Trinidad & Tobago Newsday
Sunday, February 25 2007
Free to conform
DONNA YAWCHING Two columns back, I started dissecting the idea of the True North (Canada) being “Strong and Free”, as proclaimed in the national anthem.
Rather like Discipline, Production and Tolerance (our own national farce), this slogan may be more a matter of words than reality. I’ve already mused on whether the declaration of Quebec as a “nation” is an indication that the “Strong” is developing hairline cracks; today I wonder:
How “Free” is Canada, below all the rhetoric?Currently, there are about 2,500 Canadian troops in Afghanistan, fighting America’s war. When anyone asks why they’re there, the answer is invariably: “To bring freedom to that poor unfortunate country.” (No-one bothers to add: “whether they like it or not.”)
But while Canadians are busy fighting for freedom in someone else’s country, few here seem to recognise — and even fewer would dare to state — that freedom, of speech and opinion at least, is fast becoming an endangered species. Constricted by ever more boundaries and limits, many of them having to do with political correctness, free speech is something you can only practice if it’s in tandem with mainstream opinion. Otherwise you’re in for trouble.I’ve been collecting examples of this for several months now, and I’m amazed at what a wide spectrum they cover — everything from hockey teams to universities, politicians to reporters. It’s a creeping disease, and everyone is so busy feeling noble that they don’t even recognise the irony.
Consider the following: just before Christmas, a junior league hockey team coach decided it would be a nice gesture to have all his members sign a Canadian flag, to be sent to the soldiers in Afghanistan. Heartwarming and patriotic. Except that one player, evidently a conscientious objector to the war (and there are some), refused to sign. He was fired. So much for freedom of opinion. The coach must be an admirer of George W Bush.
At the intellectual end of the spectrum, things are no better. Last year, Ryerson University decided to award an honorary doctorate to an eminent historian.
Everything was tea and cupcakes until it was brought to the university’s attention that the historian had previously expressed her personal opposition to gay marriage.Such a stance would probably win cheers in TT;
but Canada is righteously proud of being one of the first countries to legalise gay marriage. The historian had nothing against gays, per se; she just held certain ideas as to what constituted marriage. This had nothing whatsoever to do with her academic achievements; nevertheless, the university administration went into a tizzy, and for a while there was talk of withholding the award. Surely, in the intellectual community (if nowhere else), individual opinions should be tolerated.
Not necessarily, as another academic, this time in Nova Scotia, discovered. This political science professor accepted an invitation to deliver a paper at a Holocaust conference in Iran, whose president has declared the Holocaust to be a “myth”. The professor, who is by no means a Holocaust denier, saw no reason to decline; he viewed it as an academic exercise. But on his return he came in for serious censure from his colleagues and superiors. Freedom of expression stops, apparently, when it is deemed offensive to Jews.
And no, that’s not an anti-Semitic snipe on my part; it’s an issue that’s cropping up repeatedly. Recently, the Ontario teacher’s union announced it would debate at an upcoming meeting whether its members should condemn, in their classrooms, the Israeli treatment of Palestinians. The outraged response from Jewish lobby groups was described as “intimidating”; the motion quickly fizzled.
And Michael Ignatieff, a front-running candidate for the leadership of the Liberal party, saw his momentum stop dead when he was stupid enough to state aloud what every reasonable person already knew: that Israel’s attack on Lebanon last summer was a “war crime”.
His (presumably Jewish) campaign leader resigned; and he spent the rest of the campaign retracting, explaining, and attempting (unsuccessfully) to do damage control. That gaffe probably cost him the leadership; he came in second. The irony is that previously, he had antagonised the Muslim constituency by taking the opposite stance.
For a would-be politician, the only safe place is silence — or equivocation.Nor is this de facto silencing happening only at elevated levels. A high-school student, visiting the Governor General’s residence last year on a school trip, happened to criticise the then GG aloud — and found himself, and his classmates, summarily ejected. Last week, a group of teens who used the Internet to diss their principal, were suspended for several days. The school board, unbelievably, called it “cyber -bullying”.
The arts aren’t exempt, either. A respected freelance photographer who voiced mild criticism of the prime minister during the Lebanon crisis was later denied access to do a professional job at the PM’s residence. And closer to home, a friend of mine, also a photographer, attempted to mount an exhibition that focused on a municipal controversy — and found herself mysteriously blocked from using the local community centre that had previously agreed to host it.
A nearby arts cafe agreed to hang her prints — then just as mysteriously reneged. She eventually managed to show in a neighbourhood restaurant; but not before learning a lesson that was both illuminating and disillusioning.
That lesson again? That in this society, you’d better go with the flow — or the flow will certainly go against you. It makes one almost nostalgic for the unfettered free speech of TT, even at its outrageous worst.
