There are times when I do a blog that I know exactly what I want to say and the initial words just bubble out with relatively little work; there are times when I only have a glimmer of what I want to express and it can take well over an hour to get out a measly 500 words. Then there are times when I think I know where I want to go - but somewhere along the thought process I go in a completely different direction - one that frequently leaves me feeling dissatisfied. My last blog was like that.
I wanted to talk about how absolute in our judgements our society is becoming; of how we seem to be unable to look at the whole person, but rather we fixate on one event and assume that we know the person. It feels as if we will never be able to forgive the people who use to be our role models, our idols, our elected leaders.
It needs to be stated clearly that there is no doubt that all of our politicians in the last 200 years have been both racists and sexists. Even the most enlightened suffragette was racist. It was how the elites were educated - and those who aspired to be of the elite - copied their manner and attitude. I do not think we should ever forget how their beliefs and their mind-set shaped the policies and actions that they were engaged in. It does not particularly matter that they may not have done it intentionally or with malice - their acts were damaging to people different than them - people they deemed to be less than them. Those acts have had long-lasting consequences, consequences that we need to deal with and is some fashion remediate. But I am not convinced that we need to toss those public figures away, to tear down their statues or in the case of current political figures to bar them from ever running for office again.
My high school had for a number of years in the early 1960s a "Negro Minstrel Show". While I was too young to participate, I do remember attending at least one or two of the shows. In all honesty, if I had been older when the concerts were happening and if I could sing - I would have probably been delighted to be a performer. Should those high school students - some of who would be in their 80s now, be condemned for dressing up in blackface and singing what we referred to as negro spirituals almost 60 years ago as a racist? It clearly would have been profoundly offensive to anyone who was black, it clearly was inappropriate. But before we evaluate those young people, do we not need to look at their lives in the past 60 years? Have they by act and word atoned for their misguided acts.
Similarly, I am willing to bet that the vast majority of young men who went away to university in the mid to late 1960s had very little sensitivity to issues that now consume us in terms of race or gender. There is no doubt that young men like me said things that were horrific. We used language to describe people that would have been offensive (I have never used the "n" word) to those people. The fact that we did not realize it was wrong - is irrelevant. We said it and we should be ashamed.
My attitude and responses to women were no better.
But if you are only going to judge me by my participation (and enjoyment) of a concert 60 years ago where high school students wore black face, or by my use of language (and the attitude/lack of sensitivity that went with it) then you will have missed who and what I am. Instead, I would rather you judge me by my friends, the people I have worked with and the vocation I chose to devote my professional life to. Perhaps even more importantly - judge me by my children and their friends.
Don't judge me by what my parents and community taught me about what is okay or not - judge me by what I taught my children.
Saturday, February 9, 2019
Thursday, February 7, 2019
Strange Times Indeed
There can be no doubt that we are living in strange times. Never before in the history of the world have anonymous, uninformed or just not very intelligent people been given the power to direct and control both what information we are given and how to value it. The news we have been given has always been controlled by people who have biases. Whether it was the print media, or radio/television, the people who controlled those news corporations - controlled what news and from what perspective that news got discussed. Those who write the history books have always got to decide what happened. But most critical thinkers and informed readers/viewers knew that there was a bias. There were always other formats that allowed a different level of discussion of the facts.
Social media has in some ways levelled the playing field. One no longer needs to be rich to have a platform to disseminates one's views. Unfortunately one also no longer needs to be capable of thinking outside of a very small box or to be aware of the consequences of that view. Given the all-pervasiveness of social media, the general inability for people to think and their overwhelming fear of appearing to be different than anyone else - one person can make a statement and everyone agrees.
Liam Neilson disclosed that he had clearly violent, racist thoughts over a specific incident 40 years ago. He acknowledged that it was wrong and said that he had gotten help to understand what had happened. Was he wrong - of course, he was. It is clearly racist to blame every person of a certain colour for a specific act. There is now conversation amongst the media and on social networks as to whether or not Neilson's career is over because he acknowledged his behaviour in a very public way.
There has been no suggestion that Neilson has, since that event, continued to have violent racist thoughts, there is no indication that he has ever acted out that rage. If there was a rational dialogue happening - one could explore how those thoughts were formed in a young man in Northern Ireland in the midst of the "troubles". We could learn from those experiences, thereby understanding both how to prevent others from feeling that way and why and how he realized it was wrong. But instead, it is much easier to castigate a well-known celebrity because he admitted that he is human.
In my mind, the primary problem with social media is that it uses a very wide brush to taint everyone with the same attitude regardless of why or when. It is fine to label a person's behaviour as racists but surely context is important. While it might be essential to recognize a behaviour, it seems to me far more important to ask what did that person learn and did the behaviour reoccur?
It is as if some of the commentators on social media believe that we should all leave our mother's womb without faults. However, it is not how a person starts out - it is how they grow that is important.
Wednesday, February 6, 2019
The Absurdity of Cryptocurrency
I have almost no sympathy for people who think they have found a short cut to getting rich and then lose their money. I have even less sympathy for those who think that one of the paths to getting rich is to avoid paying taxes on their income. I have therefore taken some delight in reading about those who invested their money in one specific cryptocurrency and now appear to have lost access to their money. The person who ran the company has died without telling anyone how to access the accounts. Given that the cryptocurrency prides itself on its ability to ensure that the accounts are absolutely safe from hackers - it may never be possible for people to gain access to the accounts. I find it rather interesting that some investors in the semi-underground cryptocurrency economy are now demanding that the government regulate the industry so that investors are protected.
Someone needs to tell those investors that you can't have it both ways. You cannot plan on making money in a process that celebrates its lack of government regulation or monitoring - in fact, argues that cryptocurrencies are better than "regular" money that is issued and controlled by the government because it exists in a totally free market - and then ask for help to create regulation when it all goes bad. It boggles my mind that people would think that one could give "real" money to someone who would invest it in something that had no value - and in fact never really existed and then be surprised when a problem appeared.
Cryptocurrency has always seemed to me to be a bit like investing in alpacas or some other exotic animal. It only has value when someone says it does. The alpaca, for most Canadians, has no value. Its fleece is nice but there is a fair amount of processing required to make it useful and there are a limited number of people who want to use it. The real money was in selling the breeding stock. Once everyone had an alpaca who wanted one, the value of the breeding stock became significantly less and alpacas no longer were being touted as a way to get rich. Similarly, cryptocurrency has no value except what one can buy with it. The seller will always control the value of the currency. The value of the specific cryptocurrency is not tied to any specific item or economy. It floats somewhere in the cloud finding what value it can find. Trying to regulate or monitor the activities of private individuals who intentionally work outside the banking system utilizing something that cannot be defined or measured seems a pointless and perhaps impossible task.
If investors want some security - then they need to invest in systems that are regulated and monitored by agencies that are created using our tax dollars. If you want to get rich quick by gambling - feel free but don't come whining to me when you need assistance.
On a secondary note, the cryptocurrency economy uses a huge amount of electricity to run the computers. CBC noted that " A new study investigated how the energy consumed by these two processes compared, and found that crypto mining can use more than four times as much energy, for value produced, as mining for real resources like gold, copper, and platinum.". (1)
All in all, cryptocurrency seems like something the self-proclaimed elite use just to prove that they are different and therefore better than the rest of us. Pretty typical - use our collective resources (e.g. energy) to make money for themselves but then demand that someone protect them when it doesn't work out the way that they planned.
(1) https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/bitcoin-s-energy-costs-beatboxers-invent-new-sounds-wind-farms-change-lizards-and-more-1.4897314/bitcoin-mining-uses-more-energy-than-mining-for-real-gold-1.4897333
Someone needs to tell those investors that you can't have it both ways. You cannot plan on making money in a process that celebrates its lack of government regulation or monitoring - in fact, argues that cryptocurrencies are better than "regular" money that is issued and controlled by the government because it exists in a totally free market - and then ask for help to create regulation when it all goes bad. It boggles my mind that people would think that one could give "real" money to someone who would invest it in something that had no value - and in fact never really existed and then be surprised when a problem appeared.
Cryptocurrency has always seemed to me to be a bit like investing in alpacas or some other exotic animal. It only has value when someone says it does. The alpaca, for most Canadians, has no value. Its fleece is nice but there is a fair amount of processing required to make it useful and there are a limited number of people who want to use it. The real money was in selling the breeding stock. Once everyone had an alpaca who wanted one, the value of the breeding stock became significantly less and alpacas no longer were being touted as a way to get rich. Similarly, cryptocurrency has no value except what one can buy with it. The seller will always control the value of the currency. The value of the specific cryptocurrency is not tied to any specific item or economy. It floats somewhere in the cloud finding what value it can find. Trying to regulate or monitor the activities of private individuals who intentionally work outside the banking system utilizing something that cannot be defined or measured seems a pointless and perhaps impossible task.
If investors want some security - then they need to invest in systems that are regulated and monitored by agencies that are created using our tax dollars. If you want to get rich quick by gambling - feel free but don't come whining to me when you need assistance.
On a secondary note, the cryptocurrency economy uses a huge amount of electricity to run the computers. CBC noted that " A new study investigated how the energy consumed by these two processes compared, and found that crypto mining can use more than four times as much energy, for value produced, as mining for real resources like gold, copper, and platinum.". (1)
All in all, cryptocurrency seems like something the self-proclaimed elite use just to prove that they are different and therefore better than the rest of us. Pretty typical - use our collective resources (e.g. energy) to make money for themselves but then demand that someone protect them when it doesn't work out the way that they planned.
(1) https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/bitcoin-s-energy-costs-beatboxers-invent-new-sounds-wind-farms-change-lizards-and-more-1.4897314/bitcoin-mining-uses-more-energy-than-mining-for-real-gold-1.4897333
Tuesday, February 5, 2019
Venezuela - What to Do?
It may be that I am getting older and therefore less intellectually alert, but the political situation in Venezuela is confusing to me. Or rather any solution to the mess that country is in - is beyond me
It seems inconceivable that a country that is sitting on one of the world's greatest reserves of crude oil - is so far in debt and is so unable to meet the most basic of needs of its citizens. There is no doubt that the production of oil has been mismanaged. There appears to be a myriad of possible causes including the big multi-national oil companies who took out countless of billions of dollars of profits in the late 1960s and early 1970s did not contribute enough to the national economy. Others blame the Socialist government of Chavez who nationalized those companies and perhaps lacked the expertise to manage the oil reserves. It is clear that the world economy could not sustain the ever increasing cost of oil that the Venezuelan government depended on to maintain its programs and that the growth that the Venezuelan middle class demanded. The more cynical of us would wonder if there had been some not- so-subtle interference in the Venezuelan economy by some western countries and their multi-national corporate allies who opposed the concept of a Socialist government.
Every news site from Al Jezerra to the BBC to the Globe and Mail has suggested answers but it is difficult to ever imagine finding a solution to a crisis if one cannot agree on the causes of that crisis.
There would appear to be two factions within Venezuela. Both leaders are arguing that they have a legitimate right to control the resources and the military. Both are supported by various governments around the world. Neither leader, from what I have read - have a clue as to how to reverse the crisis that is Venezuela.
I am unclear as to why my Canadian government has decided to be such a verbally active advocate of Juan Guaidó - the head of the National Assembly who has declared himself interim president. The stated reason - that of being concerned for the human rights of the Venezuelan people, rings hollow to me. There are numerous other countries with whom Canada has trading relationships with, who have an abysmal record of human rights including Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, the Philippines, China, Russia and perhaps on occasion, even our neighbour to the south of us. I have no problem Canada providing some leadership on the issue of human rights. The world needs countries to call out other countries that ignore the most basic protections for their citizens. But we need to be sure that we are getting our own house in order and that our condemnations of other countries are applied equally. We must not "cherry pick" which countries we pick on.
It would seem to me that we could be far more effective if we offered some expertise to assist Venezuela in dealing with its problems. We seem to have lots of experienced, professional oil field workers and managers who, according to the press, are scrambling for work - perhaps we could pay their salaries for six months and offer their expertise - free and without strings to the Venezuelan people. But we should not be loudly advocating for the military of one country to desert to support another leader. Encouraging armed insurrection should not be what we are known for.
Saturday, February 2, 2019
The Humboldt Accident - Who gets Punished?
Jaskirat Singh Sidhu, the driver of the truck involved in the Humboldt Broncos bus crash is awaiting the sentence that will be imposed upon him for the deaths of 16 young hockey players. There is no doubt that he is guilty - he has admitted to it. He plead quilty, it needs to be stated, at the first opportunity to do so. The only remaining question is how should he be punished.
Canadians need to be very clear that any sentencing will be a punishment - there is not a rehabilitation component to his incarceration. Sidhu will be deported back to India as soon as he leaves whatever prison he is sent to. He will be sentenced because he caused an accident that killed and injured people. He was not on drugs or drunk; he was not doing anything distracting; he was not over-tired; it was not intentional - he just made a mistake. The desire to hurt him, to take away his freedom to somehow alleviate the families' pain is understandable - it is just not very logical nor will it have any capacity to change the attitude of other truck drivers. It will not force the people who have the responsibility to ensure that the rules are followed - do so.
I would argue that I have driven with more truck drivers than most. I have driven with truck drivers with just a few years experience and with old grizzled veterans with forty or more years of driving time. I would never say that I know what all truck drivers are like but given the fact that I have spent hundreds of hours driving with them or hanging around truck stops, I do have a sense of how some of them think.
It would be fair to say that almost all of the truckers I have known have been irritated by the rules imposed upon them. Truck drivers get paid by the number of kilometres that they travel. Anything that prevents them from eking out a few extra kilometres is an irritant. The log sheets are, at least for me, are complicated and time-consuming. But with one exception, all of the truck drivers I have travelled with, follow the rules and fill out the sheets reasonably accurately. There is frequently some minor bending of the rules, some twisting of the truth so that they can get time off with family or get to a destination at a better time, but t is almost always inconsequential. The one exception to this general compliance with Transport Canada's rules was a young immigrant from India who picked me up just outside of North Bay heading north. He was a new driver, spoke very little English and according to him - his boss filled out the log book for him. While he did take his sleep when it was time, the next morning, he and a fellow driver switched trailers. My driver went south with a new trailer and the other driver took his trailer further north and then west. A practice that seems unusual.
Scattered across the country are weigh stations, where if they are open, trucks must pull in, be weighed so that they are not over loaded (if they are - the tucker, not the company pays the fine) and occasionally the inspectors check the log book. But, depending on how many trucks are in the lineup, it can be a time-consuming process. The inspectors have neither the time or the desire to look at every log book. Weigh stations are opened on some unknown schedule and truckers if they can, will avoid them. Having more stations open more often would perhaps be a partial preventative to accidents.
However, the owners of the companies must always know what is happening. It is inconceivable that they could have trucks on the road and not know who was not following the rules. They are supposed to check log books, to supervise their employees. And the good companies do that. Some have gone so far as to install tracking devices on all of their trucks, others have installed software that disables the truck from operating once the truck has gone the allotted number of hours. Sukhmander Singh, owner and director of Calgary-based Adesh Deol Trucking Ltd and Sidhu's employer faces eight charges related to log book mismanagement. I would bet that he will not face prison time. Yet it is the owners of these companies that hire poorly trained drivers (I assume it is because they can pay them less), allow, if not encourage them to violate the rules, create practices that do nothing to ensure that the drivers understand their responsibilities or increase their skills, nor do they adequately support them when there are problems on the road.
Sidhu caused the accident and there should be consequences for him. But his boss will walk away with -perhaps only a fine. He should shoulder far more of the cost and the consequences. Only when trucking companies are forced to be accountable for the violations of their drivers will they stop encouraging them to do so. Maybe some serious jail time or the loss of the owner's licence to operate the company will remind them of their responsibilities.
Instead of sending Sidhu to jail for 10 years and wasting over a million dollars upon his care - why doesn't he just get deported now? Being kicked out of Canada sounds like a pretty serious consequence to me.
Canadians need to be very clear that any sentencing will be a punishment - there is not a rehabilitation component to his incarceration. Sidhu will be deported back to India as soon as he leaves whatever prison he is sent to. He will be sentenced because he caused an accident that killed and injured people. He was not on drugs or drunk; he was not doing anything distracting; he was not over-tired; it was not intentional - he just made a mistake. The desire to hurt him, to take away his freedom to somehow alleviate the families' pain is understandable - it is just not very logical nor will it have any capacity to change the attitude of other truck drivers. It will not force the people who have the responsibility to ensure that the rules are followed - do so.
I would argue that I have driven with more truck drivers than most. I have driven with truck drivers with just a few years experience and with old grizzled veterans with forty or more years of driving time. I would never say that I know what all truck drivers are like but given the fact that I have spent hundreds of hours driving with them or hanging around truck stops, I do have a sense of how some of them think.
It would be fair to say that almost all of the truckers I have known have been irritated by the rules imposed upon them. Truck drivers get paid by the number of kilometres that they travel. Anything that prevents them from eking out a few extra kilometres is an irritant. The log sheets are, at least for me, are complicated and time-consuming. But with one exception, all of the truck drivers I have travelled with, follow the rules and fill out the sheets reasonably accurately. There is frequently some minor bending of the rules, some twisting of the truth so that they can get time off with family or get to a destination at a better time, but t is almost always inconsequential. The one exception to this general compliance with Transport Canada's rules was a young immigrant from India who picked me up just outside of North Bay heading north. He was a new driver, spoke very little English and according to him - his boss filled out the log book for him. While he did take his sleep when it was time, the next morning, he and a fellow driver switched trailers. My driver went south with a new trailer and the other driver took his trailer further north and then west. A practice that seems unusual.
Scattered across the country are weigh stations, where if they are open, trucks must pull in, be weighed so that they are not over loaded (if they are - the tucker, not the company pays the fine) and occasionally the inspectors check the log book. But, depending on how many trucks are in the lineup, it can be a time-consuming process. The inspectors have neither the time or the desire to look at every log book. Weigh stations are opened on some unknown schedule and truckers if they can, will avoid them. Having more stations open more often would perhaps be a partial preventative to accidents.
However, the owners of the companies must always know what is happening. It is inconceivable that they could have trucks on the road and not know who was not following the rules. They are supposed to check log books, to supervise their employees. And the good companies do that. Some have gone so far as to install tracking devices on all of their trucks, others have installed software that disables the truck from operating once the truck has gone the allotted number of hours. Sukhmander Singh, owner and director of Calgary-based Adesh Deol Trucking Ltd and Sidhu's employer faces eight charges related to log book mismanagement. I would bet that he will not face prison time. Yet it is the owners of these companies that hire poorly trained drivers (I assume it is because they can pay them less), allow, if not encourage them to violate the rules, create practices that do nothing to ensure that the drivers understand their responsibilities or increase their skills, nor do they adequately support them when there are problems on the road.
Sidhu caused the accident and there should be consequences for him. But his boss will walk away with -perhaps only a fine. He should shoulder far more of the cost and the consequences. Only when trucking companies are forced to be accountable for the violations of their drivers will they stop encouraging them to do so. Maybe some serious jail time or the loss of the owner's licence to operate the company will remind them of their responsibilities.
Instead of sending Sidhu to jail for 10 years and wasting over a million dollars upon his care - why doesn't he just get deported now? Being kicked out of Canada sounds like a pretty serious consequence to me.
Wednesday, January 30, 2019
Facebook and Birthdays
A few days I got a reminder from Facebook that it was someone's, who is on my friends list, birthday. Not surprising or abnormal. I am sure that there are hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of such reminders sent out every day. We all get them - I suspect that most people do what I do - we ignore them or else we send a brief greeting feeling a wee bit guilty that we had not remembered on our own. It so often feels as the birthday's wishes are not really meant. This birthday reminder system from Facebook irritates me so much that I have deleted my birth date from my profile.
What was so troublesome about this reminder is that my friend has been dead for over two years.
The person whose birthday it was last week was a dear friend - I miss her. I think about her often as I go through various activities. Surprisingly often I make reference to her in my conversations with others. I quite frequently wonder what her response would be to one of my blogs. I do not need Facebook to remind me of her birth date. I do not need a Facebook notice to remind me that she has passed on.
I know that I am not the only person who gets these types of reminders. As we all age, and more and more of our friends pass, there will be thousands of profiles of dead people floating through the Facebook world. Profiles that are never updated -frozen forever in time. As far as I know, there is no easy mechanism for anyone to delete those profiles - unless one has the individuals password.
I can understand why some family members might not want to be the one to delete the profile - it would make everything feel so permanent. It may be that friends want the individual page left up for a while so that they can reach out to mutual friends. But one has to wonder if the individual themselves would want to have their profile forever locked in a never changing vacuum. Perhaps there needs to be an addendum added to all wills instructing the executor to delete the Facebook profile or Facebook could quite simply delete profiles where there has been no activity for two years.
Paradoxically I know that I am part of the problem. All that I would have to do is to delete her from my list of friends and I would never again get another reminder. I guess I am just not ready to do that.
Facebook might have numerous advantages - being reminded forever of someone's death is not one of them.
What was so troublesome about this reminder is that my friend has been dead for over two years.
The person whose birthday it was last week was a dear friend - I miss her. I think about her often as I go through various activities. Surprisingly often I make reference to her in my conversations with others. I quite frequently wonder what her response would be to one of my blogs. I do not need Facebook to remind me of her birth date. I do not need a Facebook notice to remind me that she has passed on.
I know that I am not the only person who gets these types of reminders. As we all age, and more and more of our friends pass, there will be thousands of profiles of dead people floating through the Facebook world. Profiles that are never updated -frozen forever in time. As far as I know, there is no easy mechanism for anyone to delete those profiles - unless one has the individuals password.
I can understand why some family members might not want to be the one to delete the profile - it would make everything feel so permanent. It may be that friends want the individual page left up for a while so that they can reach out to mutual friends. But one has to wonder if the individual themselves would want to have their profile forever locked in a never changing vacuum. Perhaps there needs to be an addendum added to all wills instructing the executor to delete the Facebook profile or Facebook could quite simply delete profiles where there has been no activity for two years.
Paradoxically I know that I am part of the problem. All that I would have to do is to delete her from my list of friends and I would never again get another reminder. I guess I am just not ready to do that.
Facebook might have numerous advantages - being reminded forever of someone's death is not one of them.
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
Remembering Genocide
When I was 12 or 13, I came across a book in my parent's very small library (actually it was no more than two or three short shelves). It was a small book, I think a paperback. It was an autobiography of someone who had survived living in one of the camps created by the Nazis for Jewish people. It told a horrendous tale of survival and of death. I was fascinated and horrified by it. It was a curious counterpart to all of the boy's books I had read by G.A. Henty. Books where a young British boy, through luck and courage survived wars or dangers - the books were always shaped around some sort of British imperialism and the theory that honesty and hard work will always prevail. This writer of this autobiography also survived, but it was not in the glorious fashion of Henty's heroes. I think reading that book may have been the start of me leaving most of my childhood fantasies behind. I talked to my father once about the story - he, if I remember rightly, just said that it was something meant for older readers.
In all of my years of public education, I don't remember any class or teacher spending any time discussing the Holocaust. If it was mention, it was only in passing. Certainly, none of my classes in university ever discussed it. And yet somehow I know about it, I have talked about it, discussed it with friends and have consistently been appalled at man's inhumanity to men. The Holocaust has always been a signpost leading to one of the lowest points in human history. But is it?
A few days ago, CBC (1) reported that one out five Canadian young people did not know about the Holocaust. The assumption was that we need to do more to ensure that Canadian children never forget. First of all - I am not sure if someone had done a survey with the students in either my grades 7, 8 or 9 classes in the early 1960s, if the results would have been that different. Secondly, as horrendous as was the Holocaust, our insistence that it is the most egregious example of genocide is incredibly Eurocentric. It might be the worst example of genocide in modern history, in Europe - but there have been other examples around the world that have been just as bad. The Ottoman Empire's acts against Armenians, the Khmer Rouge's slaughter of fellow Cambodians, the slaughter of the Tutsis in Rwanda, the Government of Sudan's slaughter and forced relocation of Darfuri citizens and perhaps most recently the Rohingya of Myanmar who are at significant risk are all acts of genocide. There are numerous other examples including the forced incarceration and slave labour of Africans as thousands and thousands of African were enslaved by western countries or, of course, the cultural genocide (at the very least) practiced on the First Nations people by agents of the Canadian Government.
It is not a denial of the Holocaust to argue that our schools need to spend time discussing other genocides. Our schools are not just for children whose heritage derives from Europe. Given that we are a multicultural society, we need to expand the conversation about humanity's capacity to be inhumane. Genocide is not just a European construct. Clearly, all cultures and faiths have the capacity to twist people's fears and insecurities, to blame others for economic problems, to encourage them to hate someone else, and to be labelled as being less than human - and therefore having no right to live.
The Holocaust was a terrible time and those of the Jewish faith are right to remind us of it, but we need to make sure that we allow others sufficient space in that dialogue so that we can acknowledge their histories, the stories of their culture's destruction and genocide.
(1) https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-holocaust-survey-remembrance-1.4994602
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