This and that for your Thursday reading. – Following up on last week’s column, Frances Ryan laments the UK Conservatives’ choice to inflict needless suffering on anybody receiving public benefits: During seven weeks of undercover work at a universal credit contact centre in Bolton, Channel 4 journalists witnessed a farcical
Continue readingTag: quebec
Dead Wild Roses: The DWR Sunday Religious Disservice – The Judge and the Hijab
I’m always impressed with La Belle Province and her ability to serve up controversy. Recently a judge in Quebec decided that a hijab was considered not to be suitable attire for her courtroom and dismissed a case when the litigant refused to comply with her request. The judge’s words courtesy
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Anonymous Targets Montreal Police For Attacking The Homeless
Online hacktivist collective Anonymous has declared war on the Montreal Police after the force bulldozed a homeless shelter in Viger Square. The post Anonymous Targets Montreal Police For Attacking The Homeless appeared first on The Canadian Progressive.
Continue readingCarbon49 - Sustainability for Canadian businesses: From Ground to Store: We Look at Carbon Neutral Wines
When you see a product that says carbon neutral, what does it mean? I recently enjoyed a bottle of Italy’s number one selling wine in Canada, Santa Margherita’s Pinot Grigio. Each bottle has a green label that says “Carbon neutral from ground to store. Measured and offset with Carbonzero”. It
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: The NDP’s 7% problem
The NDP’s biggest problem electorally isn’t a question of policy or values or leadership or connecting with voters or just about anything else perennially brought up to explain their difficulties in the polls both federally and provincially across Canada. Their big problem comes down to one stat: only 7% of
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: The NDP’s 7% problem
The NDP’s biggest problem electorally isn’t a question of policy or values or leadership or connecting with voters or just about anything else perennially brought up to explain their difficulties in the polls both federally and provincially across Cana…
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: The NDP’s 7% problem
The NDP’s biggest problem electorally isn’t a question of policy or values or leadership or connecting with voters or just about anything else perennially brought up to explain their difficulties in the polls both federally and provincially across Canada. Their big problem comes down to one stat: only 7% of
Continue readingEnergy East—another reason why we need Quebec
Among the arguments that might be made to keep Quebec in Canada is simply that it’s our most progressive province. One can cite ample of evidence for this: it showed the strongest support for the Kyoto Accord and gay marriage, it has the most advanced child care program, it is
Continue readingCanadian Dimension: Cacouna, Couillard and the Ties that Bind
Photo from Public Domain It’s an evening like any other. The first item on the Téléjournal is about the controversial Cacouna oil port project. The journalist speaks to citizens in favour of and opposed to the project. Then the spokesperson for TransCanada, the project’s sponsor, appears onscreen. His talking points
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Linda McQuaig discusses the radical difference between how Canadians want to see public resources used (based on the example set by governments elsewhere), and the determination of the Cons and their corporate allies to instead fritter away every dime of fiscal capacity the
Continue readingThe Canadian Progressive: Big Oil Madness: Gastem’s $1.5 million lawsuit against tiny Quebec village of Ristigouche
Gastem, a Quebec oil and gas exploration company is suing the tiny Quebec village of Ristigouche-Sud-Est to the tune of $1.5-million. The post Big Oil Madness: Gastem’s $1.5 million lawsuit against tiny Quebec village of Ristigouche appeared first on The Canadian Progressive.
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: On political evolution
Both Chantal Hebert and the combination of Bruce Anderson and David Coletto have written recently about the state of federal politics in Quebec, with particular emphasis on what we can expect as the Bloc Quebecois appears to crumble. With that in mind, I’ll offer a quick reminder as to one
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Robert Green looks at Quebec as a prime example of selective austerity – with tax cuts and other goodies for the wealthy considered sacrosanct, and well-connected insiders being paid substantial sums of public money to tell citizens they’ll have to make do
Continue readingThe Adventures of Diva Rachel: The Home of the Habs: For Whites Only?
The Hobby Lobby case rules that Corporations can impose their restrictive values on others. What if the corporation is racist? As a Verdun resident, Fred Christie follows the Habs, as do a legion of other Quebeckers. The Montrealer is even a proud season-ticket holder. Accompanied by two friends, Mr. Christie
Continue readingThe Adventures of Diva Rachel: The Home of the Habs: For Whites Only?
This blogpost was published in the HuffPost under the title:
This Canadian Stood Up to Racism Before Rosa Parks
The Hobby Lobby case rules that Corporations can impose their restrictive values on others. What if the corporation is racist?
As a Verdun resident, Fred Christie follows the Habs, as do a legion of other Quebeckers. The Montrealer is even a proud season-ticket holder.
Accompanied by two friends, Mr. Christie enters the tavern at the Canadiens‘ hockey area, plunks down some cash and orders a few beers. The bartender refuses to serve him. The assistant manager then explains to his would-be customers that the establishment extends no courtesy to Negroes.
It is 1936. July 11th 1936.
The protagonist had resided in the Métropole for over 20 years. Mr. Christie converted to the cult of ice hockey even if the NHL then bars all coloured players. Although Mr. Christie, a Jamaican immigrant, integrated himself into Canadian culture and acclimatized himself to his adopted country, he was not treated like other customers.
Long before Canada’s “multiculturalism mantra,” this was an everyday scenario played out in Toronto, Calgary, Nova Scotia… just about everywhere in the Great “White” North. Aboriginals, Asians and Africans-descendants suffered overt discrimination at will.
During the hostility at le Forum de Montréal‘s tavern, Mr. Christie tried to explain to the Manager that this race-based rule was unfair. His pleas fell on deaf ears. Mr. Christie then called the police. They only served to add insult to injury. Humiliated, Fred and his friends left the tavern thirst unquenched and empty-handed. Like most Afro-Canadians in Montreal, Mr. Christie knew which shops and theatres avoid, which jobs were denied to him, and which neighbourhoods were forbidden to “Negroes”. After all, the city was then a sanctum of segregation. But, for the man who felt at home in the Temple du Hockey, the tavern’s racist rule was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Fred Christie filed a discrimination case against the York corporation to court. Despite registering multiple setbacks, Christie’s case went all the way to the Supreme Court.
On December 9 1939, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) rendered its final decision.
It ruled that the general principle of the law in Québec is complete freedom of business. As long as a merchant did not break the law, he or she was free to refuse any member of the public on any grounds.
The Court proceeded to blame Christie for his own misfortune:
«The respondent was merely protecting its business interests.
It appears from the evidence that, in refusing to sell beer to the appellant [Mr. Christie], the respondent’s employees did so quietly, politely and without causing any scene or commotion whatever. If any notice was attracted to the appellant on the occasion in question, it arose out of the fact that the appellant persisted in demanding beer after he had been so refused and went to the length of calling the police, which was entirely unwarranted by the circumstances.» ~Justice Rinfret
Decidedly, the SCC ratified the “no service for coloureds” doctrine as being in line with the moral standards of the day.
In the social context of Canada before the Quiet Revolution (1950’s), before Viola Desmond’s act of defiance (1946), before Rosa Parks triggered the United States’ Civil Rights Movement (1955), Fred Christie stood up to institutional discrimination.
A decade before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1947), Fred Christie exhibited unimaginable courage and perseverance in asserting his civil rights. Though the judicial process did not deliver the desired result, Fred Christie remains a key instigator in Canada’s journey towards the establishment of universal rights. As Aboriginals, Francophones and elderly people of colour know, the Canadian justice has not always been kind to minorities. Fred Christie paved the way for us all.
Four years after the SCC’s shameful ruling, Ontario heralded a new anti-discrimination era with its 1944 “Racial Discrimination Act”. And sometimes anti-racism laws were even enforced! The jurisprudence would spread from coast to coast.
Fred Christie died enclosed in obscurity. He received no honours befitting of his buoyant bravery — in life or in death.
It’s about time, is not it?
This blog originally appeared in French on the Huffington Post Québec.
The Adventures of Diva Rachel: The Home of the Habs: For Whites Only?
This blogpost was published in the HuffPost under the title: This Canadian Stood Up to Racism Before Rosa Parks The Hobby Lobby case rules that Corporations can impose their restrictive values on others. What if the corporation is racist? As a Verdun resident, Fred Christie follows the Habs, as do
Continue readingTHE CANADIAN PROGRESSIVE: Climate Activists Mourn Victims of Lac-Mégantic Tragedy
On the one-year anniversary of the Lac-Mégantic tragedy, climate activists say the Canadian government has treated the fatal train derailment “primarily as a public relations problem rather than a public safety problem.” The post Climate Activists Mourn Victims of Lac-Mégantic Tragedy appeared first on THE CANADIAN PROGRESSIVE.
Continue readingPeace, order and good government, eh?: Reflections On Canada Day: The Impact Of Canadian History
I’m writing this on the morning of Canada Day 2014, thinking about all the fascinating things I’ve read about and seen, and all the people I’ve met. One thing I’ve come across is all the different parts of Canadian history I’ve studied, and how they’ve tied into many of the
Continue readingThe Scott Ross: Our First Canada Day
Our country was going to be called “Kingdom of Canada” instead of Dominion, but the British, fearing it would provoke the Americans, unilaterally changed it. The greatest thing we can do to celebrate our country is to know more about it. And certainly learning about Canada and celebrating it need
Continue readingThe Scott Ross: Our First Canada Day
Our country was going to be called “Kingdom of Canada” instead of Dominion, but the British, fearing it would provoke the Americans, unilaterally changed it.
The greatest thing we can do to celebrate our country is to know more about it. And certainly learning about Canada and celebrating it need not be separate; below are a few quotes made on our first Canada Day July 1st 1867:
“Died! Last night at twelve o’clock, the free and enlightened Province of Nova Scotia.”- The Halifax Morning Chronicle, a newspaper that thought confederation would hurt Nova Scotia.
“With the first dawn of this gladsome midsummer morn, we hail the birthday of a new nationality.”- George Brown, a father of confederation
“This new Dominion of ours came into existence on the 1st, and the very newspapers look hot and tired with the weight of announcements and of cabinet lists. Here–in this house–the atmosphere is so awfully political that sometimes I think the very flies hold Parliament on the kitchen tablecloths.”- From the diary of Lady Agnes Macdonald, the wife of our first Prime Minister.
“La seule voie nous soit offerte pour arriver à l’independance politique.”- La Minerve, a newspaper in Quebec on the province being a part of a new Canada. (Rough translation: “The only way offered to us to achieve political independence.”)
And lastly a favourite quote of George-Étienne Cartier, another father of confederation, made a few years before our first Canada Day:
“Now, when we are united together, if union is attained, we shall form a political nationality with which neither the national origin, nor the religion of any individual, will interfere…. In our own Federation we will have Catholic and Protestant, English, French, Irish and Scotch, and each by his efforts and his success will increase the prosperity and glory of the new Confederacy….We are of different races, not for the purpose of warring against each other, but in order to compete and emulate for the general welfare.”
This material was from Richard Gwyn’s excellent book, John A, The Man Who Made Us.
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