Well said, well done
There’s an article on the Toronto Star website that’s been making the rounds today. Kate sent me the link this morning, and my friend Ram posted a link a couple of hours later. It’s well worth reading, even if you’ve only got the time and inclination to check out the first paragraph:
“We want Tamil Canadians, and other minorities, to ‘be Canadian’. Yet when they act Canadian and exercise their Charter right to peaceful protest, we call them ‘Tamils,’ the very identity we do not want them to revert to exclusively.”
We’ve all read a lot about the protests over the past couple of weeks. Lately, it seems like everyone’s got their own opinion, and some of those opinions are better informed and more worthwhile than others. But I have yet to read anything else that so eloquently sums up the difficult and telling relationship that the city has with its protestors.
In fact, go ahead and read the whole article. And if you’ll indulge me, when you’re done, go ahead and read this one. If you know me, then you know that I don’t often talk about my father in public forums, and that’s mainly because he pays his kids the same respect. But this is a special occasion, not to mention a new record, and I hope you’ll read me as a citizen instead of a son when I say that I think it’s well deserved.
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Having lived in Toronto when the rootin’-tootin’ Sheriff Fantino was in charge (and having gone to many a protest where his fellers were there), let me say your dad seems to have done a pretty solid job of thoughtfully approaching situations like the Tamil-Canadian protests. I have several students who have been to many of them, and they have said some kind things about how the police have treated them. It’s not surprising that he got his contract extended.
My cousin and I were having a discussion on just how amazing a job your dad did with respect to these protests. I really can’t imagine how things would have gone down if Fantino was still in charge. I’m guessing there would have been way more beat-downs.
I still can’t believe the city went from Fantino to Bill Blair. It fucking blows my mind.