by C. L. Cook

 

Canada, the C.B.C. tells me, was voted first of a dozen countries in the esteem of the global community. This not due to great works or world leadership, but because a poll conducted with folks on the street in more than a hundred nations.

 

'The National' was a little short on the details of the poll, as they often are when "reporting" this type of datoid factums and their possible interpretations. The essence though was this: Of a list of twelve countries, Canada, U.S.A., Israel, Russia, Iran, Japan, France, and others unspecified in the report, which do you believe most and least favourably serves the greater well-being of the planet? Or something to that effect.

It seems, Canada's rating remains highest among those knowing least about it. Beyond wilderness, mounties, and ice hockey - or perhaps despite them - we Canucks are little known of around the world, and it seems the world would rather not hear about us, not at least in the 'No news is good news' world we live in today.

The logic, extrapolated the C.B.C. reporter, for those taking the survey is: "I haven't heard about you in the papers, or on the teevee, so you're probably not up to no good; ergo, you're O.K."  

 

 

 

I would further extrapolate; that assumption, if true for the more than hundred countries surveyed, would prove so here too. So, the less you know, the better you are. In a "national" context, Canadians would likely believe that, because they hear so little of evils done by those conducting Canada's governmental and business affairs there are none to speak of; so, things are running along in righteous harmony with the world.

This must then explain why, while Canadian government soldiers are killing and dying in Afghanistan, serving support for the disastrous pseudo-empirical ambitions of George W. Bush and his ill-fated co-conspirators, they can still feel O.K. about paying their taxes, or travel the world without feeling the need to camouflage their nationality's, as some others do. It must too be stone dumb ignorance, or a blind denial of the Canadian government's role in the counter-democratic assault against Haiti's Jean-Bertrand Aristide and Canada's complicity in the kidnapping of an entire nation, allowing Canadians feel smug when regarding the morally quagmired behemoth next door, snugly pious within their fictional rectitude.

We many suffering idiots in this North may beg forgiveness our appalling ignorance due to the nature of the informants we have traditionally relied on to educate our minds, and forewarn against grave peril from the high tower. The Canadian media is concentrated beyond any of even the wildest of the monopolist's dreams. The State media, still thought in some quarters as a balance to fervent capitalist nihilism, has in fact capitulated, managing to serve still one master in the form of a morphed corpo/state monolith. Education, the State's near information monopoly is also turned to the corporate model, with the universities resembling little more than corporate proving grounds and recruiting centres.

I don't suppose those distant surveyed know much about the massacre of the First People, those whose bones and blood became the mortar and stone that is the foundation of Canada. That thing that may have turned the survey participant's expression repugnant when considering Israel, and whether it most or least favourably serves the greater well-being of the planet; Israel, that perceived melange of genocide, diaspora, fascists, racists, murder, injustice, and hypocrisy-ridden, hopeless denial, are all the founding circumstances present here in good Canada's beginnings; and so too are they found in every other place the dirty corporate marauders planted their staff.

Time has done wondrous things for Canada's reputation, and all the other leading lights comprising the International Community. America has, George Bush accepted, maintained a rather better reputation than its actions merit. Despite its horrendous century-long cavalry charge across the planet, until recently, people had an overall positive view of Americans.

 

Some of the other notables on the list: Japan; probably not badly thought of just a half a century or so after its Emperor swept across Asia, leaving death and horror wherever it shored up. France; the colonial terror of Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, still thought fondly of, despite its pretensions and snooty provincialism.

 

 

Right?

But what if that past time isn't past, never past? What if Hitler lost the battle, but won the war? What if the sins of our fathers are ours now, and are ongoing, and what we call our Canada is just a crime in progress, a foul inertia inexorably outraging morality by force of its design?

It was business as usual down at Vancouver's court house today; the State was set to disgorge another inconvenient citizen down the rat-hole of its burgeoning prison-industrial complex. A dissenter against the common-greed, a so-called defender of the natural world, who braved dare stand before the steam-shovels, ready to stay the destruction of yet another sacred hollow, sacrificed in this instance to serve the chariots ascending the Olympian heights of Mount Whistler, ground zero of the five-ring dash for cash crashing towards a 2010 implosion at Vancouver in form of the Winter Olympiad. Betty Krawczyk, the 'Eco-Granny,' in the dock again.

Justice Brenda Brown, Brenda Brown, brought her broken gavel down/Down on the head of dear, dead Harriet it fell first/ striking her out after nine days in Surrey/ Now raised high to fall on her friend Betty too/ For saying No! to the broken courts.

Those innocent foreign poll question answerers probably never heard of Betty, or of Harriet, (most Canadians too don't know them from Jack), but so it ain't totally forgotten: There is less to esteem about this Canada tonight, that would allow again, not a week after killing one septagenarian to prove the power of the court, it send up 78 year old, great grandmother Betty Krawczyk for ten months, on top of time served, for standing in the road to protect the little that remains for the next to come behind us.

Would the outlanders have known this before being asked the question, I wonder if this Canada would have fallen in their esteem? And, would only Canadians who discover this travesty conducted in the name of the Crown that rules in these matters, shorten the confident gaze along the length of their supposed moral superiority long enough to act to realize a Canada as good as they did believe they already possessed.   

Betty is in the Surrey Pre-Trial Facility; the same sad place her late friend, Harriet Nahanee occupied before her final release.