Calgary Herald | 07May2010 | Orest Slepokura
http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/todays-paper/Churchill+record/2997435/story.html
Churchill's record
Re: "McClung doesn't deserve new statue," Naomi Lakritz, Opinion, May
5, 2010.
If, as lawyer David Matas and columnist Naomi Lakritz insist, Nellie
McClung is not fit to be honoured with a statue, then let's also
reconsider the honours we heaped on Winston Churchill. Churchill, who
as late as 1937 was lauding Hitler's "patriotic achievement," decried
any "squeamishness about the use of (poison) gas" on Kurdish tribesmen,
derided the indigenous people of America and Australia as inferior to
the whites' "higher grade race," sourced Bolshevism to the Jews'
"envious malevolence," and, according to Harold Macmillan, urged fellow
Tories to adopt the campaign slogan "Keep England White!" Sauce. Goose.
Gander.
Orest Slepokura,
Strathmore, AB
Calgary Herald | 06May2010 | Naomi Lakritz
http://www.calgaryherald.com/technology/McClung+doesn+deserve+statue/2987475/story.html
McClung doesn't deserve new statue
"Thanks to the foresight and courage of Mr. (George) Hoadley, (Minister
of Agriculture and Health), Alberta had the first Act authorizing the
sterilization of the unfit in the British Empire. Mental deficiency in
the schools had increased from one to three per cent, and this seemed
to be one measure of prevention. There was fanatical opposition from
certain religious bodies, but I am glad to say that our Opposition
Party gave it our support."
So wrote Nellie McClung in her autobiography, The Stream Runs Fast,
published in 1945. The timing of her sentiments is important to note,
for she still held fast to her belief in eugenics, and used the present
tense to confirm that, even at the end of the Second World War and the
defeat of the Nazis, who shared her belief. That's the reason human
rights lawyer David Matas objects to a statue of McClung being erected
on the grounds of the Manitoba Legislature.
"If it was up to me, I wouldn't put it up . . . . The adverse impact,
in my mind, on disability rights weighs more than the positive impact
on gender rights," Matas told Winnipeg Free Press reporter Kevin
Rollason.
I'm with Matas. McClung was the driving force behind suffrage and the
1929 Persons Case, which permitted women to be appointed to the Senate.
But her odious view that mentally disabled women should be stripped of
their dignity and forcibly sterilized does nothing for either women or
the disabled.
The issue rears its ugly head in Manitoba 11 years after a similar
situation arose in Calgary, with the dedication of the Famous 5 statues
at Olympic Plaza. At that time, then-Gov. Gen. Adrienne Clarkson,
indicating herself and Senator Vivienne Poy, who was also present,
solemnly told the assembled that Emily Murphy "would have been thrilled
to see a Chinese woman senator and a Chinese governor general." Pardon
me, but like hell she would have. Murphy loathed the Chinese and she
spewed out reams of vile prose warning that the "black and yellow
races" might triumph over whites. She would have seen the ascendancy of
a Chinese woman senator and Chinese governor general as proof her dire
prediction was coming true.
The objections to Matas's position are predictable: Tommy Douglas also
supported eugenics. There are statues of Louis Riel and look what he
did. Well, Riel was fighting for minority rights, those of the Metis.
McClung didn't believe a minority, the disabled, had rights. And
Douglas recanted his stance. McClung did not. She died six years after
The Stream Runs Fast was published, and in those six years, she never
said, "I was wrong." Indeed, she continues her autobiographical
diatribe about forced sterilization by complaining bitterly that the
father of a mentally handicapped girl had "preserved just enough of the
religion of his forefathers to believe that everyone had a right to
propagate their kind, no matter how debased or marred the offspring
might be."
And while McClung certainly deserves credit for securing the vote for
women, there were limits to her fight for that, too. She did not
concern herself with the enfranchisement of aboriginal women, and they
are not even mentioned in her autobiography. Aboriginal women did not
get the vote in Canada until 1960.
It doesn't say much for McClung that she kept an iron grip on her
belief in eugenics even after a world war was fought to defeat an enemy
who shared that belief. To dismiss McClung's dark side by saying she
was merely a product of her times is wrong because it unfairly
tarnishes those of her contemporaries who were truly humanitarian in
their thinking.
The truth is that McClung, despite her battles for suffrage -- and the
reason she was so intent on women getting the vote was that she thought
it the most direct route to prohibition -- stubbornly held regressive
views which were not universal among people of her time. That's why it
took so long for the aforementioned Hoadley to get his forced
sterilization bill passed. When he introduced it in the Alberta
legislature in 1927, there was tremendous opposition from the Liberals
and Conservatives and it didn't pass second reading. Hoadley brought it
back in 1928, when it was finally passed by the United Farmers of
Alberta government then in power.
[W.Z. It is
my understanding that an undue proportion of the males and females sterilized in
Alberta under this legislation were of Ukrainian origin.]
Meanwhile, according to the Canadian Encyclopedia, then-premier John
Brownlee expressed "anything but enthusiasm" for the bill, while the
"Camrose United Farmers Women's Association submitted a resolution
declaring that 'sterilization constitutes a violent and drastic
invasion of the most elementary human rights,' an objection that is
hard to improve upon even today."
An invasion of the most elementary human rights. The Camrose women
could see that, but McClung couldn't? It's an insult to those ladies
from Camrose, to Brownlee and to all those who opposed the
sterilization bill, to glibly forgive McClung for being a "product of
her times."
Her statue ought never to stand on the lawn of the Manitoba legislature.
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