[BRIEF NOTE] "Sorry, so sorry"

Even as I write, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is delivering an apology on behalf of the Canadian government to the victims of First Nations residential schools, for reasons described in Agence France-Presse's article "Canada to apologize for aboriginal abuses".

Canada's Prime Minister on Wednesday will officially apologize to natives for more than a century of abuses at residential schools set up to assimilate its indigenous peoples.

"Aboriginal Canadians have been waiting for a very long time to hear an apology from the Parliament of Canada," Stephen Harper said on Tuesday, previewing what would come.

"I hope that we will begin the process of healing and reconciliation," he told parliament, which suspended all business on Wednesday for this solemn occasion.

Beginning in 1874, 150,000 Indian, Inuit and Metis children in Canada were forcibly enrolled in the 132 boarding schools run by Christian churches on behalf of the federal government in an effort to integrate them into society.

Survivors allege abuse by headmasters and teachers, who stripped them of their culture and language.

As well, they say their education left them disconnected from their families, communities and feeling "ashamed" of being born native.

It was "the darkest chapter in Canada's history," said Chief Phil Fontaine of the Assembly of First Nations.

"They tried to kill the Indian in the child, to eradicate any sense of Indian-ness from Canada," he told AFP.

The experience has also been blamed for gross poverty and desperation in native communities that breeds abuse, suicide, and crime.

"It was cultural genocide," said Ted Quewezance, a residential school alumni and director of the National Residential School Survivors' Society.

The government's apology is part of a 1.9-billion dollar (Canadian, US) settlement with 80,000 former students in 2006 -- the largest settlement in Canadian history.

The very extensive CBC digital archive "A Lost Heritage: Canada's Residential Schools" carries quite a few audio and video documents from the mid-20th century in particular, protraying a happy life for those children rescued from the wilderness, illness or poverty. That program of forced assimilation, carried out with the full support and participation of Canada's major Christian denominations (all have which have recently been paying through the nose via lawsuits), ended horrifically, often violent and frequently accompanied by various sorts of abuse (physical, sexual, of course psychological). This did quite a lot of harm to these young people, and indirectly, to their children and to their grandchildren. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that the peoples of the First Nations are still recovering.

I'm certain that the CBC is right that the delivery of the apology is an emotional event (though stagemanaged to avoid confrontations, of course).

While a handful of victims and aboriginal guests will encircle Harper as he delivers the apology, and others will watch from the gallery, they will not have the opportunity to respond on the record in the House of Commons chamber, something that has drawn criticism in recent days.

After the apology, native leaders will be invited to make speeches at a ceremony held in the reading room on Parliament Hill.

Working business has been cancelled in Parliament on Wednesday to mark the apology, while ceremonies and gatherings have been planned by native communities across the country.

Joseph participated in a ceremony at Victoria Island in Ottawa River, where aboriginal people lit a sacred fire at dawn that will remain burning all day. Participants asked the creator to be with all survivors listening to the apology.

"There will be many, many emotions, and some of them will be painful. There will be a lot of tears," Joseph said.

The closest analogies to the Canadian situation seem to be in Australia, where the issue of the "Stolen Generation" of Aboriginal children taken from their mothers seem to have been a major politicla issue for at least the past decade, producing first National Sorry Day and finally with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's recent apologies. Elsewhere in the ranks of neo-Europes, Indian schools in the United States (Wikipedia, National Public Radio)) seem to have had a similar reputation although I don't know if they're national political issues. Can anyone think of any other places where like institutions were used to forcibly assimilate the children of recalcitrantly existing First Nations?

This apology is all well and good. I'm just upset that I have to be cynical about the possibility that this apology will change the situation at all, and fearful that it might be made into just another reason to feel good about Canada.

[BRIEF NOTE] More on the Couillard affair

From the Canadian Press comes the article "Couillard affair claims another Conservative casualty".

The woman who brought down Stephen Harper's foreign affairs minister has cost his Conservative cabinet another senior employee.

Public Works Minister Michael Fortier confirmed Wednesday that he dismissed senior Quebec adviser Bernard Cote after learning that Cote briefly dated Julie Couillard last year while she was attempting to win a government contract.

Cote had to resign because of a perceived conflict of interest, since Public Works was handling the building contracts Couillard was bidding on, Fortier said.

Fortier told reporters that Cote, "should have actually recused himself from this matter, which he didn't do, hence his resignation."

Couillard sparked the resignation of foreign minister Maxime Bernier two weeks ago when she went public with the fact her former paramour had forgotten classified NATO briefing documents at her Montreal home for more than a month.

Harper said Bernier had to quit because he breached cabinet rules on handling sensitive documents, nothing else.

The prime minister has steadfastly maintained that Couillard's past associations with criminal bikers do not pose a security concern and that who ministers date is a strictly private matter.

But senior RCMP officials told a Commons committee on Tuesday that ministers associating with a person who had extensive links to biker gangs would be considered a relevant security concern.

The Mounties also said that Couillard was known to them before her past biker liaisons became public knowledge last month in the media.

In a weekend story carried by The Globe and Mail, Couillard's former husband Stéphane Sirois, now in Canada's witness-protection program after testifying against his gang, had this to say.

From his secure hiding spot under witness protection, Mr. Sirois said he watched Mr. Bernier's fall from grace with sadness - and a smile.

"She's a powerful woman. She gets into your head. She's attracted to people with money and power. She complains Bernier didn't stand up for her. Look what happened to me when I had the balls to defend her - look where I am now.

"I felt sympathy for him," the former biker said of the former minister.

"But I was glad too. I'm not the only dumb one, it seems."

[BRIEF NOTE] Spring Fields

ruralpei4
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

ruralpei6
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

ruralpei16
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

ruralpei17
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

I posted the first three photographs above because they rank among one_serious_cat's favourites from my rural Prince Edward Island photo set, and the last in the set, ruralpei17, is my favourite.

ruralpei4 and ruralpei6 were taken in the area of Vernon River, the last two in the area of Earnscliffe, both nearby communities in the southeast of Prince Edward Island. The photo set has twenty-one photos in all.