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Thanks Ken for this, but it's behind a paywall and difficult to access.
I managed anyway so I'll share it with all:
ABATHA SOUTHEY
Senator scores Canada a late-game medal in the Wingnut Olympics
Tabatha Southey
Special to The Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Mar. 10, 2017 1:16PM EST
Last updated Friday, Mar. 10, 2017 3:20PM EST
This week, breaking with perceived wisdom on the way to finalizing her
bitter divorce from reality, Conservative Senator Lynn Beyak decided to
present an emotional defence of Canada’s residential-school system. It’s
difficult, times being what they are, for Canada to stand out in the
Wingnut Olympics currently in full swing, but Senator Beyak seems
determined to own the podium.
Down in America, Ben Carson kicked off this week’s event by describing
slaves as “immigrants” – just a bunch of crazy kids in the bottom of a
boat with a dream (seemingly of being used as whippable farming
equipment) as Ben would have it – high scores from all the judges. It
was not looking good for Canada – Kellie Leitch’s video submission
having been disqualified for presumed use of a malfunctioning robot
body-double, or possibly animal cruelty. There did seem to be a lot of
distracting cats in that room.
Word is Leitch is dropping her plan for a long-form values test and will
simply ask prospective newcomers, “Yes, but can you direct?”
Then, on Wednesday, up stepped Senator Beyak with a little number I’ll
call “Homage to the Real Victims of Residential Schools: The
Hypothetical Descendants of the People Who Taught at Those Schools,
Whose Feelings Might Be Hurt If They Stumbled Across a Copy of the Truth
and Reconciliation Commission’s Final Report and Read It.”
She did this, she said “mostly in memory of the kindly and
well-intentioned men and women and their descendants – perhaps some of
us here in this chamber – whose remarkable works, good deeds and
historical tales in the residential schools go unacknowledged.”
It’s true, A Child’s Garden of Beating, Starving and Raping Children in
the Indigenous Residential School System never did find a publisher. Nor
did The Secret Burial Garden.
All those “historical tales” lost. All those “remarkable works” so
uncharitably documented as crimes.
To hear Senator Beyak tell it, there were just a few bad apples working
in Canada’s residential-school system. We do know for a fact the
children, around 150,000 of them, mostly ripped from their homes and
sometimes literally from their parent’s arms, would likely have
appreciated getting their hands on a few bad apples, as some of them
were indisputably, and often deliberately, with the knowledge of the
government and – in the name of “science” – starved.
These kids often worked in the fields to produce food that never made it
to their plates but, enthused, Senator Beyak spoke in the Standing
Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples: “Nobody meant to hurt anybody,
the little smiles in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are real,
the clothes are clean and the meals are good. There were many people who
came from residential schools with good training and good language
skills, and, of course, there were the atrocities as well.”
Just try putting that on the end of everything, “Yeah, we went camping,
saw a beautiful sunset, roaring fire, roasted marshmallows. Of course,
there were the atrocities as well.”
“Lovely dinner last weekend, walked through the city streets, wore my
new skirt. Of course, there were the atrocities as well.”
There is no context in which “of course, there were the atrocities as
well” sounds good.
I’m not sure what report Senator Beyak read (I’m going to keep calling
her “Senator” because I want that to sink in, this woman is charged with
providing our nation with sober second thought). She may have mistakenly
picked up a Madeline book and believed that from the years 1876 to 1996,
Canada operated a system whereby First Nation, Inuit and Métis children
were removed from their communities and sent to an old house in Paris
that was covered with vines where the nuns only spoke lyrically, in
rhyme.
The 2015 report that emerged from Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s
in-depth, thoroughly researched six-year study of the system is a
horrifying read. To take chuckles, fine-dining and fresh laundry away
from that document requires a truly superhuman level of myopia. I’d say
it was a Herculean task, except Hercules would take one look at the
Senator’s fact-bending mission and say “Whoa man. Wrestling a lion is
one thing, but even I can’t twist the truth that hard. That Senator from
Dryden, formally in the
