In the end, good triumphed over banality: Carmen Aguirre, the “bloody terrorist” who should never have been allowed into the country according to one of the judges, won the Canada Reads contest. And the judge, Anne-France Goldwater, ended up voting for her.
It was either that, or another hockey book. Maybe she tossed a coin.
Goldwater got a little defensive on Twitter, especially when it came to the provenance of her husband, who apparently served in the El Salvador military under the dictatorship there back in the day. It must gall the two of them that the FMLN, which also describes in her Tweets as “terrorist,” now forms the democratically-elected government.
In the meantime, Marina Nemat, a survivor of Iran’s torture-dungeons who was called a liar by the same judge, published an article in the Globe & Mail that everyone should read. Its quiet dignity reminds me of the first public statement made by Maher Arar.
A confused Citizen journo managed to conflate the two of them, while praising Goldwater for—you guessed it—“injecting a brief flicker of spark into the self-satisfied and clubby feel that defines Canada Reads.”
The SUNification of Canadian public discourse continues. Why not go all the way next year, invite the authors on, and have them defend their own books while throwing chairs at each other?