Click the pic and Vic will lie to you.

There is a terrific blog created by Christian Cassidy that Manitobans with a passion for our history should know about. This Was Manitoba is an almanac that runs short features on daily events throughout Manitoba’s history. For example, on this day in 1923, thousands of Winnipeggers watched Harry Houdini escape from a straitjacket while suspended 30 feet above the parking lot of the former Free Press Building on Carlton Street. The blog offers information about people and events all over the province. I have added it to the blogroll.

I couldn’t resist the heading.

Mr G dropped me a line after seeing the picture of the Louis Riel statue: “whoa … that statue actually looks like Riel! what happened to the old one? (the one hidden by the concrete cylinder so it couldn’t be seen from the street) And it’s a full-fledged bank-holiday too? My how times have changed.”

Indeed they have, Mr G! The original Louis Riel statue on this same site was erected in 1971. An abstract sculpture by Marcien Lemay and Etienne Gaboury the first commemoration depicted Riel’s “tortured soul” and was enclosed in a tall cylinder open to the north and south. It was a controversial thing, as you can tell by the picture which shows it in its present location. The statue was moved in 1996 and can now found on the grounds of St. Boniface College, 200 ave de la Cathedrale in Winnipeg. Yup, full bank holiday as well!! The coffee shops are full and the streets are empty.

Louis Riel said, “I am more convinced everyday that without a single exception I did right, and I have always believed that. As I have acted honestly, the time will come when the people of Canada will see and acknowledge it.” Today is that day, Louis. We celebrate your contributions with a holiday.  

I gleaned a few of Louis’ thoughts: “We may be a small community and a Half-breed community at that – but we are men, free and spirited men and we will not allow even the Dominion of Canada to trample on our rights.” “Deeds are not accomplished in a few days, or in a few hours. A century is only a spoke in the wheel of everlasting time.” “My people will sleep for one hundred years when they awake, it will be the artists who give them their spirit back.”

Just before Riel was hanged a guard asked him for a souvenir. Riel’s reply: “I have nothing but my heart and I have given it long ago to my country.” 

Don’t miss the irony that while we are honouring a man who fought and died for the rights of Metis and all Manitobans, we are confronting a federal government intent on taking away more and more of our rights and freedoms.

Sinister, secretive, untrustworthy, tyrannical, compromised by a foreign country, indebted to their corporate masters and unsullied by conscience, the Ref-Con (Reform-Conservative) regime currently ruling Canada is a dog’s breakfast of right-wing extremists, religious fundamentalists, greedhead capitalists, stunted idealogues and just plain dummies, not unlike a lot of alleged democracies these days. Similarly, this government is trying to make it legal to spy on every Canadian who has a computer and/or a cellphone without a warrant. Spy Bill C-30 stinks of Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and Communist China and the massive negative reaction to it by hundreds of thousands of Canadians is appropriate.

Canada’s Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, a long-standing windbag, sponsored this paranoid piece of “legislation.” Subsequently and deservedly, Toews has had his dirty laundry paraded before the public when the sordid details of his acrimonious divorce were published on a Twitter account. Although already public knowledge, the revealing details caused poor Vic such great despair and indignity that he got all victimy and launched an “investigation.” What a hoot! (Memo to Toews: if you can’t stand the heat, don’t light the fire. Plus, you make a lousy victim!)

Because language is a virus from outer space, every bill introduced in Canada has two names, a long and short name. Bill C-30′s long name is An Act to enact the Investigating and Preventing Criminal Electronic Communications Act and to amend the Criminal Code and other Acts. Its short name, the mainstream media name, is Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act. That’s different. Read the text of odious Bill C-30 here. Be brave.

Just so you know who has their hand up Toews’ back and wrote the script for him, on November 5, 1997, a bill was introduced into the U. S. House of Representatives. Its short title was H.R.2815 — Protecting Children From Internet Predators Act. 

Booga! Booga! Taking another page from the U. S. Neo-Con playbook, Toews thought he could fearmonger Canadians into ceding more of our rights and freedoms by invoking child pornographers as the boogeyman. Explaining the simple options to Canadians, Toews said, ”either stand with us or with the child pornographers”  – fearmongering at its most amateurish.

Today Toews has backpedaled about three country miles from that because Canadians didn’t fall for it. Instead we started to share all our mundane personal information with Toews that we thought he needed to know. On his Twitter account #TellVicEverything and in emails to parliament, ordinary Canadians began confessing their sins to Deity Toews. Like? Like parking closer to one yellow line than the other in the mall parking lot, cleaning up cat puke and waiting for more, just checked – I’m still not a child predator and asking for a copy of an email accidentally erased. You get the picture. Thousands responded! Call it satire, zen, karma, justice, Canadian humour, eh. Consequently, the true nature of a foolish man with a little bit of power was appropriately revealed to the world, a deflated balloon, a sad buffoon.

Bonus: Because social media and bloggers drove and dominated events, the mainstream media went into a tailspin. Canadians weren’t buying their brand of bullshit. Editorials and pundits ranted about how the bill makes the internet safer for everyone, blah, blah, blah but it didn’t seem to work. The MSM are failing to convince more often now but don’t tell them yet. In spite of declining readership and viewership, they’ll be the last to know how truly irrelevant they have become. 

In the cemetery of the church yard around St. Francois Xavier Roman Catholic Church in St. Francois Xavier, MB stands a huge tree, once magnificent in every season, now dead every day. On its naked branches, some entangled in the church steeple, European starlings gather to discuss important bird business. In the neighbourhood, Rover barks at imaginery foes, halftons roll past one by one and the dead are patient, as ever. Click the pic to watch my latest video, Tree Birds Dog Trucks Dead.

Yes, I counted them so you don’t have to. I was on the trail of capturing some footage of the Prairie Dog Central one morning last September and caught this fast freight hauling tons of precious crap to the dollar stores of Winnipeg. Click pic make train move.