It was Irish statesman Edmund Burke who said, “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.” Spanish philosopher George Santayana is likewise credited with saying, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” and let’s not forget Winston Churchill, who wrote, “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
I’m familiar with each of those quotes, but I’ll be the first to say that I’ve never applied any of that to today. After all, it’s history, and, being born and raised in Canada, a country where I’ve never had to fight for my freedom, I’ve honestly taken my and my children’s freedom for granted—until two weeks ago. I realized there is too much I do not know about history, but one of the beautiful things about being free is that you’re never too old to learn. So my nighttime reading lately has been history. Likely not the best thing to read to have a peaceful night’s sleep, but education is imperative.
So where do I start? First, there are the residential schools, an atrocity perpetuated at the hands of the government against First Nations people. The horrors of those schools were exposed in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission reports, the recommendations of which have yet to be implemented. Then, in early 1942, the Canadian government detained some 21,000 Japanese Canadians under the war measures act, and those living in British Columbia were forced to live in internment camps for the rest of the Second World War. Their homes and businesses were sold by the government to pay for their detention.
If someone showed up at your doorstep to take everything you had and shove you and your family in an internment camp, what would you do? Unfortunately for Japanese Canadians, it wasn’t until 1988 that then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney apologized on behalf of the Canadian government for the wrongs it had committed against them. Apologies are good, but being able to forgive is a personal decision. I’ve always admired greatly the strength of those who have suffered and then had the ability to forgive the very people who stood by silently and did nothing to help them, the powerful people who hurt them so badly.
I’ve thought about this especially as of late, with the craziness going on, the continual shifting of the goalposts, and the narrative changing on what seems like a daily basis. Look at how easy it was for the government in history to take something that wasn’t theirs. Were the Japanese Canadians ever compensated fully for what was stolen from them? Not many will say this, but I will. It was theft. It’s a horrible part of history and a reminder of something I heard from someone who immigrated to Canada over twenty years ago, “Canadians are wonderful, kind people, but they have one flaw: They trust their government.”
Is history something everyone should know? Absolutely. We should all know about the atrocities of the past so they can’t happen again. We should also ask the hard, important questions no one is asking about how and why those atrocities happened to begin with. To say this has been a crazy week would be an understatement. I’ve witnessed dissension, anger, viciousness, and violations of rights that I never would have believed I would see violated in my lifetime. This mob mentality couldn’t happen without mainstream media fueling it. One of the scariest things for me is how much has changed in a very short period of time. I once stood on an overpass with other mothers, fighting for funding from the government for medically necessary autism treatment for my child. But today, if we fought the way we did then, we’d likely be arrested.
One thing I did learn from my years of fighting, sitting on the opposite side of the desk from government officials, pounding on doors, getting petitions signed, and advocating and fighting with schools, was how not to curl up in a ball and cry at all the doors that had been slammed in my face. I was not going away, was not taking the no dished out again and again at me by government officials. I learned also to ignore the friends and family who didn’t want me to stand up and make noise, because I was supposed to just be quiet, say nothing, do nothing, not bring any unwanted attention to myself or stir up, as someone said, “nonsense.” If a group of parents hadn’t set out on that six-year legal battle together, facing all those high personal costs, my son wouldn’t be where he is today. I advocated and fought and didn’t go away and I did it for my child, for my child’s future, going up against a goliath. Someone once said you can never win against the federal government, as they have the resources to bury you. But that’s only if you go it alone.
I was reminded repeatedly over this last week about the Canadian Constitution and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, documents I should know inside and out. The Canadian Constitution prescribes which powers—legislative, executive, and judicial—may be exercised by which level of government, and it sets limits on those powers.
I’ll leave you with something Malcolm X said: “The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent.” Media has the power to influence the minds, ideas, behaviors, and attitudes of the masses.
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