefer solving problems by talking about them, no matter how much time it takes.
Johnny: That’s a relief!
Boom-Boom: [a worried, sad look comes over Boom-Boom] That Ayatollah really spooked you didn’t he? You know me. Don’t worry. You can ask me anything you want, you may express whatever opinion you want. I may give you blunt answers. I may completely disagree with you. I may even sink to the Ayatollah’s level and call you names, but unless you threatened me I won’t threaten you. This dagger [pointing to his kirpan] is strictly ceremonial, it couldn’t cut warm butter. There is so little freedom of the press left in the world today that if we let clerics decide what we can or can’t talk about, it will be the end of freedom for the press and the freedom to say our opinion, what do you call it, freedom of speaking.
Johnny: Freedom of speech. I am so glad to hear you say that. It seems today that freedom of the press and freedom of expression are rapidly eroding in the face of religion’s resurgence [regaining his composure]. But enough about religion that was yesterday’s topic. Before we start talking about The Fracture I am sure some members of our viewing audience would be interested in knowing how you acquired the nickname Boom-Boom?
Boom-Boom: Well you know what they say; you can’t create a country without blowing up a few citizens [laughing]. Just kidding. It’s a nickname I acquired during the battles, skirmishes really, that led to the creation of the Commonwealth. I was sort of handy with explosives of the plastic kind. As I said before, those days are behind me. I now much prefer solving problems by talking about them with my adversary as oppose to trying to blow him to pieces. As long as he doesn’t threatened violence against me, I won’t threaten him with violence, no matter what I think about his beliefs or what he thinks about mine [looking into the camera]. ARE YOU LISTENING MAD [shaking his head]. What a guy!
Johnny: Getting back to today’s topic. What are your views on what caused The Fracture?
Canada and the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire
Boom-Boom: My views. Well, my views on The Fracture sort of begin where the lovely doctor Diane left off except for her comparison [chuckling] of Canada’s downfall to the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. What do you call it, over the top.
Johnny: Why is that?
Boom-Boom: I don’t mean to quibble but Canada’s rise and fall, if you can call it that, in no way compares to the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire was, for most of its history, a dynamic force to be reckoned with. It outlasted Canada’s somnolent existence by more than a thousand years, maybe two-thousand years. The Romans built their empire with blood and sweat and fought heroically to the very end to preserve what they had built. Can the same be said about Canada? I don’t think so!
Johnny: I don’t mean to quibble either. I agree that few took notice of Canada’s passing and even fewer cared. I also agree that Canada’s demise was not at all reminiscent of the fall of the Roman Empire. That is why I introduced the first interview with a selection from T. S. Eliot’s The Hollow Men and its evocative line about “this is the way the world ends not with a bang but a whimper.” Again, I don’t mean to quibble but, while Canada’s fall was not Roman-like, its birth was a totally different story and was the result of an heroic struggle. Perhaps not on the scale of the birth of the Roman Empire, but heroic nonetheless.
Boom-Boom: Perhaps I spoke to quickly. I didn’t mean to trivialize the struggle that you say was Canada’s birth. Again, I apologize.
Johnny: No need to apologize.
Boom-Boom: I know so very little about Canada’s early history even though as a teenager, before The Fracture, I attended Canadian public schools. If I remember correctly, we were not encouraged to learn about Canada’s early history. The emphasis seemed to be on learning our history; the history of our ancestral land; the history of our ancestors who came to Canada. If we did learn about Canadian history it was modern Canadian history in which our contribution to building the country figured prominently. The only early Canadian history I am familiar with is the history of the ruthless exploitation of early immigrants from Asia and the Asian sub-continent.
Johnny: At the risk of sounding as an apologist for Canada, will you allow me a few minutes to inform our viewers about Canada’s early history?
Boom-Boom: First you take up my interview time by reading a letter from a previous guest. Now you want to take more of my interview time to talk about the early history of Canada. Maybe I should have brought a book [smiling broadly]. Just kidding. Take all the time you need. How do you say it, knock yourself in.
Johnny: Thank you. It’s knock yourself out. I will be as brief as I can possibly be and if we run out of time I will make it up to you. I promise.
Boom-Boom: Maybe you can introduce me to Dr. Diane [smiling]. Just kidding. Speaking of briefs, of being brief.
Johnny: [speaking to the camera]. It’s the winter of 1534. Jacques Cartier, a French explorer and his companions are slowly dying from scurvy in the land that would become Canada. In a show of compassion, a common trait of the local inhabitants, they give Cartier the cure for the disease and the little band of brave men from France are rescued from certain death.
The next two hundred and twenty-nine years are marked by conflict as the French and English bring their never-ending wars to the New World and the Natives choose sides. The exception being the western interior which for most of the eighteenth century remains in relative peace thanks, in part, to that great Canadian explorer Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, Sieur de la Vérendrye who, between 1730 and 1749 negotiates a series of treaties with the local inhabitants. One of these would be an alliance with the Cree-Assiniboine-Ojibwa against the Dakota to the south thereby preserving the Great Plains for the future country of Canada.
Boom-Boom: Sieur de la Vey·ren·dree. With a name like that and he was born in Canada?
Johnny: [glancing at Boom-Boom] Yes, he was. In 1763, France decides that its colony is not worth the trouble and abandons it to the British in favour of the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. Guy Carleton, the second Governor of the former French colony, convinces the British government to allow the inhabitants “the Canadians” to practice their religion and keep their language.
Boom-Boom: That was nice of the British.
Johnny: [glancing again at Boom-Boom] Yes, it was. When the American war of independence begins in 1775, most of the Iroquois Nations under the great Mohawk chief Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea) fight the Americans denying them the land that would become the province of Ontario. When the Americans, under Benedict Arnold try to wrest Québec and the entire St. Lawrence River valley from the British, they erroneously assume that tens of thousands of French-Canadians will gladly join the thirteen colonies in rebellion. He meets his Waterloo in front of the city of Québec, on the Plains of Abraham on a cold snowy December night.
Boom-Boom: Was that the same Benedict Arnold that was accused of being a traitor during the American war for independence?
Johnny: Yes. In the war of 1812, the British, French-Canadians or simply Canadians as they are called at the time and Natives again join together to preserve the integrity of the territory that will become Canada. Tecumseh, the famous Shawnee warrior and leader and the Iroquois Nations are again instrumental in denying the Americans the land that would become the Province of Ontario. The Canadians deny the Americans the land that would become the Province of Québec.
Following the war, Natives surrender most of their lands in Upper Canada to the British Crown in formal treaties. Further bloodless surrender of native lands will follow as the European settlers move west. For this extremely generous act, the British Government guarantees, in writing, that it will always look after their needs it terms of food, shelter and general well-being.
Boom-Boom: That too was nice of the British.
Johnny: [glancing at Boom-Boom and showing some impatience] Yes, yes it was. In 1851, it’s the Métis who fight and defend the territory that would become the country’s breadbasket. In the Battle of Grand Coteau, the Métis defeat the Sioux from further south for control of key buffalo hunting grounds. For close to a century the Métis defend, dominate, settle and farm the prairies.
In 1867, the former French colony and the remaining English colonies put their differences aside and join together for the greater good and security of all in a Confederation. In 1878, John A. MacDonald and the Conservatives are re-elected to continue in their nation building ways. During the election campaign MacDonald promises to protect the country’s fledging economy from being completely dominated by its southern neighbour by the adoption of a national economic policy or as it was called The National Policy to, in MacDonald’s own words “benefit the agricultural, the mining, the manufacturing and other interest of the Dominion.” The National Policy is a success.
Boom-Boom: I don’t understand why Canadians let Mulroney get rid of this National Policy?
Johnny: You’re not the only one. In 1896, it is the Liberal’s turn to continue the nation building process. Under the leadership of Wilfrid Laurier, the first French-Canadian Prime Minister, the prairies are opened up to massive immigration thereby creating a new generation of Canadians and ensuring that the West will remain Canadian. At Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee in the summer of 1897 he rebuffs Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain’s proposal to bring the former colonies into an imperial, military, economic, and political federation thereby setting the stage for the creation of the Commonwealth and Canada achieving full independence.
Boom-Boom: Not unlike the beginnings of our Commonwealth.
Johnny: The next eighty or so years are an exercise in strengthening the union and continuing the co-operation among the three founding nations - English, French and Natives, the First Nations - while promoting everyone’s welfare and creating a country spanning a continent and bordering three of the world’s five oceans. On Canada’s Coat of Arms you find the words “A Mare usque ad Mare.” By setting aside their differences and cooperating instead of fighting each other, English, French and Natives built a country from “Sea to Shining Sea.” Its southern neighbour fought a revolutionary war and a civil war that cost hundreds of thousands of lives to achieve what Canada did with little loss of life. [looking at Boom-Boom] That’s it.
Boom-Boom: That’s it???
Johnny: Yes, the subsequent history of Canada was more or less covered in the first interview on Monday with Diane Frances.
Boom-Boom Has His Own Version
Boom-Boom: By that’s it, I meant, what about early Japanese and Chinese immigrants?
Johnny: What about them?
Boom-Boom: I said I was not very familiar with the early history of Canada but I am familiar with the history of the first Asians who settled on the west coast of Canada, where quite a few members of ACNA are located today. You didn’t mention them at all. You didn’t mention the Japanese and Chinese who were some of the earliest immigrants to the the west coast of Canada.
Johnny: The Chinese immigrants, yes that was an oversight given that they provided most of the manual labour that built the first transcontinental Canadian railroad.
Boom-Boom: The cheap labour that built the railroad. Sound familiar.
Johnny: You are not suggesting…
Boom-Boom: I said I didn’t completely disagree with Dr. Diane’s theory. According to her theory, Mulroney and the Conservatives wanted to return to the labour and working conditions of the 19th century, to the cheap labour economics that saw desperate Chinese lured to Canada to built that railroad – the construction of which Canadians were so proud, and rightly so.
Johnny: You are right of course and I apologize for not giving credit where credit was due, definitely due.
Boom-Boom: I am not here to reopen old wounds since the twentieth century. Except for the period that begins with that fellow Mulruney [sic] being elected Prime Minister, 1985 was it, the economic history of Canada was a progression towards more enlightened and egalitarian economics.
Johnny: You mentioned Japanese and Chinese as being some of the earliest immigrants to the west coast. I am not familiar with any large scale immigration of Japanese during the later part of the 19th century.
Boom-Boom: Johnny, Johnny [shaking his head] when do you think all those Japanese Canadians – many of whom had been citizens of Canada for generations and were put in interment camps during the second world war – when do you think they came to Canada?
Johnny: The later part of the 19th century???
Boom-Boom: The last quarter, but close enough. You get a gold, no, a bronze star. You get a silver star if you get the next question right.
Johnny: We’re now into awarding stars are we?
Boom-Boom: Just for fun. Don’t be a stick in the glue. Why did the Canadian government encourage Japanese men and women to immigrate to the west coast?
Johnny: Don’t be a stick in the mud. Okay I’ll play. Cheap labour!
Boom-Boom: Silver star for you; now for the gold star. What industry, in the then province of British Columbia required an influx of cheap labour?
Johnny: Forestry?
Boom-Boom: No gold star for you.
Johnny: What else could it be! The fur trade?
Boom-Boom: It was the salmon canning industry. Okay. I will give you another chance to go for the gold. Just answer this question correctly.
Johnny: Boom-Boom, is this really necessary?
Boom-Boom: What, you don’t like being a guest on your own show?
Johnny: No but…
Boom-Boom: No butts unless it’s about Dr. Diane’s [laughing]. Just kidding. I’m enjoying this. For, what do you say, all the marbles, for the gold star. Which workers did the Japanese immigrants displaced? Which workers, because they wanted better wages and better working conditions, did the commercial canning companies want to get rid of by replacing them with even lower paid workers from Japan?
Johnny: I don’t have a clue.
Boom-Boom: Here is a hint. They were mainly women. They worked more than twelve hours a day for near starvation wages in hot, messy and dirty conditions slicing and dicing, cleaning and cooking and stuffing this salmon into squat one pound cans that were largely destined for the European market.
Johnny: Chinese women?
Boom-Boom: No! No! No!
Johnny: English women would never have accepted working under those conditions... that leaves only... native women.
Boom-Boom: Yes, yes you got it. You get the gold star. In 1880 something, mostly native women packed twenty-nine million one-pound cans of sockeye salmon. That is the equivalent of six million salmon in one year.
Johnny: That’s a lot of salmon!
Boom-Boom: Yes and what happened when salmon stock started to decline?
Johnny: They instituted conservation measures?
Boom-Boom: Yeah, sure boss. They looked for somebody to blame, silly.
Johnny: Who could they blame except the commercial fishermen?
Boom-Boom: Yes, but not the white commercial fishermen. They blamed the same people, the same people they blamed a hundred and twenty years later when irresponsible commercial fishing and pollution brought the stocks of wild salmon to the brink of extinction.
Johnny: You are not saying that they blamed…
Boom-Boom: The women’s husbands.
Johnny: You’re kidding?
Boom-Boom: In 1880 something, with the salmon in decline, the canners and the white commercial fishermen wasted no time blaming the Indians – hate that name – for the declining salmon stock. The government of British Columbia urged on by the companies and the white commercial fishermen convinced the government in Ottawa to severely curtail Native fishing rights. They would again blame the Natives – actually they never stopped blaming the Natives.
Johnny: They started blaming Canada’s first inhabitants for the decline in salmon fish stocks all the way back then. That’s unbelievable, especially when you consider that Natives had been occupying the west coast of Canada for over forty thousands years with no recorded decline in fish and animal species and, within a few decades of the white man’s arrival, the salmon is in decline and the fur trade close to collapse. That is quite unbelievable.
Boom-Boom: If you don’t believe me, look it up in a wonderful old book about the history of Canada’s native people called I Have Lived Here Since the World Began by a fellow called Arthur Ray.
Johnny: I will. You know, your story about the near extinction of the West coast salmon brings to mind the fishing to extinction of the cod, the haddock, the capelin and just about every other commercial species of fish on the former Canada's east coast.
Boom-Boom: Not to mention the near extinction of the lobster fisheries. Here’s an easy question.
Johnny: Not another question [laughing], our viewers will think you are trying to take over my show.
Boom-Boom: It’s the last one. I promise. Who did those fishermen blame for that near extinction of the lobster?
Johnny: The natives?
Boom-Boom: Congratulation. You’re a fast learner. Of course it was the Natives, in this case the Micmacs of New Brunswick.
Johnny: I guess the Beothuks of the former province of Newfoundland were fortunate in some ways – they were not around to be blamed for the collapse of the east coast fisheries, having preceded many of the fish they depended on into oblivion.
Boom-Boom: Yes, and they didn’t live to witness the disappearance of countless of their brothers and sisters. How many tribes were there before the Fracture and how many are left?
Johnny: Before The Fracture I believe there were six hundred and thirty-three tribes. Now the number is probably half that. Except for a handful of anthropologists, there is not that much interest in the plight of Canada’s first inhabitants, which brings up my reason for quoting chief Shinguacouse of the Ojibwa at the beginning of the show.
My Brother's Keeper
Boom-Boom: It’s too bad that the Natives did not have the strong community ties and organization that allowed members of ACNA to survive intact and prosper once order was reestablished.
Johnny: Yes, the power struggle was in the cities and towns, not on Native reserves. Once the central government of Canada was no more, they had no champion in the struggle for territory that followed the Fracture. And, if I may be allowed a small criticism of ACNA; it was not overly concerned that the land it claimed for its members was not already the property of the first inhabitants.
Boom-Boom: Those property rights claimed by Natives were based on treaties which were negotiated with the old British Crown and the former Government of Canada. The obligations of the British Crown were assumed by the government of Canada, at Confederation I believe. It may have been later. But all this is irrelevant today. Ten years ago this week, the country of Canada disappeared and with it any treaty obligations.
Johnny: Perhaps the treaties were no longer enforceable, with no central authority to enforce them, but wasn’t there a moral obligation?
Boom-Boom: What moral obligation? The money and land that was granted under those treaties was in large part, as far as most ACNA members are concerned – especially the money – guilt payments, white Anglo-Saxon guilt payments for stealing the land and mistreating the Native population. The citizens of the member states of ACNA were not here, at least not in any great number when this robbery of Native lands took place. In fact, many ancestors of citizens of ACNA when they first came to Canada were subjected to some of the same discriminatory practices and thievery, the best known being the seizure of Japanese Canadian’s property and their interment during the Second World War.
Johnny: Yes. I’m familiar with those events but…
Boom-Boom: Not only are they responsible for what happened to them then, but they are also responsible for what is happening to them now.
Johnny: How’s that? I mean, why are they responsible for what’s happening to Natives now?
Boom-Boom: Who created the system that led to the Fracture in the first place? It was the white Anglo-Saxon and French majority in the Canadian Parliament. The Fracture as Dr. Diane makes clear can be traced back to the Neanderthal politics of that fellow Mulruney [sic] and his Conservatives and the Liberal governments that followed. All these governments tried to return the country to the 19th century economic system that exploited immigrants and it backfired, backfired badly. Let them, let the white Anglo-Saxon and French continue their guilt payments and look after them, the Natives.
Johnny: You know that is not possible. The Québec government couldn’t care less, after all, the Natives in every referendum voted overwhelmingly against separation. It’s payback time in le beau pays. The remaining, what you called the white Anglo-Saxons communities are deeply divided, their attention is now taken up with dealing with the Asian Commonwealth of North America, the Holly Alliance of Muslim Municipalities, the North American African-Caribbean League, and their economies are in bad shape.
Boom-Boom: It’s not that I am not sympathetic to the plight of Canada’s first inhabitants but, you must understand, we don’t have a past.
Johnny: What do you mean?
Boom-Boom: There is no substantive shared history between Canada’s first inhabitants and Japanese, Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis, Sikhs and Tamils, therefore, convincing members of the Commonwealth to provide more help than you would a stranger in distress is very difficult, if not impossible. Also, it’s no secret that before The Fracture many of the minorities that are now under the ACNA umbrella considered the first inhabitants a pampered minority – that lack of shared history again – that they should not have had anymore rights than any other minority and definitely not the billions of dollars that were given to them every year under the now obsolete treaties. This is a view that is still shared by a majority of the members of ACNA, the North American African-Caribbean League and, of course, the Holly Alliance of Muslim Municipalities.
Johnny: To be fair, it’s not only members of ACNA, H.A.M.M. and NAACL that feel no moral or fiduciary responsibilities to Canada’s first inhabitants. After The Fracture, the new country of Québec is not exactly respectful of those treaty rights.
Boom-Boom: I feel a tremendous sadness for Canada’s first inhabitants; sadness for the tribes that are no longer with us; sadness because they lost their country, not once but twice; sadness that they now find themselves in a no man’s land, in disputed territories of the new alliances that don’t recognized their ancestral claims; sadness for the many that are being killed in scenes reminiscent of the hunting of the Beothuks; sadness for those who are slowing starving to death. To me, it would be like if my ancestral lands became the property of my enemy. I really feel for them, but they lost their country and it was not because of anything citizens of ACNA did. They mostly did it to themselves with a little help from their friends. Their new country, Canada became, after The Fracture, just scattered pieces of real estate; we are just picking up the pieces and trying to create a new country out of them.
Johnny: What do you think of the words spoken by chief Shinguacouse of the Ojibwa, almost two-hundred years ago which I quoted at the beginning of tonight’s show?
Boom-Boom: To me it’s a warning to choose your friends very carefully.
Johnny: That’s all?
Boom-Boom: Look, [showing signs of frustration] ACNA will do anything, is doing everything that can be done and more. There is even a resolution before the Commonwealth Council of Ministers to integrate those tribes willing to give up their claims to some of the Commonwealth’s lands into our own societies.
Johnny: I don’t think they will do that. Not even in the face of starvation and losing the few remaining sanctuaries south of the 60th parallel.
Boom-Boom: You’re probably right. It is really too bad; if only they had shown the same resolve when the Europeans first set foot on their land. But their fate was sealed when they welcomed the Europeans and for what: to trade, believing that they, the Europeans had attractive stuff to trade and would be fair free traders. In exchange for a few trinkets and baubles they gave up a continent.
Johnny: It’s interesting how the fate of alleged primitive cultures and the fate of more advance nations like Canada is decided by economics or more specifically the value some economic systems place on acquisition, trade and greed. Both, you could say, were the victims of bad economics, of bad trade deals.
Boom-Boom: Dr. Diane would definitely agree and as mentioned previously so do I, to a large extent.
The Scam
Johnny: So getting back to the central question that this series is trying to answer. What, in your opinion, was the key decision or event that made The Fracture inevitable? I realize you have already partly answered this question by telling us that you are largely in agreement with Dr. Diane Frances Smith’s theory. What would you add to that theory to make it complete?
Boom-Boom: The Fracture, love that term, so easy to pronounce, so full of meaning. Yes, I agree with Dr. Diane that the import of cheap labour, which was part of an exploitive economic system harking back to the economics of the late 19th century, contributed to The Fracture. The new or should I say the old economic model the Mulroney Conservatives put in place might have worked back then, but it would not work again with a more educated class of immigrants who knew a scam when they saw it.
Johnny: What scam?
Boom-Boom: That the promise of a better life in Canada was on the condition that at least one generation of immigrants wipe the arses and empty the bedpans of its aging white population and the next generation pay the pensions of this same population of idle old people who could not or would not look after themselves. Freedom fifty-five required a steady flow of this cheap almost slave labour from poor countries. That was the scam.
Johnny: I must admit, the descendants of the early resourceful, self-reliant Canadian settlers, in the years leading to The Fracture, were somewhat of a disappointment.
Culture and Religion as Contributing Factors
Boom-Boom: It is true that the so-called troubled times that preceded The Fracture began with immigrants, the sons and daughters of immigrants in low paying, dead-end jobs; immigrants, sons and daughters of immigrants who increasingly found themselves on welfare through no fault of their own, joining together in a common cause to try to change the system that exploited them. Adding to the “troubles” were religious groups, the most prominent being Muslims, who, having achieved what I would call a critical religious mass began making demands on a secular government that a secular government could not grant without giving up the claim to being secular.
Johnny: So you agree with Dr. Smith that The Fracture was mainly bad economics?
Boom-Boom: Not completely. Canada might have been able to overcome these economic inequities given time. What it could not overcome was the society it created where almost everyone’s first allegiance was somewhere else and, this is where I regretfully part company with the lovely Dr. Diane. It is self-evident today that The Fracture occurred where Canada was most vulnerable, at the intersection of the pieces that made up its cultural and religious mosaic.
Johnny: Unlike its southern neighbour, the United States, which encouraged newcomers to become part of American culture, to immerse themselves in that great melting-pot where everybody comes out American, Canada encouraged new-Canadians to maintain the culture and traditions of their ancestral homes. It encouraged them to remain a visible and vocal part of the so-called Canadian multicultural mosaic.
Boom-Boom: The cultural and religious clashes that contributed to the fracture need not have happened if Canada had not persuaded newcomers to remain culturally, therefore sentimentally attached to the country they left as opposed to encouraging them to immediately form an attachment to their adopted country by adopting the culture of their new country.
Johnny: Perhaps, but except for Québec, I don’t think the rest of Canada admitted to having a culture or a culture worth preserving.
Boom-Boom: That would explain their readiness to welcome other cultures and traditions. Be that as it may, this policy of encouraging new citizens to maintain deep emotional ties to the land of their ancestors was, in my opinion, a dubious way of creating the necessary cohesiveness among citizens of a country, that sense of belonging that is necessary to a nation’s survival. Without it a country is in constant danger of flying apart, is always in danger of fracturing. That line from that poem you quoted prior to your interview with MAD, Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold was prophetic for Canada.
Johnny: Was it this cultural attachment and the religious differences that Canada had encouraged, that led to the rise of the ethnic gangs, these same criminal gangs that would serve as the shock troops of the different factions fighting for land and influence after The Fracture?
Boom-Boom: Every society has its criminal gangs. In Canada, membership in most of these gangs was ethnically based partly because Canada did not promote cultural and religious mingling of the races. Also, ethnic violence would have been an everyday occurrence in the ancestral countries of some citizens.
So the answer to your question, and I don’t mean this as a, how do you say it, a cop out, would be that Canadian policy towards its cultural and religious minorities did not encourage the creation of ethnic gangs but it did not discourage it either. It was a policy that led to the creation of ethnic ghettos and neighbourhoods based on race or religion. It is only natural that these types of gangs would emerge from these ghettos and neighbourhoods.
Johnny: Did the knowledge that their ancestors had been exploited have anything to do with the gang violence, taking revenge against the ancestors of those who had exploited their ancestors?
Boom-Boom: Everybody is exploited by somebody at one point in their lives, usually more than once. It’s the nature of the system; you could say its part of society, perhaps even a necessary part. Did knowledge of the exploitation of their ancestors encourage criminal behaviour? I don’t think so, except perhaps to rationalize criminal behaviour and breaking the law. This is not to say that the historical exploitation of their ancestors was not used by some community leaders as encouragement to these same gangs to commit those horrible crimes in the name of real and imagined crimes against their long dead relatives.
Johnny: How would they have known? I mean, how would they have developed such a negative, violent attitude towards contemporary Canadians on the basis of events that occurred at least one-hundred years before they were born?
Whose History Is It Anyway?
Boom-Boom: It was the teaching of Canadian history out of context. As explained previously, the teaching of history in the decades preceding The Fracture dwelt more and more on the real and imagined injustices done to the ancestors of new Canadians, the ancestral history of the new Canadians and less on the contributions to the building of Canada by the earlier settlers.
It was also a history that maintained that the greatest contribution to the building of Canada, not that it was not substantial, was made by immigrants coming to Canada after Mulroney opened the floodgates to cheap labour. It was this biased history that would be shamelessly used to rally gangs members, now the shock troops of the different movements seeking to lay claim to a piece of the rapidly disintegrating country.
Johnny: It was a biased history that Canadian politicians actively encouraged for their own ends. I remember reading a book by that great Canadian philosopher Saul, whom his countrymen never fully appreciated – but then again that was also so typically Canadian – called Reflections of a Siamese Twin in which he writes about the 1995 referendum that almost led to an early fracture; about how politicians talked about Canada as if it had no history before 1985.
Boom-Boom: It was not only this fellow Saul that talked about it but also a guy, an historian called Granatstein, I think.
Johnny: Yes, I believe he is the author of a book called Who Killed Canadian History?
Boom-Boom: If it hadn’t been for your thoughtful explanation of early Canadian history, I would still be under the impression that, while Canada’s birth and early history was not as spectacular as that of Rome, it was a birth and a history that Canadians should have been proud of.
Johnny: Getting back to your answer, your answers to the question “What caused The Fracture?” If I understood you correctly, in your opinion, it was a combination of bad economic policy and an exaggeration of cultural and religious differences that was encouraged by the Canadian government with its multiculturalism policy.
Boom-Boom: Yes, with emphasis on Canada’s policy of paying newcomers to build barriers between themselves and other ethnic, cultural and religious groups – its multiculturalism policy.
Johnny: A policy which you and other community leaders profited from. Am I correct?
Boom-Boom: Yes. But, you must understand, I am not against multiculturalism as such and against taxpayers money being spent to promote multiculturalism. What I am against is the type of multiculturalism, the exaggerated, divisive multiculturalism that was promoted by the Canadian government for purely selfish reasons and which I maintain was a contributing factor in the fracture of Canada.
Johnny: You realize that your stand on multiculturalism puts you at odds with His Excellency Ayatollah Domeini who maintains it was not enough multiculturalism that led to The Fracture.
Boom-Boom: I will take that as an indication that I am right.
Johnny: What would your brand of multiculturalism have been like?
Boom-Boom: Multiculturalism should be like a treasure of good and bad memories. You should be allowed to keep those memories alive, if you want, but not encouraged to relive them.
Johnny: What specifically did you not like about Canadian multiculturalism?
Boom-Boom: First and foremost, multiculturalism became a vote buying exercise. That immediately corrupted the whole concept. The corrupted multiculturalism policy promoted everyone’s culture at the expense of a core Canadian identity. It became a policy that most in the immigrant community did not want to have anything to do with and would not have had anything to do with if it had not been forced on them.
Johnny: Why did you, as a community leader, take the money?
Boom-Boom: It was free money; it was like winning the lottery. What can I say? But seriously, we, I did not think that it would be used to manage and promote programs that accentuated cultural and religious differences that would lead to the end of Canada. Sorry, that is not quite right. I did not believe that these programs, which encouraged my fellow immigrants to live outside the mainstream of Canadian society, were a bad thing. Now that I look back on it, this money funded the rise of community and religious leaders, who would advocate, then carry out the dismemberment of Canada. Money for the promotion of multiculturalism purchased the hammer that would be used to smash the Canadian mosaic to bits.
Johnny: That’s a powerful metaphor!
Boom-Boom: Canada did become what a short-term Prime Minister, a fellow called Joe Who, I think, wished for. Canada did, for a short time, become a community of communities. Then it started. Communities started to look to their community leaders for direction. The central authority, I guest the type of super community that this fellow “Who” predicted never materialized or never achieve legitimacy in the eyes of this hodgepodge of religious, cultural and ethnic based communities.
Johnny: You said that the overwhelming majority of immigrants were against the type of multiculturalism promoted by the Canadian government. Can you give our viewers an example?
Boom-Boom: Obviously not everybody in the immigrant community was against it. You had a small, vocal well-connected minority who saw multiculturalism as a means of creating exact replicas of the life they had left behind. The overwhelming majority who came to Canada after the Mulruney (sic) reform came to Canada to escape the life they left behind. It was the vote buying politicians and this small vocal well-connected minority, and I must admit I was one of them, who lived off multiculturalism money that claimed otherwise.
I believe ordinary Canadians understood that most immigrants came to Canada to seek the Canadian way of life which is why they became so vocal in their opposition to spending their tax payments on the promotion of multiculturalism.
Johnny: And the example, the proof of what you’re saying?
Boom-Boom: Yes, you did ask for an example. Even as a teenager I was interested in politics and public affairs which is why I watched a lot of public affairs programming on the Canadian Broadcasting System, CBS.
Johnny: Was it still the public broadcaster then?
Boom-Boom: Yes.
Johnny: Then it probably was the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the CBC. It easy to get confuse. The few remaining televisions station at the time of The Fracture were competing with an alphabet soup of American broadcasters who had gained much of their Canadian fans earlier on after rapidly switching to broadcasting their offerings in colour when the technology became available while Canadian broadcasters dallied for years before offering colour programming.
Boom-Boom: I never heard that explanation for Canadian’s addiction to American television.
Johnny: They would repeat the same mistake when digital broadcasting and its superior image came along. Americans again beat them to the punch by a number of years and gained another swat of the Canadian television audience. After Diefenbaker, except for a few short-lived exceptions, it is a myth that Canadians were quick to adopt new technologies especially if it was home-grown technologies.
Boom-Boom: Why am I not surprised. As I was saying, I was watching this public affairs program on the CBC. The CBC had invited members from two Muslim organizations to debate the imminent establishment of Islamic Tribunals and the enforcement of Islamic Law, what Muslims simply call the Sharia, in the then province of Ontario. The situation I am describing will not be new to your viewers who watched your interview with Domeini.
Johnny: Why did the CBC invite only Muslims to discuss the eminent arrival of the Sharia which Aljazeera praised in December of 2003 for bringing “Muslim Sharia law to a largely secular society?” A correct but premature prediction as was its prediction that eventually most of the provinces of Canada would accept Islamic Tribunals.
Boom-Boom: Johnny, for a student of Canadian history you are somewhat unfamiliar with the sociopolitical climate of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. This was Canada. Nobody, but nobody dared question the practices, traditions, values of other cultures. This was taboo. All cultures, all traditions, all values were judged to be equal. You questioned this orthodoxy and you were accused of being intolerant or worse a racist. You could even be charged with the crime of spreading hatred for having an opinion.
Johnny: How can you have a debate if only one point of view is allowed?
Boom-Boom: Remember, a member of a religious or ethnic group could not criticize the practices, traditions and values of another ethnic or religious group. However, there was nothing against members of ethnics or religious groups debating among themselves. There was no law against that.
Johnny: Are you saying that even with only Muslims present, the CBC managed to have a serious discussion on whether the establishment of Islamic tribunals in Ontario was a good thing?
Boom-Boom: Yes. The broadcasting company was quite cute in engineering a debate on the issue with only Muslims present. Unlike the Canadian government, which I mentioned before believed that every immigrant wanted the same thing, a home away from home, the CBC and most Canadians knew better. The CBC understood that the majority of Muslims in Canada did not want the Sharia. All it had to do was convince some of them to debate the issue with the fundamentalists who had convinced Ontario politicians that having Islamic Tribunals arbitrate in family and business matters would not only save the government money but earn the politicians the gratitude and the vote of the Muslim community.
Johnny: And they did, convince Muslims to debate Muslims on such a fundamental, no pun intended, issue?
Boom-Boom: Don’t forget that the radical, monolithic Islam that you have today is mainly MAD’s doing. While the government of Canada paved the way for MAD, before The Fracture there was still room for discussion within an ethnic or religious group and this is what the CBC exploited.
Johnny: Muslims against Islamic Tribunals. I would never have believed it.
Boom-Boom: Believe it. On one side you had members of the radical Islamic Congress of Canada, all stern and serious old men who had successfully lobbied for the Sharia; on the other side, a mix of Muslim men and women, some from the forward-looking Muslim Canadian Congress who were adamantly against the introduction of Islamic Tribunals. One of the more compelling arguments against the establishment of Islamic Tribunal and the imposition of the Sharia was given by a Muslim father of two girls who explained that he had fled a country ruled by Islamic Courts to save his daughters from the brutalities of Sharia law. It was so moving.
Johnny: His fears for his daughters’ future were not unfounded.
Boom-Boom: As was the fear expressed by another leader of the Muslim Canadian Congress in her opposition to another Provincial Conservative leader’s promise, if elected, to get taxpayers to pay the cost of indoctrinating Muslim children. He would get them to pay, to pay for Muslim schools.
Johnny: Hadn’t he learned anything from the Sharia mess?
Boom-Boom: I guess not. In another debate with an old man from the Islamic Congress, the leader of the forward-looking Muslim Congress said she was puzzled as to why the Conservative leader expected Ontarians to pay for schools where little boys are taught that they are better than little girls, and little girls taught to accept this inferior status because God said so and that they would go to hell if they didn’t.
Johnny: But Canadians in all provinces except Québec would eventually pay for all faith-based schools including Muslim schools.
Boom-Boom: And the Canadian mosaic sagged a bit more under the weight of multiculturalism Canadian-style. As I mentioned before, there would have been nothing wrong with promoting what I would call a soft multiculturalism, the promotion of a private personal appreciation of your roots, where you came from. This type of soft multiculturalism would not have threatened the culture and traditions, the core values of Canadian society.
Johnny: And what, in your opinion, were those core values?
Boom-Boom: I don’t agree with those who claim English Canadians had no culture worth protecting. In my opinion the culture of English Canada had values which Canadian should have been prepared to vigorously defend – to the death if necessary – values such as secularism, democracy, the rule of law and equality before the law, freedom of speech and expression, etc. If multiculturalism had not been used as a cynical vote buying exercise; if multiculturalism had not been used to deny freedom of expression; to deny the right to question the values and traditions that where at odds with the core values of Canadian society that I just enumerated, I am convinced we would not be here today talking about Canada in the past tense.
Johnny: You surprise me, talking about Canada that way. That is not the Tamil Singh I remember fighting for the establishment of the Asian Commonwealth of North America as the only means of preserving the traditions and cultures of immigrants from that sub-continent. In those days, your rhetoric was not that much difference from that of His Excellency the Ayatollah Domeini except he wanted Muslim-only-territories where, what he called a “pure” form of Islam, could be practiced – no unbelievers allowed.
Boom-Boom: I know. I know. I am now old and hopefully wiser, unlike MAD who is just older. If we don’t talk about the Canadian collapse then citizens of ACNA, like Canadians ten years ago this week may wake up one morning and ask “Eh dude, where’s my country?” This is why I think we must be brutally honest about what happened and not hide behind the self-serving platitudes like those of Canadian politicians and interest groups whose double-talk and duplicitous actions led to The Fracture.
Johnny: His Excellency Ayatollah Domeini said The Fracture was a good thing because Muslims can now practice their religion as Allah intended. What do you think?
Boom-Boom: I can’t see how confining women to their homes; public stoning of women suspected of adultery; age of marriage now nine years old; the destruction of all works of art that contain even the smallest representation of persons or animals can be considered a good thing. All those boys missing a hand, some both of them for alleged petty thievery; the lost of an eye for looking at a girly magazine; hanging teenage girls for having pre-marital sex – all those things are not good things, they are not the mark of a civilized society. [taking a deep breath] But he is MAD, what can I tell you, and in Allahland mad men are kings.
Johnny: Yes, but what about the creation of ACNA.
Boom-Boom: You know I am going to try to get the Parliament to change the name of the Asian Commonwealth of North America. In its abbreviated form it is too much reminiscent of a teenage affliction. The Asian Commonwealth of North America is all grown up now and maybe it is time that its name reflect that new grown-up attitude.
Johnny: Are you trying to avoid answering the question “Was The Fracture a good thing for the nation states of the Asian Commonwealth of North America?”
Boom-Boom: Was the fracture of Canada a good thing? Yes and no. Personally, I would have preferred it never happened. A moment ago, I said that politicians perhaps gave us more credit than we deserved, ignoring three hundred years of Canadian history. Having said that, the country was literally being plundered by commercial and private interests without any regard for the future. It was not just the fisheries, it was everything: the forest, the land, the water, everything. The Fracture, you could say was bad for Canada but good for the environment. Good for the environment within the borders of the Commonwealth anyway. Some species of west coast salmon that were thought to be extinct or on the verge of extinction due to overfishing and pollution are now making a comeback; clear cutting of the forest has been stopped and what remains is treated as a garden that must be carefully harvested; there are new more environmentally friendly farming methods and so on. One day, maybe a poet will write about the land of the Asian Commonwealth of North America as Paradise Regained.
Johnny: I could not think of a better line, a reference to Milton’s Paradise Lost to end what I must say was a darn good interview.
Boom-Boom: Better than Dr. Diane’s [laughing]? Just kidding. It was indeed a pleasure to be here and remember, don’t be afraid to call things as you see them. Don’t let people like the Ayatollah, claiming to speak for God, intimidate you. Remember, a coward dies a thousands death a brave man only one.
Johnny: Somehow I don’t find much comfort in that last sentence, but thanks anyway. We are out of time, and again thank you very much Tamil, it was a pleasure, and thanks to all of you for tuning in.
Join us tomorrow when our guest will be Maude Elisabeth Barnstone the well-known feminist, socialist and writer of the definitive biographies of Nellie Mooney McLung and Susan B. Anthony. If I’m not mistaken we’re about to get a whole new perspective on The Fracture.
Join us again tomorrow. Good Night
END OF THIRD INTERVIEW