Our Rights. Our Freedoms.
We don't know how important something is, until we don't have it anymore. But I'm afraid maybe we won't even remember it is gone.
A few stories. Stay with me.
I worked a lot of hard labor in my life. But loved it. However, fell off a building and suddenly had to fight for my rights, given I was just considered wasted goods. I did well. So, Doug, a consultant contacted me to help guys on Workers’ Comp. like myself. And so I did, even if Doug wasn’t all in it for “the good” - but I won’t disparage the dead. Short story shorter, I excelled fighting for peoples’ rights, driving constantly to Sudbury and prepping clients on how to work the system and get a little cash for their suffering. I remember especially Dan from Mattawa. His caseworker, calling me up in a panic. Dan was driving to their office to fuck them up! I got there, police cars blocking Main St. I talked him down and he put his hockey stick away (in Canada we don’t bring a bat, we bring a stick). But Dan was right, his rights had been trampled on. The working stiff gets it up the ass, they do. And if you are an injured working stiff, you get a bigger stick up yur ass.
I taught refugees to Canada for a number of years in Toronto. Loved the job. Pay not so much but hey, I wasn’t working in a coal mine. Every Friday we had a potluck and I ate like a king! World dishes from all over. Chinese students brought me bags of dumplings for my freezer. Iranians bags of pistachios. One thing I did every first-class - I handed every student a copy of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a copy on very quality paper. I told them to frame it. In Canada, you have rights, you and every individual is valued.
In one of my other lifetimes, over 10 years, I lived in Corsica, France. A poet in vitro. Lucky man, beautiful friends. One thing the Corsicans drilled into me, was the story of Pasquale Paoli — their pride and joy and source of their fierce independence and sense of liberty. It’s a little-known story but Pasquale Paoli and the short-lived independent Corsica was the first formal, national constitution containing a declaration of rights and liberties for all men, regardless of status, race, religion, etc … Decades before the American Bill of Rights or the French Revolution. The Corsican Constitution is the basis of most of the fundamental freedoms and declarations of rights of men we have - Canada’s, the UN declarations etc … We are eternally indebted to Paoli and his band of Corsican freedom fighters and his own knowledge of Montesquieu. Finally, the enlightenment was on paper!
I quote from the document …
“The General Diet of the People of Corsica, legitimately Master of itself […] Having reconquered its Liberty, wishing to give durable and constant form to its government, reducing it to a constitution from which the Felicity of the Nation will derive.”
And from the immortal biographer Boswell, he knew how to judge a man.
“The most extraordinary person I ever met with, he is above all praise … his person graceful, and his address extremely polite. He is learned in all the antient and modern languages, has a fund of knowledge that would astound you, and so happy a memory, that you can not quote any passage from any writer of reputation, which he is not able to go on with … his conversation at meals [is] instructive and entertaining.” Boswell, An Account Of Corsica
So why do I relate the above stories? Because now in my home and native land, they’ve declared emergency measures to put down the protests of “truckers”. A “fringe” group. Yeah, fringe my ass - you don’t need to suspend peoples’ rights and freedoms because of some small “fringe group”. You invoke these powers to keep your own illegitimacy going.
I’ve watched, just the last few weeks even, so many fellow Canadians have their rights trashed. TRASHED. It’s a moment where we either rip up our Charter or we stand up and defend it.
Now, you’ll probably ask, WHAT? I don’t see any transgressions. Any freedoms being trampled upon. Hey, you are lucky to live in such a kind, blessed place.
Well, I’m not going to list them all but here are just a few.
Police based on social media posting, visiting said posters houses for a little “talking to”.
An old man who honked his horn, great-grandfather, manhandled like a piece of shit.
A pastor in Calgary, in a maximum security prison. Sleeping cold on a hard bed, without water despite the cries of his congregation.
Hit and runs in Canada of peaceful protesters, NOT prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Winnipeg and Windsor.
And just to end, a PM that through his words and actions has defaced what the Charter means, to protect the right to speak and act on your thoughts and beliefs.
Brian Peckford wrote the damn document, the Charter and signed it. He testifies that covid policy has trampled, stained this document. He’s a hero.
I’ve witnessed the last 20 years, a world becoming one of the tribe, the warrior. One where individual and guaranteed freedoms were slowly eroded away in favor of “groups”. I’ve witnessed this and I feel like it is 1930s Germany. Word.