Justin Trudeau at the Vancouver Pride Parade, 2018
The Failure of Canadian Conservatism
Mark Wegierski, writing on the 153rd anniversary of Canadian Confederation
This essay is partially based on Mark Wegierski’s paper, ‘An Ineluctable Direction of Progressive Development?: The Ongoing Failure of the Right in Canada’ (read by Dr. Tomasz Soroka). 8th Congress of Polish Canadianists (Polish Association for Canadian Studies) ‘Canadian (Re)Visions: Futures, Changes, Revolutions’ (Lodz, Poland: University of Lodz, Faculty of Philology) PACS. September 25-27, 2019
Canada has indeed developed far away from its origins. July 1, 2020 is the 153rd anniversary of Canadian Confederation. That was the date on which the British North America Act (Canada’s original constitution) was passed in 1867 by the British Parliament. Four provinces (Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia) formed Confederation. It was also a union of two, long pre-existent nations, English Canada, and French Canada (the latter mostly centered in the province of Quebec). The Aboriginal peoples were included insofar as they were traditionally considered to be under the special protection of the Crown. The Canadian Constitution of 1867 was anti-revolutionary. What was called the Dominion of Canada was characterized by “peace, order, and good government” in contrast to the American credo of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”.
Until 1896, the Conservatives under John A. Macdonald dominated the Canadian polity. Macdonald was a real nation-builder, extending the railways across the continent, thus bringing British Columbia into Confederation in 1871. He also suppressed the two Riel Rebellions which stood in the way of a coast-to-coast Canada. However, the execution of Louis Riel for treason was a baneful act. Indeed, in the 1896 federal election, French Quebec turned away from the Conservatives, voting en masse for the Liberal Party of Wilfrid Laurier.
Throughout most of the Twentieth Century, Quebec would overwhelmingly support the Liberal Party in federal elections, thus virtually guaranteeing a Liberal majority in the federal Parliament. However, until the 1963 federal election, this did not have socially radical implications for Canada, as the country was dominated by a “traditionalist-centrist” social consensus. Indeed, even the social democratic third party, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), was mostly socially conservative. However, in 1961, the party changed its name to New Democratic Party (NDP), which suggested a more “futurist” orientation. Continue reading
Fear of Frying
Statue of Martin Luther, Frauenkirche, Dresden
Fear of Frying
Dresden, the Fire and the Darkness, Sinclair McKay, Viking (imprint of Penguin Books), 2020, reviewed by Leslie Jones
“Man is at bottom a savage, horrible beast”, Arthur Schopenhauer
Historian James Holland, a ubiquitous presence on television programmes about World War 2 these days, featured in ‘Lost Home Movies of Nazi Germany’. In the undated footage in question, a group of Jews are being deported from Dresden. Holland confides that he had always considered the city “an innocent place”, bombed needlessly in February 1945. But having watched this amateur film, he reminds us that it was also a rail hub with over 140 factories producing war material. For example, from 1942 the Zeiss Ikon camera plant produced precision instruments and optical technology for the military. It employed slave labour, including Jewish women. In this “hotbed of Nazism”, Holland maintains, the Jews were dealt with as brutally as anywhere in Germany. He acknowledges, however, that the Dresden firestorm was “horrendous”, something of an understatement.
In ‘Greatest Events of World War 2 – Dresden Firestorm’, Holland returned to this contentious subject. He referred to the German air raids on England, notably those on London and Coventry but conceded that in all of these attacks, ‘only’ 40,000 people were killed. Dresden suffered more losses between the 13th and 15th of February. Holland blames the Nazi authorities in Dresden, notably the Gauleiter of Saxony, Martin Mutschmann (‘King Mu’), for failing to build air raid shelters for the civilian population (but not for himself). Continue reading →
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