I am not a Jew. And equally important, I do not live in Israel where the October 7th attacks have recreated memories of the past and the living reminder that the goal of many of its neighbouring countries and peoples is the elimination of Israel as a state and for some, of the Jewish people. Nor am I Palestinian, currently facing the possibility of death or injury or starvation, and I do not live in Gaza, which is being destroyed, or the West Bank, where right-wing Israeli settlers are oppressing Palestinians.

If I were Israeli, though, I would hope that I could articulate my views as does Fania Oz-Salzberger in this clip as she talks about the complicated reality of the feelings of many Israelis now and her hopes for the future.

I am not a Jew living in Israel, however; I cannot possibly experience Fania Oz-Salzberger’s extraordinary mix of anguish for the present and aspirations for the future for myself. My views about the Israel-Hamas war, the events leading up to it, the history of the creation of Israel and of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are, of course, influenced by my own situation.

I am someone who believes Israel has a right to exist. Even further, I adhere to the thesis that Israel needs to exist, as a secular sanctuary from the ill-treatment of Jews throughout history, from the requirements, for example, to live in ghettos and wear particular clothing even under so-called “benign” regimes to the Holocaust to the thread of antisemitism since and today. It is consistent with my moral values to consider the existence, the availability, of Israel a good thing. It is equally consistent with my moral values to abhor what Israel is actually doing in Gaza. And so I find my moral compass struggles to find its true direction.

And while I strongly believe in the right of Israel to exist, I also believe in an independent Palestinian state ruled by Palestinians. I am among those who remain convinced that the only answer is the two-state solution, although I realize that seems further away than ever.

Despite this, I join with many others who struggle with the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. The very nature of war tests moral certainty. There are still events or conduct that do not pose a moral quandry for me, for which my own views are straightforward and I can identify without compunction where my own moral stance lies, for or against. However, there have been important developments that for me are more complex.

One reason for moral ambiguity, always true and perhaps especially so today, is that we cannot be sure where the truth lies. Whom can we believe? Who is lying? What is real, what is fabricated by word or AI? What is the context for a snippet of comment, for a slice of a video? What is the history that frames the current situation? That history is of course hotly contested: did it begin in 1947 (the UN partition of Palestine)? in 1917 (the Balfour Declaration)? what is the impact of 1967 (when Israel seized the West Bank, the Golan Heights, the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip in the Six-Day War)? of 2005 (when Israel withdrew from the West Bank and Palestinians subsequently elected Hamas and all that followed)? what is the significance of the existence of Arabs, Muslims and Jews in the region as far back as 2000 BCE?

The current Israel Hamas conflict is not the only event that forces us to ask these or similar questions and it is not the only one for which we cannot be sure that we always have the “right” answers, but it is certainly a situation in which truth has lost its way.

“Picking a side”, though, glosses over the complexities, forces one — forces me, at any rate — to ignore a fundamental moral code based on people’s humanity. Some things remain clear to me, but I struggle with others that are interrelated.

There is no question for me that Hamas’s attack and concomitant actions were immoral. Unlike some immediate and subsequent characterizations that their brutality was an “act of resistance”, I see them as only worthy of condemnation (see my post My Personal Response to October 7th). I’m still not conflicted or confused about that. Nor am I conflicted about my response to the denials, that seem to have arisen again recently, that Hamas raped women on October 7th (I talk about this in “When is Rape not Rape? When the Victim is Jewish“).

I also feel clear in my mind about the rightfulness of Israel’s initial incursion into Gaza. As does any country that is attacked, Israel has a right to defend itself. No gray area here. And it has a right to defend itself forcefully, to take its enemy as it finds it, an enemy that promises to repeat October 7th again and again and operates within civilian and otherwise protected infrastructure. Like it or not, war means that there will be civilian deaths and the destruction of infrastructure.

But this is where the “simple” answers end. For the Israeli prosecution of the war and its apparent plans for after the war do raise moral questions. Waging war has its limits, its rules, its differences between disciplined actions and corrupt or degenerate conduct.

I see little about how Hamas is fighting this war, although I have seen references to their shooting civilians and stealing food and other aid (see here for description of Hamas’s conduct), assertions contradicted by other observers. Given their past behaviour, I expect nothing from them. But I do have expectations about the IDF. I understood it to be a trained and disciplined army and it claims to be a moral army. Yet IDF soldiers post videos of themselves looting, humiliating detainees, playing around with Palestinian women’s intimate garments, laughing about blowing up buildings, taking great pleasure in displaying their activities to the world. I would like to argue that these acts by individual and small groups of soldiers are “rogue”, but there are too many, they are too public and it appears there is no serious, if any, effort to stop them.

These are not the acts of a disciplined and moral army and in some instances probably constitute war crimes. How well Israeli soldiers have been trained is also questionable — after all, many reservists raced to defend Israel after October 7th and there was no time for additional training, we have to assume. Too often we hear IDF soldiers feel “threatened” as an excuse for killings of unarmed civilians: for example, a sniper kills three hostages despite the hostages’ efforts to communicate who they were; soldiers fire on starving Palestinians rushing a food truck; and an Israeli sniper kills a 12 year old boy playing with a firecracker because they — the soldiers — felt “threatened” in all these cases. In the food truck calamity, over 100 Palestinians died and over 700 were injured, from a combination of IDF shooting, being run over by aid trucks seeking to escape and trampling in the chaos. (This event is a good example of how difficult it is to detect the truth of much of what is happening in the war, as Israel provides one version that minimizes their responsibility and others, including witnesses, a different version that blames Israel soldiers: see here. )

War, as I said above, and as is obvious, leads to deaths and destruction. The real immorality derives from whether the intention is to kill the population or whether, sadly, people die as a result of the “normal” operations of war that are consistent with the rules of war. Being reckless about deaths is similar to being intentional, I believe (a point made by a spokesperson for MSF describing attacks against MSF staff, buildings, vehicles). Whether the death toll Hamas reports (under the name of the Palestinian Ministry of Health) includes militants as well as civilians, and is otherwise accurate, or who are members of Hamas, far too many civilians have been sacrificed, including children, women and civilian men. Journalists, doctors and other medical personnel, teachers have all died, often with the excuse that they supported Hamas. The level and type of injuries have been abhorrent.

The number of deaths and very serious injuries, the displacements, the destruction of most of Gaza are heartbreaking and in my heart I know they are not justified.

Israel claims that it warns people living in areas it intends to bomb so that they can leave, unlike the usual practice in war. And yet at this point, much of the population has been driven south to the border with Egypt, huddled together in Rafah with nowhere else to go. That includes Egypt, which as is the case with other Arab countries, does not want Palestinian refugees. This in the face of Israel’s announced intentions to move into Rafah to destroy what they say are the remaining Hamas battalions. (Just in the last day or so, Israel has announced it will move the people in Rafah to humanitarian areas before they attack Rafah.)

Although there are disputes about whether Israel is blocking food trucks, and Israel claims it is providing aid, it is almost impossible not to conclude that Israel is making efforts to limit food and other necessities reaching Gazans, leading to starvation (and groups of Israelis block trucks at different access points for different reasons, sometimes explicitly to prevent food coming in or [with the same effect] to pressure Hamas to release the remaining hostages and the bodies of those who have died).

While I believe that Hamas has built tunnels beneath different types of buildings, putting those who live, work, learn and teach, pray and treat at risk, I do question whether the way in which Israel has destroyed so many buildings in Gaza is justified by that. I believe Israel has found tunnels, although I know that — or at least the extent that is true — is disputed.

The photos and videos of Gaza show that it has been almost completely destroyed. We know that hospitals and places of worship, off limits under the rules of war, have been attacked on the basis that they are over Hamas tunnels. What we do not know is whether the existence of tunnels under most of these protected buildings is guesswork or excuse. When Russia bombs churches, museums, schools and hospitals in Ukraine, we condemn Russia; it is true that Russia is bombing in aid of an offensive war and Israel is bombing in the course of what it meant to be a defensive war, but it cannot be ignored that the Israeli destruction of the Gaza strip has gone over the line.

More than these visuals, however, the words and decisions of significant members of the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and of the Prime Minister himself reveal the official Israeli intentions. And here I come full circle. We have known that it has been Hamas’s goal all along to eliminate Israel and with it the Jews. Now we cannot avoid the reality that the objective of the Netanyahu government is not only to eliminate Hamas, but to destroy Gaza to make it impossible for the Palestinians to live there. Bluntly, while many — including me — think the only way to respond to the Israel/Palestine dilemma is a two-state solution, that is at least as far off as it ever was. The Netanyahu government and Netanyahu himself strenuously oppose it.

Israel has long supported Israeli settlers in the West Bank, although that is against international law, and even during this war, the Netanyahu government has approved the building of more settlements. The Israeli cabinet approved 3,300 additional settlement homes in the West Bank in February of this year. It has accepted “settler” violence against the Palestinians there. Doing so has been wrong in the past and it is wrong now. What is true now, though, is that there is no pretension at all. The opposition to a two-state solution is in the forefront now and is the engine driving the prosecution of the war (other than Netanyahu’s efforts to maintain power).

The Minister for National Security of Israel, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and the Finance Minister who has also been appointed to oversee civilian life in the West Bank, Bezalel Smotrich, represent the most extreme of the views held by Israeli government officials; they have been called, properly in my view, “fanatics”. They have called for “voluntary emigration” of Palestinians. Even before October 7, 2023, Smotrich, who lives in the West Bank, “approve[d] thousands of new settlement homes, legalize[d] previously unauthorized wildcat outposts and [made] it more difficult for Palestinians to build homes and move about“. The government has said this is not their policy, but it is difficult to see how it is not.

Shane Bauer in a New Yorker detailed article about the West Bank, describes Palestinian displacement and settler violence (including against Israeli activists trying to assist Palestinians there), as well as the settler relationship with the Netanyahu government and the IDF. I am clear in my own mind, based on news over several years, and reinforced by the Bauer article, that the settler treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank, which breaches international law and, according to Bauer, Israel’s own rules, is beyond the pale. And the words, views and actions of the hardliners in the Israeli government simply confirm this. While from time to time or in relation to specific comments, Netanyahu disassociates himself from the hardliners, the reality is that they remain in government and they continue to do what they do.

(Comments by government ministers, including Netanyahu, and others in official positions have been used as evidence of genocidal intent in the case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Although some of these statements as reported may have been misquotes or failing to understand a broader context, there are enough to make these individuals’ intention clear. It is not necessarily the intention of all Israelis, however.)

There is much more to say about how the war is being prosecuted. Increasingly, however, the thousands of deaths of Palestinians (the exact number is another “fact” that raises doubts, but we can agree it is thousands and far too many), from bullets, from being caught in the destruction of their homes and other buildings, from starvation because aid trucks are held up at the border, have led to calls for a ceasefire. We should note, however, that these calls have been made since soon after the start of the war. For example, see here for call for ceasefire by a UN official on October 14th, without a concomitant call for release of all the hostages seized by Hamas. On December 12th, the UN voted for a ceasefire and release of the hostages.

The notion of a ceasefire is a fraught concept. What do we mean by a “ceasefire”: a “permanent” end to hostilities? a pause in the fighting to allow the release of more hostages and provision of aid?

The early calls for a ceasefire forget that Hamas started this war on October 7th, when a ceasefire was in place. And when Israel had loosened border controls to allow the passage of Gazans into Israel to work. Today, however, it is, I think, fair to say that the widespread calls for a ceasefire are a response to the conditions facing Palestinians in Gaza and to the extreme destruction of infrastructure. Yet how realistic is this? Why should we expect Israel to give up when it — and we — know that Hamas will attack again?

Is there an alternative to a permanent ceasefire for those whose moral values (including me) cannot countenance what is happening in Gaza now? For some, there is not: Israel should cease fighting, it is that simple, because they are “oppressors”, they are “colonizers”; for others, their concept of a ceasefire involves Hamas releasing all the hostages and giving up their commitment to the destruction of Israel and, indeed, to renouncing their governance of Gaza. I do not ascribe to the former and, while I take the view that a permanent ceasefire must be conditional on the latter, I do not see the latter as realistic for two reasons: Hamas will not do any of that and Israel cannot trust Hamas even if it said it would do all of that.

And so we turn to a pause in the fighting: freeing hostages (Hamas seems to control how many this will be and who they will be, partly determined by whether they know where the hostages are and which hostages are still alive) in an exchange with Israeli-held Palestinian prisoners (always a greater number than those returning to Israel) and allowing aid into Gaza. A pause or temporary ceasefire of the kind we saw last November, possibly for six weeks, is now on the agenda, negotiated by those who might (emphasis on “might”) influence Israel and Hamas. Negotiations are continuing as I write.

What happens after a temporary ceasefire, if there is one? Perhaps a break will allow Israel to listen to its friends and engage in a more targeted war that avoids as much so-called “collateral damage” as possible. Given much that has happened and much that is said by government ministers, this may be wishful thinking. For at least some ministers, the phrase “from the river to the sea”, opprobrium when shouted during pro-Palestinian marches to mean the elimination of Israel, means an extended Israel, including annexing the West Bank.

Where is my moral compass pointing, then? As I said, I believe Israel has the right to defend itself, but in doing so, it must do so in accord with the modern rules of war. The government must control soldiers’ conduct and stop the hardliners’ comments and actions. Yet given the government’s own stance, it is unlikely to do that unless its friends exercise their own influence, something they seem to have difficulty doing, short of stopping arms sales to Israel, which a few countries have done (although some haven’t sent any since October 7th). Israel is destroying itself and making it impossible to defend it. The condemnation that has previously followed attacks from Israel’s enemies in the past will be muted in the future.

(There is much else that is relevant to this post: UNRWA and the significance of the different status granted Palestinian “refugees” compared to refugees generally; a fuller assessment of protests throughout Canada and elsewhere; the extensive antisemitism that has emerged from the shadows. (On this last point, I do not disagree that there has been islamophobia, too, but the statistics indicate there has been far more antisemitism in Canada and nothing compares to the pro-Palestinian/pro-Hamas demonstrations.) But it has been difficult enough to wend a path through the issues in this post, so best these other matters be left for another day.)

As long as the Netanyahu government is in power, the situation will not improve. And while that has implications beyond Israel, it is obviously an internal Israeli matter, since Israelis must decide to remove him. The war keeps Netanyahu in power, but the war as it is being run now, will also likely destroy not only Gaza, but Israel’s soul.

No one, other than the hard-line right-wing members of Israeli society can want the deaths and destruction in Gaza; unfortunately, they are the government. Like fanatics everywhere, I see them as morally bankrupt.

I see something else, too: the way antisemitism cuts deep, fostered by highly organized pro-Palestinian? pro-Hamas? protests or a mix of both those wanting to end the deaths and starvation in Gaza and those who are marching for the elimination of Israel?; how the slogans and signs in Canada, the United States and other countries too often reflect the slogans and signs of Nazi Germany; the elision between criticism of Israel’s prosecution of the war and other policies elides with denunciation of Jews: a video of a couple leaving a synagogue, walking down a street in New York, being harassed by young people; a pro-Palestinian crowd yelling and harassing people as they enter the new Holocaust Museum in Amsterdam; a contingent of Pro-Palestinian protestors blocking a Toronto overpass near a neighbourhood with many Jewish residents (an “in your face” demonstration finally ended by the police); a protest against a McGill library because of an exhibition marking the gift to the school by Moshe Safdie, architect and a Jew). Protests on Parliament Hill calling for “intifada revolution” (as the pro-Palestinian protestors at the AGO chanted “we are the infitada” in response to the leader screaming “who is the infitada”) and describing October 7th as an example of the “amazing bravery and resilience and resistance of the Palestinian people to take every step necessary to liberate every Palestinian prisoner from the jails of the Zionist regime“. (No, I haven’t forgotten “the nail-gun man” who was rightly arrested or the sale of West Bank land held at a synagogue, thereby in my view muting criticism of demonstrations outside the synagogue.)

Nor can I ignore what I accept to be true: that when it comes right down to it, Jews find themselves on their own, knowing that antisemitism, whether in words or actions, always lies below the surface, ready to burst forth and that the temptation to ensure it is kept in check is to deny the Jewish part of oneself or to hide in the shadows.

My moral compass finds its true direction (although not always the same direction) when all I’m concerned about is Hamas’s actions on October 7th, its stated intention to destroy Israel and the Jews and the need to remove Hamas from power; similarly, it quickly finds its true direction when the focus is on Israel’s right to exist and its right — its responsibility — to respond to the October 7th attack, end the threat of Hamas and bring the hostages home, reinforced by the blessing of Hamas’s actions across the world. Yet the tension caused the compass by Israel’s prosecution of the war, by the extent of death and destruction in Gaza, and the settlers in the West Bank leaves it with an erratic fluctuating needle.

The difference between a real compass and a moral compass is that even while the needle of the moral compass can identify what is right and wrong, unlike the real compass, it must also struggle with the complexity of how right can become wrong. In this case, it needs to measure the moral complexity inherent when a fitting response to brutality turns itself into a moral wrong. Moral certainty on one level must struggle with the questioning and denunciation a moral stance requires on another.

Every day brings news about incidents of antisemitism in Canada and elsewhere or actions by the IDF in Gaza resulting in the deaths of more Palestinian civilians. I have begun writing about both of those, but another development has emerged that has dealt a blow to my soul: denial that Hamas terrorists raped women on October 7th. Like the Hamas brutality on October 7th itself, about which I wrote here, saying there is no room for “two sidesism” in condemning it, I see nothing complicated in expressing dismay at this denial.

In Canada, my own first exposure to this astounding development was the open letter signed by Sarah Jama, MPP for Hamilton Centre, who was ejected from the NDP caucus because of her antisemitic statements, and many organizations and other individuals. Among many other issues, the letter referred to “Jagmeet Singh[‘s] repeat[ing of] the unverified accusation that Palestinians were guilty of sexual violence”. (Singh was actually referring to the sexual violence committed by Hamas, not by “Palestinians”.) Jama herself on another occasion stated that the sexual violence was disproven and there was no evidence of “these rapes”.

This letter was signed by individuals and groups; among the latter was the University of Alberta Sexual Assault Centre (via its director, since fired). A sexual assault centre treated the claims of sexual violence against women by Hamas on October 7th as “unverified”. Since then, the President of the University of Alberta has released a strong, clear statement about the University’s commitment to the work of the sexual assault centre and, among other things, its “recogni[tion of] the historical and ongoing harms of antisemitism”.

Other women’s groups are ignoring or denying that Hamas raped women: “Why is the Cruel Sexual Violence of the Oct 7 Hamas attack being ignored?“, referring to Prof. Ruth Halperin-Kaddari (formerly a member of the UN Committee on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women) who “feels ‘“completely betrayed” by the international women’s rights organizations with whom she has worked for years, for their failure to condemn – or even recognize – the rape, kidnapping and other atrocities committed by Hamas terrorists against Israeli citizens on October 7.” There have also been other complaints that the United Nations has ignored the rapes of women on October 7th:

Women’s rights groups and officials in Israel who have been working tirelessly for the past six weeks to document cases of rape and gender-based atrocities carried out by Hamas terrorists during their mass, brutal terror attack in Israel on Oct. 7, say the United Nations is ignoring them. 

They say they have also shared much of this evidence, some of it horrifyingly graphic and all of it extremely intimate, with the United Nations and groups that protect and empower women. 

The response: Silence. 

“We’ve sent letters and shared graphic documentation,” Sarah Weiss Maudi, a senior diplomat and legal adviser in Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told Fox News Digital. “Their silence is so deafening that it’s sickening,” she said.

“United Nations slammed for silence over Hamas rapes, mutilation and murder of Israeli women, critics say”; https://www.foxnews.com/world/united-nations-slammed-silence-hamas-rapes-mutilation-murder-israeli-women-critics-say

This in the face of Hamas’s own videos, the descriptions of the military forensic pathologists and the Zaka volunteers who pick up the bodies and the testimony of at least one survivor of that dreadful day, a video I saw today of a young woman unclothed from the waist down being brought out of a building (perhaps a shelter), as well as interrogations of captured Hamas terrorists.

As explained by Sarah Morgan in “The Burden Women Bear: Israel-Hamas War Sheds Light on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence Experienced by Irsraeli & Palestinian Women“, rape is a weapon of war and it is inflicted by armies on all sides on women of the “enemy”. This is not new.

Over my career as a feminist scholar, I have written and spoken in many areas of law, including sexual assault (and other forms of gendered violence). As have other women of my generation, I have seen the treatment of sexual assault evolve. I was 35 years old when the Criminal Code of Canada made rape by husbands of their wives illegal. I have seen how the courts gradually began to treat sexual assault seriously to the point at which higher courts condemn the use of myths by lower court judges as they acquit accused rapists, although we still see judges blaming women for being drunk or behaving otherwise in a way that excuses the accused. The understanding and the law of consent acknowledges that consent cannot be presumed. Sexual assault crisis centres are vital places of advice and support and legal advice is available through community legal clinics. Robyn Urback’s “Unfounded” series in The Globe and Mail resulted in changes in how police treated sexual assault allegations. Much more has changed for the better since I was a teenager beginning to find my feminist self (although, as we say, there is still work to do).

We have to acknowledge, too, that while “MeToo” was important in raising the profile of sexual assault, and in shifting the presumption in favour of women’s allegations, claims are occasionally not true in the same way allegations of other crimes may not be true (see Urback on this here). That is not the case here: these are not the claims of the women themselves, who are dead, but of those who recovered and examined their bodies. Their statements constitute the evidence, among other sources.

Given the advances in sexual assault, it is, then, particularly disturbing to see this regression in how women who have been raped are treated. How their suffering is ignored or repudiated. It is astounding, but indicative of where we are, that a director of a sexual assault centre (albeit it one dismissed for her action) could sign a letter, on behalf of the centre, that takes us back years. (I do not know whether other persons at the centre disavowed the director’s action.)

Such an odd thing to do, one might think. But really, not so odd perhaps. The women who were raped, whose experiences have been dismissed, are Jewish. So while there are certainly people, women and men, decrying the rapes by Hamas, along with the other brutality, it seems that all you have to do to set back the advances we have made around sexual assault is to be a woman who is raped — and Jewish.

Let me be very clear: there is no “but what aboutism” or “two sidesism” about Hamas’s brutality of October 7th. It was cruel, brutal and merciless. Hamas and their terrorism must be unequivocably condemned.

It’s been three weeks and a day since Hamas’s October 7th brutal terrorist attack on Israelis living near the Gaza border. It’s been three weeks and a day since they broke down the much-lauded security fence and streamed into the kibbutzim, fields and music festival in Israel. It’s been three weeks and a day since the terrorists broke into homes and murdered some 1,400 men, women and children of all ages, of nationalities other than Israelis. It’s been three weeks and a day since they committed every atrocity, many of which most of us couldn’t have imagined. And it’s been three weeks and a day since they stole over 200 people, from the elderly to toddlers, to people in wheelchairs, to the ill, took them into Gaza and held all but four of them hostage in the tunnels Hamas built under Gaza until now, with no release in sight.

Three weeks and a day has not diminished the horror of October 7th. We have since seen and continue to see the ferocity through Hamas’s own body cameras, victims’ cell phones, security images on the attacked sites, reports from Israeli forensic pathologists and from the tearful accounts of the Israeli volunteers dedicated to recovering the bodies of those killed in attacks on Israeli civilians. Some of those images and descriptions will remain with me for a very, very long time: the child and parent tied together and burned; the dead family, parents and children, holding each other; the burned babies; the woman who had been raped, with blood on her pants and hands tied behind her being pushed into a vehicle; the mass shooting of young people running from the music festival and burned cars along the road where they tried to escape but were gunned down; destruction of the kibbutz buildings, sometimes with people inside. We know that grandparents, parents and children were gunned down or died when grenades were thrown into their homes. We know how they shot up children in their beds because of the pictures of bloody children’s bedrooms. We know that some bodies were so mutilated or burned that efforts to identify them are ongoing, especially of foreign victims. We know they killed or took as hostage Israelis (and a Canadian living in Israel) who had worked for peace and Israelis who had assisted Gazans. Not that it mattered: these weren’t individuals, they had no identity except they were Jews or assumed to be Jews.

We also know of the grandfather who told his family to stay in a back room while he sat in the front room because he thought that if the terrorists saw him, they’d think he was alone; he was right: they killed him but he saved his family. We know of the young man who kept throwing grenades back at the terrorists as they threw them into where he and others were hiding, until he couldn’t throw any more; one of the others had his arm to his elbow strafed off and he is now a hostage. We know of the young woman, the security chief of her kibbutz, who ignored the instructions from the authorities to wait for them and instead organized a waiting party with guns for the terrorists; the guardians killed 15 terrorists, saving the people in her kibbutz. We know of the caregiver from Thailand who offered the terrorists all she had, $1,500, if they would spare the person in a wheelchair for whom she was caring and herself — and they did. And we know that Arab/Palestinian citizens of Israel helped to rescue festival-goers. They, too, are part of October 7th.

Since October 7th, we have seen three streams of response: the pro-Palestian marches, demonstrations and social media posts denying Hamas’s brutal actions, justifying them or outright celebrating them; rallies and demonstrations in Israel and elsewhere calling for peace; and Israel’s attacks on Gaza.

I was an academic for over 30 years and executive director of the Law Commission of Ontario for another 8 years, located in a university. I am familiar with the anti-Israeli views of leftist academics with whom I otherwise shared much in common, something I did not share. But I am nevertheless appalled at the degree of anti-semitism that has characterized much of the academic response to October 7th. I am appalled that Jewish students in Toronto are being confronted by fellow students with anti-semitic statements. I am appalled to see a video of Los Angeles high school students streaming through their high school hallway yelling “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” in imitation of all the demonstrations occurring in Canada, the United States, Britain, Australia, Pakistan, Turkey, Europe and elsewhere. This is a catchy slogan, appealing both to those who know what it means and those who do not. It is, in less “poetic” form, contained within Hamas’s Document of General Principles and Policies; it means the eradication of Israel. I am appalled to see videos of posters of the hostages being torn down, including, but not only, in Canada.

Let me be clear here, too. Not everyone participating in the marches or demonstrations is anti-semitic, but much of the response to Hamas’s terrorism has been anti-semitic in attempts to justify or celebrate it as an act of resistance, to ignore it when making statements in favour of Palestine, in the treatment of Jews on an individual basis or protests at Jewish businesses.

The anti-semitism that has characterized Jewish life throughout history is alive and very well today; and it is being too often treated as justified.

I recognize that many Israelis and many Jews living outside Israel are calling for peace and oppose now and in the past many of the actions taken by the Israeli government that have worsened the situation in Gaza and have ensured the place of Hamas there at the expense of the Palestinian Authority. I have defended Israel in the past, but I am also critical of actions taken by the Israeli government with both internal and external effects. As someone who opposes fundamentalism in all forms, I oppose the far-right and fundamentalist Jews now supported by the current government to a greater extent than even before. I’m a critic of the current prime minister of Israel, whose dedication to saving his own skin has led him into pacts with the far-right.

Over the past weeks, we have seen the photographs in the media of dead and bloodied children, the rubble that were once homes and other buildings and outdoor areas where people congregate in Gaza. About 8,000 people have been killed. The death toll for children is very high, since about half of the population of the Palestinian Territories are under 20. We have seen Palestinians displaced so that Israel can send rockets into areas where they believe Hamas is entrenched and still be able to say they are protecting civilians. The lack of food, water and electricity is resulting in a humanitarian crisis.

Hamas does not care about the people of Gaza; on the contrary, they use them as human shields. They have enough electricity for their tunnels, enough fuel, enough other supplies. Israel’s position is that they will not resume provision of these needs until Hamas releases the hostages; at this point, there is no indication that Hamas cares enough to release the hostages. The reality is that the the people of Gaza are caught by both Israel’s determination to destroy Hamas in this post-October 7th conflict and by Hamas’s determination to destroy Israel. Seen from afar, the images are heartbreaking.

I don’t intend to wade into the politics of this situation; while I have my views, I do not feel equipped to deal with nuances, how to attain peace, how to — and here’s my view at the most superficial level — attain the two-state solution. But that is not what I’m writing about here. Here I’m expressing my anger, my sadness, my sense of helplessness at all the hurt, damage and loss of life of those who are in the way of destruction.

So I end by reinforcing two things: there can be no nuance around condemnation of Hamas’s brutality on October 7th; and it is vital that the anti-semitism on college campuses, other educational institutions, by governments, by anyone and everywhere be denounced.

In the anonymous poem “For Want of a Nail“, a kingdom was lost. Now, I wouldn’t argue that a failure to wear a mask would result in the loss of the country. But I am going to argue that the failure to wear masks inside, even outside in crowds and when speaking at a close distance from someone, is prolonging the Covid-19 pandemic. Because despite all the government lack of action, maskless crowds (even of medical professionals), talk of the pandemic in the past tense to the contrary, we are still in the pandemic.

Wearing a mask is one of the easiest protections against becoming infected with Covid-19. (“Masks are one of the most effective individual public health measures that we can use to protect ourselves and others from COVID-19.”) This is particularly true when everyone in a conversation or situation is wearing a mask. And it is even more true when they are wearing well-fitted masks experts recognize as most effective, such as an N95 mask. Despite this, apart from a few exceptions, governments and most institutions have now decided that it’s up to each individual whether to wear a mask, regardless of circumstances.

And so, we see few masks in any given context, unless they are required. Ontario hospitals still require people to wear a mask — and people do. Grocery stores are no longer subject to mandatory mask protections — and in my experience, while some customers do wear masks, many do not, and in some stores, almost no or no staff wear masks. We see photos of politicians, celebrities and other “famous” people interacting with each other, sometimes with a few people, sometime in a crowd, and no one is wearing a mask. The fact is, mask wearing is pretty much done, except by individuals who worry they will be ridiculed, “judged” or treated as if they are “paranoid” aboutCovid-19.

In this post, I follow the narrative of mask wearing and expectations, mandatory and otherwise, and the language around mask-wearing and the pandemic itself. That narrative has evolved from official warnings against mask wearing to legal requirements to wearing masks to the dropping of those requirements in most contexts, and from criticism of those who wouldn’t wear masks when they were expected to to language more or less making excuses for those who do. Masks are no longer “strongly recommended”; emphasis is now on “choice” and “respect for choice”, whether someone wears a mask or not. (Although the government of Canada recognizes the value of wearing masks, it also emphasizes that doing so or not is a “choice”: “Remember to be kind, understanding and respectful of people’s personal choices.“) One of the most notorious messages appears on posters in the New York MTA (transit authority): it says “yes” to wearing a mask or not and indicates that even if you decide to wear a mask, it doesn’t matter how (the image of a face with a mask right across the middle says “you do you”.

How is this narrative connected to the situation we find ourselves in today, where government has abandoned its duty to promote the health of the population, hospitals are in crisis, Covid-19 levels are high, the expectation is that “everyone will get Covid-19” people are reinfected, we really only have to worry (if at all) about particularly vulnerable people, and “long-Covid” is a medically recognized condition?

In the beginning …

In the earliest days of Covid-19, health officials encouraged us not to wear a mask. Two years ago, Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer of Health advised people who were symptomatic or who had been in close contact with someone with Covid they should wear a mask; otherwise, there were several reasons not to wear a mask. Prioritizing health care workers, the false sense of confidence wearing a mask might provide and the increased face touching that results were three reasons. As the CBC reported on March 31, 2020, “‘Putting a mask on an asymptomatic person is not beneficial, obviously, if you’re not infected,’ Tam said”. Even then, there was criticism of this advice. For example, in the same CBC story, the director of the Institute of Applied Health Research at the University of Birmingham in the U.K., pointed out that asymptomatic people might in fact be infected. And some countries had already imposed mask mandates in a range of circumstances.

(Personal Note: I had no interest in wearing a mask in these early days and was happy to go along with the “official” line. I was careful about being around people, didn’t know anyone who had contracted Covid-19, but did cancel an eye appointment. And this takes us to the next stage.)

How quickly things change…in both directions

Before we knew it, we were in lockdown, beginning in Ontario and elsewhere in March 2020. By May 2020, Theresa Tam was telling us that it was a good idea to wear a mask. By then, a crucial difference between Covid-19 and other viruses had become evident: asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic people might actually be infected. Covid-19 symptoms could take three or so days to emerge after infection. We were already in so-called “lockdowns” and isolation; we already knew that we should keep a distance of six feet from each other. But now masks became a more significant tool in the fight against Covid. We didn’t pay much attention to the kind of mask, though: cloth masks were fine, disposable masks better. Eventually, that morphed into advice to wear KN or N95 masks, definitely not cloth and preferably not just medical masks (although hospitals and other medical facilities sometimes insist this is what you wear when you enter their premises).

(Personal Note: When I started to cover my face, I wore a bandana and then for a long time, a blue 3-ply disposable mask [these were too big for my face]. Now I wear an N95 mask, one of an appropriate size. The only time I don’t wear a mask outside is when I go for a walk or the odd occasion when I’ve eaten or had a coffee outside.)

By July 2020, provinces and territories and cities enacted mandatory mask requirements in indoor public spaces (see, Toronto, for example). These mandates lasted into 2022; in Ontario, with some exceptions, they were eliminated in March of this year.

The removal of the mask mandates occurred at what some would consider the most inopportune time: when people were gathering in crowds at concerts, when almost no one was bothering about maintaining distance in any context. Many people, if not most, live in a delusion of “normality”. And they are encouraged to do so by governments across Canada and elsewhere. Required isolation periods are low, or non-existent. For example, isolation is not mandatory in Nova Scotia: feel free to walk abroad, although not in crowded places, spreading the disease; however, you should wear a mask and fill out a form that provides information about your condition. In Ontario, once they apparently have no more symptoms, kids should return to school and workers to the workplace, preferably wearing a mask for 10 days after symptoms started (“doing the following [wear a mask and avoid high risk settings] can provide extra protection against the spread of COVID-19 and other respiratory viruses circulating in the community“).

Advice from authorities …

The Acting Medical Office of Health for Haldimand-Norfolk Health Unit tweeted at the end of May:

The pandemic is coming to its end.

As a frontline physician, I saw horrendous things: hopelessness and heartlessness wrought both by the virus but also by our, at times, counterproductive restrictions.

Today, I am grateful that these are (almost) all over.

Tweet, May 28, 2022

Last September, almost a year ago, the CBC reported that “Haldimand-Norfolk looks at ways to walk back medical officer of health appointment” because he “used social media to criticize COVID-19 public health measures and say he’d sooner give his kids COVID-19 than a Happy Meal”. In fact, the story explains that members of the health unit (Haldimand-Norfolk council) had mixed views of Strauss.

Strauss may be particularly obvious in his views, but Dr. Kieran Moore, Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health, has also diminished the importance of protections against transmission of the virus, emphasizing the level of vaccination in Ontario.

The messaging around mask wearing is best described as corntradictory and weasily. The TCC’s policy is a good example: it states that masks are “mandatory when travelling on the TCC, with some exceptions”, but then goes on to assure people it “will not be enforcing the use of masks”. However, see here where the TTC said it would not have a mask mandate after June 11th, but strongly recommended wearing masks. Similarly, Dr. Kieran Moore announced the government will not impose a mask mandate, but “strongly recommended” people wear masks. There’s no need for a mandate, “mainly because Ontarians continue to wear masks despite a mandate. We’re cautious. We’re careful. We’re kinda considerate to each other. And I continue to see masking even outdoors walking on streets in Toronto“. Anyone entering a grocery store knows we can’t count on individuals to decide to wear masks.

Detour …

This has been a quick run through of the changing nature of mask requirements from discouragement to requirements to decide for yourself. However, the picture is, of course, not as simple as even that description. First, it cannot be ignored that the shifting on whether it is a good idea to wear a mask had an effect on the trust level granted public health officials. This ignores the need to adjust advice on the basis of emerging knowledge and experience, but it (although it was not alone in doing so by any means) helped to spawn among a minority — a loud minority– an ongoing resistance not only to wearing masks, but other protections governments imposed. I won’t go into detail about these developments; I have written about some of them previously, as well as other Covid-19 developments [see Slaw posts here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here, among others]. I also think it important to say that governments have made mistakes, even when they are doing what is desirable in my view, ensuring public health protections. Government approaches have required us to suspend judgement and have more faith than we might otherwise accord government action.

(Personal Note: I suspended judgement more than I normally would, but I do believe that Canadian governments, with some exceptions at different points in the pandemic, did try to promote an effective response to the pandemic — at least, until the last months. While I believe changing circumstances should result in changes in approach, in my view, elimination of just about all protections at once (in most contexts) is an abdication of responsibility. I’ve written about this on a previous post on this blog [“Racing Towards Normal .. What Are They Thinking?“, February 13, 2022]).)

Changing attitudes and language….

Throughout the mask mandate stage of the pandemic, the onus was on those who refused to wear a mask to explain why. During this period (specifically July 2020), the premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, called anti-mask protesters “absolutely irresponsible” and “reckless”. Some people were simply prepared to give others the benefit of the doubt and assume there was a good reason they couldn’t wear a mask. But in fact, there were very few reasons why someone couldn’t wear a mask.

The real problem lay with those who loudly objected and engaged in protests against mask wearing. Mandatory masks are a denial of freedom, said some, while others claimed they didn’t work or that Covid-19 was a hoax (and therefore objected to all protections). (See several stories: a Vox story from the US from August 2020; a Star article about a Barrie protest in May 2021; and a piece about an organized group camping on Parliament Hill from July to at least September 2020.) The new Conservative Party of Canada leader aligned himself with these scofflaws and opponents of pandemic protections during the so-called “freedom convoy” and has continued to do so; in June, he tabled a bill to prohibit all covid vaccine mandates.

As we adapt to “living with Covid”, as the mantra goes, wearing a mask is a “choice”: no one is stopping you wearing a mask, except perhaps by implicit negative judgements (so far, at least). And we’ ‘re told we should respect the choices of those who wear masks and those who don’t. Have respect for everyone’s choice. When mask mandates were dropped, the language used was that health authorities “strongly recommended” wearing a mask (see, for example, the City of Toronto‘s advice “to wear a mask if you feel it is the right choice for you, based on your level of risk”.). But even then, the emphasis is on protecting the vulnerable, as the City says.

Ontario’s Medical Officer of Health said on June 8, 2022, “While masking requirements are expiring, organizations may implement their own policies. Ontarians should continue to wear a mask if they feel it is right for them, are at high risk for severe illness, recovering from COVID-19, have symptoms of the virus or are a close contact of someone with COVID-19.” This, he said, is because “we have made significant progress in the fight against COVID-19”. Determining whether wearing a mask is “right for them” is a difficult decision for people to make, since the province does not provide satisfactory data on the extent of Covid-19 in the community. As others have said, “we are on our own”. (For a recent story on the new “guidelines”, see here where the CMOH justifies the loose guidelines on “[o]ur collective efforts [that] are helping us move away from a crisis phase to a more sustainable approach to the long-term management of COVID-19”.)

Wearing a mask is often attributed to “fear”, rather than a safe practice that can help protect the wearer and others, vulnerable or not. Only if we test positive for Covid-19 do we know whether we have it. Otherwise, we could have it at almost any time without knowing it and therefore potentially infect another person who, even on the basis that mask-wearing and other protections are to protect persons with applicable disabilities, could infect someone who is vulnerable. Of course, there is no guarantee that masks will prevent infection, but if everyone was wearing one, the spread would be reduced.

One of the most outrageous commentaries about mask wearing appears in a column by Robyn Urback in The Globe and Mail, “Boycotting Canadian Blood Services for ending its mask mandate is illogical“. It illustrates how far we have come from the mask heyday.

On July 25th, Canadian Blood Services (“CBS”) announced it would no longer require donors (or it appears, although it is not clear, employees) to wear masks. In an amazing about face (pun intended), CBS states on its website, “Although no longer required, masks are known to help curb the spread of COVID- 19 and are welcome in our environments and available to anyone who chooses to wear them.”  In the usual contradictory language, it tells donors, “Thank you doing your part to limit the spread of COVID-19 and for respecting each person’s choice to wear a mask or practice physical distancing. ”

It has also eliminated physical distancing, except for “encouraging” people to physically distance. On its website, the CBS explains that its employees and volunteers are vaccinated (meaning?) but that donors do not have to be (although “we strongly encourage donors to be fully vaccinated before entering a collections event”).

CBS explained that “the decision was made in light of the fact that the majority of Canadians are fully vaccinated and that COVID-19 illnesses now tend to be ‘far less severe in most cases.'” (CTV news) However, CBS’s decision resulted in pushback (see here and here, for example). “Fully vaccinated” tends to mean two doses of vaccine, but not necessarily boosters. If people got two doses during the initial efforts to vaccinate the population, they are of little value by now.

CBS is calling for donors, saying they have few blood supplies on hand (a spokeswoman says “collections have been steadily decreasing since July 1” in a Globe and Mail interview. Why? Well, the spokeswoman gives several reasons: “ongoing illness and isolation requirements related to COVID-19, heat-related weather issues and the return of pre-pandemic activities and summer travel that have left many people with less time to donate are all factors contributing to the situation”. Notably, she doesn’t mention the removal of CBS’s mask mandate.

Robin Urback blames those who have announced they will not donate because of the removal of the mask mandate. They have cancelled appointments or have not made appointments when they otherwise would have. This, says Urback, is an example of how “over the course of the pandemic … we’ve collectively lost sight of the forest for the trees”. She thinks CBS’s “calculation” that “it is better to marginally increase the risk of COVID-19 transmission at donor centres (making these centres as risky as grocery stores or movie theatres) than to maintain the status quo of critically low blood supplies” (the low supplies were presumably the reason CBS removed its mask mandate, hoping to bring into the centres those who have declined to give blood because they had to wear a mask).

It is “illogical” to boycott CBS because it has removed its mask mandate, she asserts, since people can still wear a mask if they want to do so:

Some regular donors who were otherwise willing to have a needle stuck in their arms and have about 450 millilitres of blood depleted from their bodies for about 10 minutes are now unwilling to take on the risk of entering a room where the risk of contracting COVID-19 is roughly as high as in a Shoppers Drug Mart.

She places the onus on those who have decided not to donate because of the removal of the mandate: “hopefully they will see that the overall harm caused by denying Canadians of their donations will be more significant that the slightly increased risk of contracting COVID-19”.

There are several problems with Urback’s argument. First, it assumes that other environments are properly without mask mandates. Second, accepting the end of mask mandates in grocery stores, it is different to move around in a grocery store than it is to sit still in a blood collective centre. (I agree cinemas are closer in that people are sitting still, probably next to strangers, but again, why was the mask mandate removed?). Of course, people can wear a mask if they want. At least so far, they are not prohibited, although I wouldn’t be surprised if they were — so as not to embarrass, upset or show disrespect towards those who aren’t wearing masks. Importantly, one way masking is nowhere near as effective as when everyone is wearing masks.

Finally, Urback makes a big error in saying that donors would be giving blood “for about 10 minutes”. As a former blood donor (my reason for no longer giving blood has nothing to do with Covid-19), I can say that it takes far longer than that to donate. First, it may be necessary to line up, even if one has an appointment (perhaps this changed with CBS’s more responsive changes to Covid, but I expect it will returen). It is necessary to confirm personal information and be tested for one’s level of iron. The donor is than required to complete a questionnaire (sitting alone, but in a small area where others have sat probably immediately before) and to have that reviewed by a registered nurse, who also checks the donor’s arms for signs of drug use. Then it’s waiting (usually) for an empty cot. CBS says the donation itself takes 8-10 minutes; however, in my experience, it can easily take a bit longer (if it takes too long, the RN stops the process). The donor is then strongly encouraged to have juice or coffee and a cookie and sit for about 10 or 15 minutes.

Urback’s opinion thus rests on a faulty premise. Her criticism of donors who have decided not to donate because of the removal of the mask mandate is, in my view, appalling and is an example of why the pandemic wears on. Why shouldn’t the onus be on those who won’t give blood because they have to wear a mask to do so; why don’t they show some public interest?

And let’s stop pretending … the pandemic is still taking a toll now and who knows about the future ….

Masks are not a panacea. However, widespread masking can help reduce the spread of the coronavirus and with lower community spread, people can participate in the activities they want to engage in — indoor restaurants, concerts, parties, conferences, attending sports events — with less risk. In-person school will be safer.

I don’t argue masks are the complete answer. They are particularly effective in preventing transmission, though, as vaccinations are not. However, their effectiveness is of course enhanced as part of a suite of protections: proper ventilation, high vaccination rates, including boosters and presumably the new vaccine targeting the Omicron variant, isolating for longer than the five days now required in some jurisdictions, among others. Lower community spread leaves less room for the development of new variants. Keeping vaccinations current at this point will not, it seems, prevent infection, but it will mean the cases are milder for most people. Masks complement the vaccines because they are directed at reducing transmission in the first place.

And reducing infections is important. We know that people can become reinfected and more than once. Vaccines do not provide immunity. Nor do infections. And it seems that reinfections can lead to more serious effects. From being viewed sceptically, “long-Covid” is now recognized as a real condition with a myriad of possible symptoms. And it can result even from mild cases. Thus preventing infection to the extent possible is crucial.

But why worry about masks, the pandemic is over, isn’t it? …

It turns out the bête noir of chief medical officers, the Haldimand-Norfolk chief medical officer, was merely ahead of his time. New Brunswick Minister of Social Development announced that the province was “no longer in the pandemic”; after pushback, a press release revised this to say, “in pandemic lockdown”. But this language is not so far off what we’re seeing more and more often. And possibly the biggest influence of them all, particularly (but I fear no longer only) in the United States, President Biden has declared the pandemic “over” (although we still have “problems with Covid”). His reasoning seems to be based on the fact that no one was wearing a mask at the auto show where he was being interviewed. (More on this below.)

In The Globe and Mail stories on TIFF, which made the most of its in-person festival, used language suggesting the pandemic is more or less over. In a story on the peacock leanings of male stars, the trend towards designers and colourful outfits for men is explained by an editor for a “trend forecaster” as the desire of men “‘[c]oming out of the pandemic'” for self-expression. Another writer, telling us about “TIFF’S coolest canapés”, explains that these bite-size morsels are gaining a “resurgence” now that “COVID paranoia is waning” (although he qualifies that by asking, “it is waning, isn’t it?”). Are we meant to take from that phrasing that being concerned about Covid makes us paranoid?

Given that he writes about movies for The Globe and Mail, perhaps it’s not surprising that Barry Hertz, for example, considers that he is able to make that determination, saying, “Whether we’re out of the woods or not today seems to be a matter of perspective – I’ll place myself firmly in the ‘post-pandemic’ camp – but it is safe to say that TIFF is preparing an 11-day celebration that screams, with mask-free vigour, ‘comeback.'”

In other words, there is nothing objective about whether there is still a pandemic but rather it’s how people view it and where they want to be on the continuum. And while we’re at it, why not laud not wearing masks in crowds?

Those claiming that the pandemic is “over” rarely, if ever, rely on objective scientific evidence. Rather, as one review of the matter states,

“It’s over when people decide that it’s over. … And most people seem to have decided it’s over,” said John Barry, author of “The Great Influenza,” a history of the 1918 Spanish flu.

Most of the experts who spoke with STAT echoed a version of Barry’s remarks: In some respects, the pandemic is over when people stop taking measures to protect themselves, when they stop following advice about how to lower their risk, when they resume pre-pandemic behavior.

STAT, Is the Covid-19 pandemic over? The answer is more art than science

The reality is that the pandemic is not over. Acting as if it is does not make it so. And it leaves us open to even more virulent strains of the coronavirus. (See commentary by experts in this Globe and Mail story.) As André Picard has written, “We are in that cognitively dissonant time now when COVID-19 is still very much a medical threat, but has been deemed to be over, politically and socially” (emphasis added).

The STAT article cites another expert who explains that there are two ways of considering the question: “by looking at what the disease is doing to humans physically and psychologically”. Psychologically, many people are finished with the pandemic, they are fed up with it and they act as if it is over, as if things are “back to normal”. Physically, however, it is more complicated: difficult though it is to measure some of the criteria (the number of reliable positive tests, for example), since governments have abandoned attempts to do so, deaths do rise, schools appear to be rife with Covid cases (although who really knows), “mild” is often a misnomer and long-Covid may be more extensive than any official figures indicate. Furthermore, we do not knows whether there will be more serious variants (it seems there will be if the UK experience is any indication). (See, for example, Canadian Press story here.)

As André Picard, writing in The Globe and Mail about The Lancet Commission’s report on the world’s response to Covid-19 says, “wishful thinking doesn’t end a pandemic. Neither does denial, or no longer caring about who is harmed.” (And if there’s any doubt about how well governments have done over the life of Covid-19, Picard summarizes the report as giving them “a big fat F grade“.}

Conclusion: Back to masks …

So here we are: increasingly language, implicit and explicit, indeed, very direct language, reflects a belief that we are finished with the pandemic. Yet there are still a significant number of cases (probably more than official figures tell us because few records are kept), cases may be mild, but not necessarily so, people are dying in high numbers, Covid lingers or leads to other conditions affecting major organs, we haven’t been through a full cycle of when new variants appear. All this is troublesome, though, and most people seem prepared to get together in large groups without masks, and there is fear among those who still have concerns that statements from someone like the President of the United States (and possibly the World Health Organization, which is giving hints that we’re near the end), may make people even less likely to get vaccinations. “Official” guidance gives people permission to go to work or school while still infected (but without symptoms and wearing masks — but there is no enforcement).

Yet one of the easiest ways to prevent transmission, one just about everyone can satisfy — which then prevents not only mild but serious illness and long-term Covid conditions, never mind death — is to wear a mask when inside. But why would “ordinary people” wear masks when they see doctors at conferences, UN members, presidents and prime ministers, Westminster Abbey guests and on and on, maskless. Why the resistance? (Ah, yes, “freedom, freedom, freedom.) And so, for a want of a mask — who knows who and what we might lose?

Globally, a number of jurisdictions are throwing off Covid-19 protections as quickly as they can. In Canada, several provinces are moving forward in haste to remove vaccine mandates, capacity limits and masks, for example. Ontario is one of the slower ones, although the Chief Medical Officer’s recent announcement suggests Ontario is joining the lemmings. While some people are welcoming these opportunities to pretend that spring 2020 never happened, others are concerned about just what the ramifications might be. Count me in as one of the latter: ready to make some changes, but recognizing we need to be ready for surprises.

Furthermore, medical experts and politicians need to make these decisions based on the reality of Covid-19, not on the demands of those demanding “freedom” without understanding what that means. Sadly, those upending the rule of law appear to be having an impact on the latter.

In September 2020, I started to write a post on the “rhythm” of Covid-19, its ups and downs: “As we have seen, covid-19 has a foreseeable rhythm: initial identification, small increase followed by significant increases in cases and deaths, lockdowns and other measures, a serious decline in cases, opening up, a renewed surge and reluctant responses.”

And even then, I noted another trend: “There appears to be another cadence, too, however: the decline in the sense of community that turns slowly into atomism, except in this case it has not returned to community. The pandemic has become a victim of those who disassociate from society, joining like-minded antagonists of science and caring.” This is even more true today.

Much has changed since September 2020. We have effective vaccinations, with a high number of Canadians doubly vaccinated (about 83% over five years old), but fewer who have also had a booster shot (about 52% over 18). While for a while the vaccinations were effective in preventing infection, that is no longer the case; they remain effective, however, in minimizing the need for hospital care, including ICU, and death. Vaccines are the most significant development since the pandemic started.

We can no longer track the number of cases because there is little official testing. We can track the number of people in hospital (again including in ICU) and the number who have died. For most parts of Canada, these last two numbers are decreasing (commentators talk about declining cases — but by what measure?). But even these stats are being complicated: who goes to hospital because they have covid? who is found to have covid when tested when they go to hospital for another reason? who becomes infected in hospital?

Increasingly, people are becoming fed up and frustrated with covid restrictions — we might rather call them protections — especially since the message has been “everyone will get Omicron”. Governments are purporting to respond to the data when they begin to drop protections or announce they’ll be doing so soon. But it’s hard to avoid that they’re responding to restlessness in the population and to the illegal blockades in Ottawa and Windsor, Ontario and Coutts, Alberta.

They are racing towards the finish as if they can decide when Covid is finished, not only the protections against it,.

But as epidemiologists, other healthcare experts and people like me say, ” you may be done with Covid, but Covid isn’t done with you”. Yet it is also true that “we can’t keep going on like this”. So what’s the answer? I lack the expertise to give THE answer — no one seems to to be able to do that, in fact, but certainly some can get a lot closer than I can — but there are some things I’d like to see.

Two bottom lines (they’re very close together!) for me are that mask requirements continue for inside places, such as grocery stores, theatres and similar places, and people isolate after contracting Covid-19. Jason Kenney has removed mask requirements for school students (but not for staff and bus drivers) and has also eliminated the authority of school boards to impose mask requirements. School board administrators considered this might be too hasty. He’s also announced he’ll deny municipal authorities the right to impose mask requirements, a turnaround from previously (when he apparently thought municipalities had a better handle on local conditions). An echo of Governor Ron De Santis of Florida?

Saskatchewan will end masking at the end of February, along with self-isolating when infected with Covid-19. Other provinces have developed short timelines for removing or relaxing restrictions.

The goal is to act as if Covid-19 is not a threat, although certainly we’ll hear “it’s still with us” even while these protections are being removed. And there’s no question that at some point, various requirements must be abandoned. I’m not ready to trust those premiers whose readiness to eliminate requirements last summer (with the clarion call that Alberta “is open for business”), after which they saw large increases in cases. In Saskatchewan, that meant sending patients to Ontario, taking advantage of Ontario’s more cautious approach.

There are no easy answers and all through the pandemic, we’ve seen different provinces take different approaches. And one can be critical of different efforts to bring a cudgel to bear on Covid — no single approach has worked and the closing/reopenings are frustrating and economically harmful to businesses relying on regular customers, such as restaurants. It’s especially easy to be critical in retrospect, but I shudder to think what would have happened during the beginning, until we had vaccines, with Alpha and Delta if we hadn’t been restricted in our movements, including distancing, or been required to isolate. Vaccines were crucial against Delta, but are more limited against Omicron and presumably the new subvariant emerging from Omicron, which is even more transmissible than Omicron (although we don’t seem to have heard too much more about that).

We are where we are now, though. What we know is that people who are vaccinated — even with the booster — can both become infected and can transmit the virus. We also know that unvaccinated people are more likely to end up in hospital or the ICU or to die than those who are vaccinated. This doesn’t mean vaccinated people can’t also suffer more serious consequences depending on their personal conditions. We also know that being infected doesn’t result in immunity, since people are becoming infection more than once (“reinfected”).

And, significantly, it is not unusual that people who get mild Covid may end up with long-Covid. I recall early on that medical professionals questioned the occasional claim of having being infected twice or having long-term effects, but now there seems no doubt that both are not only possible but frequent. People infected with Alpha or Delta, who have been relying on so-called “natural immunity” rather than becoming vaccinated, are apparently particularly vulnerable to being infected with Omicron because their natural immunity has waned.

Finally, it seems the newest variant (although it doesn’t yet have a Greek name, which may be significant in terms of its prevalence) is more transmissible than Omicron, which is more transmissible than Delta (it has replaced Delta, of course). In short, it’s easier to catch it. This is especially true now we’re returning to “normal” (if “normal” included a variant of Covid-19, which has been described as as transmissible as measles, which requires 94% of the population to be immune to eliminate it).

Even I (characterized by a friend as the most cautious person they know — I think they meant as far as Covid-19 is concerned) recognize eventually we will resume life more or less as normal, getting regularly vaccinated for Covid-19 as we do for the flu (or I hope most of us will). Possibly, from time to time, it will be necessary to take particular protective actions because a new more virulent strain emerges. We have dealt with this kind of thing before. Not least, when there is a particularly bad strain of the flu, congregate living places where older people reside effectively lock-down, with meals in the residents’ rooms and no visitors.

The issue is, what do we do in the meantime?

Three general principles can guide us:

• minimize the chance of infection and severe consequences of infection, while also minimizing restrictions;
• not doing things that can be seen to risk unnecessary infection; and
• not handing over decision-making to lawless hostage-takers.

Continuing Protections/Minimizing Disruption and Frustration

One important protection is wearing masks inside, yet there is an eagerness of authorities to remove mask mandates. Of course, we are free to wear a mask if we want to, but masks are most effective when everyone in a group (or two people together) are wearing them. Wearing a mask is an easy thing to do and does not have high cost implications (as closing businesses do, or even capacity limits). It is somewhat uncomfortable, however, and without a mandate, I expect we’ll soon see many people ditching their masks.

Minimizing the risk of infections appears to require at the very least discouraging large crowds, if controlling capacity is no longer seen as feasible. Reluctantly, I wonder whether we should continue with capacity limits in restaurants where people remove masks and sit for some time.

I do, however, think it’s probably time to eliminate the vaccine passports. They worked when vaccinated people were highly unlikely to get infected or to transmit the virus, while unvaccinated were more likely to do both. The passports allowed businesses, such as restaurants and museums to open while at the same time allowing people who were vaccinated to enjoy greater societal interaction. A reassessment of traveller policies is also in order.

At this point, it is almost inevitable that new or continued protections will frustrate people. Those opposed will be loud and aggressive. Protections need to be as minimal as possible to still be effective. Politicians need to acknowledge frustration, respond to the concerns of those who want to do the right thing, and develop signposts for when protections will change, subject to unforeseen developments (such as an entirely new and dangerous variant). The signposts are not dates, but measures reflective of the most accurate state of Covid-19.

Not Taking Steps Likely to Lead to Infections

I hope Fraser Valley hospitals change their plan to place people with Covid who are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic and people without Covid (who are vaccinated) in the same room (even distanced). There are exceptions, such as a high-risk condition of the patient without Covid. The biggest irony is that the patient with Covid would only be placed in a room with a non-infected patient who is fully-vaccinated. It appears, if I understand it correctly, that the hospitals will protect unvaccinated patients. I hope no other health authority follows suit.

But it is also important politicans not take premature steps in order to increase their popularity. We have seen elsewhere how “getting back to normal” results in paying a price.

Everyday we hear of “famous” people who have contracted Covid-19, usually mild cases to be sure, but why is this? No doubt because of the high transmissibility of Omicron, but also because people are living life as they did before the pandemic: mixing with people without masks. Perhaps they and those around them have been tested and perhaps not. Prince Charles is a perfect example: he is, by all accounts, doubly-vaccinated with a booster and has already had the virus and thus some immunity; yet he has become reinfected after being out and about with many people and with no one wearing a mask, as photos show. On my Twitter account, I see a number of people I follow announce they have Covid — just mild symptoms, mind you. One thing we do not know is how many people will have long-Covid. Of course, we also see people famous for their anti-vaccination diatribes dying of Covid.

These announcements, at least about “mild” symptoms, are part and parcel of the normalizing of Covid: “everyone” is getting it and “anyone” can get it: it’s not a big deal. But everyone doesn’t get mild Covid and even mild Covid can apparently have long-term effects.

Responding to Lawless Hostage-Takers

What is most disturbing now is how certain politicians are plainly pandering to the illegal demonstrators in Ottawa and Coutts in particular. Pierre Poilievre has declared himself “proud of the truckers”. Scott Moe, Premier of Saskatchewan, saying he has heard those who will be at Saskatchewan border crossings, has announced the province will remove all Covid-19 protections by the end of February. He and Jason Kenny have adopted the language of the “Freedom Convoy”, referring to the end of restrictions on people’s freedom. Jason Kenny tweeted, “Alberta will not continue to damage people’s lives and violate their rights and freedoms indefinitely. We’ve just got to learn to move forward.” Of course, people have had negative experiences because of the need to take restrictions: loss of business and other income, sometimes closing businesses, mental stress, children out of school and so on. But the adoption of this language is a clear statement of catering to those who have evidenced little undertanding of why these protections have existed and who are part of a larger attack on our institutions.

Many, many people in Canada have followed restrictions because they care about their own health and the health of others. Is there room for criticism? Yes. Might some protections be reconsidered? Yes. I hope, though, that the answers to these questions aren’t found in shameful toadying to those with the loudest voices and the most ill-conceived selfish tactics premised on harming others.

Questioning on the federal election English-language debate has given rise to controversy about Quebec’s Bills 21 and 96. (I note I did not watch the debate, but see that several reports of the question and response are similar to each other.) In this post, I’m focusing on Bill 21.

Shachi Kurl, the moderator, asked Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet the following question:

“You denied that Quebec has problems with racism, yet you defend legislation such as Bills 96 and 21, which marginalize religious minorities, anglophones and allophones. Quebec is recognized as a distinct society, but for those outside the province, please help them understand why your party also supports these discriminatory laws.”

CBC Online

By way of “preamble”, my own predisposition is for a secular society, one in which not only is there not an official religion, but one in which religion does not enter official public life. Although not a principle of Canadian life, I believe in the separation of church and state. Yet I believe Bill 21, An Act respecting the laicity of the State, is discriminatory. And I believe that Quebec does recognize that it is (or there is a strong case that it is) it would not have used overrides of the Canadian and Quebec Charters. (Bill 21 is a convenient label, since it has now been enacted.)

I’ve written two Slaw posts on Bill 21. In a post on April 27th of this year, I wrote how Bill 21’s use of section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms legitimated prejudice (see “Challenging Bill 21: The Decision on Section 3 of the Charter (Among Other Things“). This post discussed Hak v. Attorney General of Quebec, which determined challenges to Bill 21. In an earlier post, on May 21, 2019 (“Religion and the Law: ‘Respect” or Denial“), I contrasted the relationship between the law and religious belief as reflected in two contexts: the Ontario Court of Appeal decision in Christian Medical and Dental Society of Canada v. College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario and Bill 21 .

To return to the impact of the debate question, the response was immediately a vehement condemnation from the BQ leader and from the Premier of Quebec, François Legault. Blanchet replied, “‘Those laws are not about discrimination. They are about the values of Quebec.'” And the next day the Premier announced, “‘To claim that protecting the French language is discriminatory or racist is ridiculous,'” and stated he would not “apologize for defending our language, our values, our powers. It is my duty as premier of Quebec.'” He further maintained that Bill 21 had nothing to do with the rest of Canada. (All quotations from CBC Online.) The Quebec National Assembly called for an apology for the “hostility” shown to Quebec by the question.

In addition, at the debate and subsequently, the three major federal leaders, Prime Minister Trudeau, Erin O’Toole and Jagmeet Singh, weighed in, criticizing the question and maintaining the consortium of media broadcasters responsible for running the debate had to apologize. Trudeau’s and O’Toole’s comments reflected the perspective of Quebec, claiming in different ways that the question was insulting to Quebeckers. However, Singh’s comment took a slightly different angle: “’It’s a mistake to imply that only one province has a problem with systemic racism when it’s a problem everywhere in Canada,’ he said in an e-mail statement on Wednesday. ‘Implying that it’s only in one province hurts the work being done to fight systemic racism.’” (The Globe and Mail here.)

Let me say up front that I fail to see how Bill 21 is not discriminatory, on religious and gender grounds. And I do not see how describing it as reflecting Quebec’s values does not nevertheless make it discriminatory or, worded differently, automatically make it non-discriminatory.

Bill 21 prohibits public sector workers, such as teachers, police officers, legal aid lawyers and others, from wearing religious symbols and clothing, visible or non-visible, such as crosses, turbans, hijabs or headscarves (headscarves, I note, may be worn by both Muslim and Jewish women, although the former have been the focus of critics of the law) or kippahs. It is discriminatory because it specifically targets people whose religion requires them to wear a symbol or a type of clothing and because it disproportionately affects women who wear Muslim dress.

A religious symbol, within the meaning of this section, is any object, including clothing, a symbol, jewellery, an adornment, an accessory or headwear, that

(1) is worn in connection with a religious conviction or belief; or

(2) is reasonably considered as referring to a religious affiliation.

An Act respecting the laicity of the State, Section 6

Note that the “clothing, symbol, jewellery, adornment, accessory or headwear” does not actually have to reflect the wearer’s belief; it is enough that other people think it does. (According to Quebec’s Minister of Justice, as ccited by Justice Blanchard in Hak, Bill 21’s prohibition does not encompass beards or wedding rings.)

Perhaps ironically (or not, depending on one’s point of view), Bill 21 explains that “[t]he laicity of the State is based on the following principles”: these are not only two that reflect the underlying premise of Bill 21 (“the separation of State and religions” and “the religious neutrality of the State”, but also “the equality of all citizens” and “freedom of conscience and freedom of religion”. Its Preamble also states, “the Québec nation attaches importance to the equality of women and men”.

Some commentators justify the prohibitions in Bill 21 by casting back to the dominance of the Roman Catholic Church in Quebec and, following the throwing off this yoke, the desire not to repeat religious expression in public life. Others have argued that for people of particular religious beliefs, especially those who have immigrated from countries where religion was oppressive, being served by people wearing religious symbols might be intimidating.

Mario Polèse, for instance, asks why requiring civil servants not to display their religious beliefs is any different from requiring them to not to display their political convictions. He quotes another commentator, Boucar Diouf, in providing examples of the need to show that civil servants (at least outwardly, one might add) are not prejudicial: “’How would an immigrant of Palestinian origin, contesting a conviction, feel in front of a judge wearing a kippah? Inversely, how would a young driver wearing a kippah feel faced with a policewoman wearing a hijab who just gave him a ticket?’” Polèse ends his opinion by saying he would allow “female teachers keep their hijabs”. (See “Quebec’s Bill 21: Is there room for more than one view of religion in Canada?” here.) (I note that Google’s translation of Diouf’s La Presse article adds the adjective “questionable”: “a questionable ticket” [see here]).

The main reason for Bill 21 is that a secular society does not allow religious expression in association with the state. Public servants, on this view, represent the state. This argument would be stronger if the state required people to wear religious symbols rather than allowing a wide range of them.

However justified Bill 21 may be, however, doesn’t change the fact that it is discriminatory. We try to avoid saying certain treatment is discriminatory in different contexts. Thus affirmative action programs under section 15(2) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms avoids saying these programs are discriminatory against majority groups; rather, the guarantee of equality (treatment without discrimination) under section 15(1) “does not preclude” them. This is a way of justifying the different treatment of a particular group because that treatment is required to help remedy inequality.

The Quebec government and National Assembly were not prepared to justify the denial of people’s religious expression. They immunized Bill 21 in two ways: they made it immune from the Canadian Charter’s freedom of religion and equality rights (and other not clearly applicable provisions) through application of the section 33 override; and they included a provision that sections 1 to 38 of the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms would not apply. Furthermore, Bill 21 amends the Quebec Charter. It adds the following in the Preamble: “Whereas the Québec nation considers State laicity to be of fundamental importance”. And it amends section 9.1 to add the term “State laicity” after “democratic values” so that it now reads as follows: “In exercising his fundamental freedoms and rights, a person shall maintain a proper regard for democratic values, State laicity, public order and the general well-being of the citizens of Québec.”

As a result of these provisions, the judge determining the challenge to Bill 21 under the Canadian and Quebec Charters was unable to act on his finding that the Act is discriminatory. (He did find it operative in a limited way that is difficult to sustain.) In Hak, as I explained in my April 27th Slaw post, Justice Blanchard did not mince words in expressing his views of Bill 21:

[68] There is no doubt that [Bill] 21 has serious and negative consequences for all people who wear religious symbols in public. In general, on the one hand, all those who hold a job covered by [Bill] 21 find themselves stuck in their current position since they cannot change it under penalty of losing the benefit of the anticipation clause, unless [they] decide to no longer wear religious symbols in public.

[ 69 ] On the other hand, all these people who aspire to one of these jobs find themselves faced with the following dilemma: either they act according to their soul and conscience, in this case their beliefs, or else they work in the profession of their choice. It is easy to understand that this is a cruel consequence which dehumanizes the people concerned.

[ 70 ] For many, the legislator sends the explicit message that their faith and the way they practice it do not matter and that it does not carry the same dignity or require the same protection on the part of the State. For them, [Bill] 21 postulates that there is something fundamentally wrong or harmful with religious practices, especially some of them, and that the public must be warned. Thus, it conveys an explicitly exclusive message to people who are told that they cannot participate fully in the public institutions of the State only because of their intimate convictions.

A secular state may take different routes to establish its bona fides. It may implement the concept of “religious neutrality” in related ways.

The state may take a “hands-off” approach to religion, permitting all forms of religious expression (except where it contravenes other significant requirements and then it would be limited only to the extent necessary), but not assisting or promoting it. It would neither favour a “state religion” nor would it prohibit, on the one hand, or promote, on the other, any kind of religious practice or expression. Or it could take the view that Quebec has adopted: to deny the expression of religion in certain contexts; it would be neutral because it would not permit any form of religious expression in those contexts. (One might argue on this view that denying the right to wear symbols or clothing of a particular religion and not others is what would be discriminatory.)

However, there is a significant difference between promoting activity, religious or otherwise, and permitting it to function without aligning it with the state. In the case of public servants wearing religious symbols, in allowing the expression of all religious symbols (as opposed, say, to mounting a cross on the wall of the government office where service is provided) or no religious symbols, the state is acting neutrally. And because it is not aligned with any particular religion, it is consistent with a secular state.

Query whether providing a room for prayers would change this equation. I think there is an argument that it would. Here the state is acting in a positive manner. Query whether allowing men to work separately from women because the religion demands it. This would also require positive action by the state, would be discriminatory and would, I’d argue, not be consistent with state secularism.

Assume, though, that a secular state really does require the absence of personal religious expression because the very presence of the religious symbol or clothing links back to the state. As does any restriction on religious expression, such as requiring photos on drivers’ licences, even though for a certain religious group this is a contravention of their religious belief, it must be justified. It is recognized as discriminatory or a breach of freedom of religion, but that is not the end of the story: there may be significant state or public interests that justify the restriction (or not). (See the 4-3 Supreme Court of Canada decision in Alberta v. Hutterian Brethren of Wilson Colony upholding this requirement.)

Certain restrictions on religious expression may also have discriminatory effects on other grounds, in the case of Bill 21, it is argued, on the basis of gender because of the number of women wearing Muslim headscarves or hijab, especially in schools (see, for example, the Canadian Women’s Foundation written statement on Bill 21 here).

State justification of the prohibition would have to show that the significance of having no religious presence in the public sector workplaces, even though the state is otherwise passive in simply permitting it, is greater than the need for people for whom the religious expression is important to their beliefs to make a choice between their employment and their religious expression. (In a slightly different context, a Sikh doctor did make the “hardest thing [he] ever did”: he shaved his beard in order to wear a mask to treat Covid-19 patients [see McGill Reporter here]. Of course, under Bill 21, his turban would otherwise pose a problem, not his beard, and, one hopes, this will be, or was, temporary.)

This is not an impossible case to make. But it could be somewhat messy. It is not clear the extent to which some of the wearing of religious symbols and clothing is actually a religious tenet, but a cultural practice, for example, or whether the wearing of a particular symbol or clothing is a requirement for some sects of the same religion and not for others. To what extent is it something that is considered more significant in some contexts than in others, with the workplace being a discretionary option? There are no simple answers to these questions and the answers that do exist very from religion to religion, sect to sect. This, presumably, would be worse than the blanket denial, if the state is insistent on denial.

Thus the route taken by Quebec is in an important respect the easiest route: remove Bill 21’s prohibition from a difficult justification or from failure of justification. (And, it must be said, from decision-making by a Supreme Court that Quebec would likely see as lacking understanding of Quebec.) And so the answer: apply section 33 of the Canadian Charter and override and amend the Quebec Charter. Doing so, however, is a tacit acknowledgement that the law does discriminate.

Prologue

I first started writing this post early in June (here it is June 17th – somehow life fills up even when you’re in self-isolation and think you’re doing nothing), about a week after George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis as a result of a police knee on his neck for some 8 minutes and 46 seconds. I had the post in mind for a while and the administration’s actions finally undid my lethargy and drove me to write it. But once more or less finished, it no longer seemed relevant in the face of the continuing protests and the springing up of acknowledgements of systemic racism and promises to reform (and even a few actual actions in that direction) by a wide range of institutions. So I let the post sit. But I realize that the reason I drafted the post remains extant. So here it is. Here I’m “looking across the border” at the destruction of America’s constitutional institutions by the Trump administration and the Republican Senate, not at the demonstrations (to which I refer) and which cannot be considered absent reference to Canada’s own situation.

The Post

My family, my parents, my four year old sister and I, spent nearly eight unpleasant days crossing the Atlantic Ocean, emigrating to Canada from England in 1956. I was eight years old, forced to leave my home, even if with my family, and forced to leave behind the toys to which I had become most attached (particularly “Bear”, a bruin, who stood on his four paws who was probably smaller than he appears in my memory, but still too big to bring with us). What happened after we landed is another story, one I’m not telling here, except for the close relationship I subsequently developed with the idea of the United States of America, a conceptual impression comprised of hope and disappointment, progress and regression, commitment to civil rights and real-life echoes of times that should be past, all at the same time. Some of that idea was manifested in reality, but some of it was never really true.

And so my response to America has always been an ambivalent one, just as the relationship with my birth country, England, and my adopted country, Canada, has been. All of them have made me happy, sad and angry at different times. In Canada, my anger, my desire to make what I thought of as a good country overall, better, led me to activism. As far as the United States is concerned, a jumble of pleasurable holidays, enriching scholarly conferences and exciting political developments, on the one hand, and of shameful and unworthy actions, by individuals and groups and government actors, on the other, has complicated my response.

Even now, as the country appears to be sliding further into an autocracy, the past few weeks have leavened that perception. And yet it is hard to avoid the conclusion that these two developments are proceeding on parallel tracks, occasionally intersecting, travelling towards a showdown where only one — the testing of the fibre of democracy and the fighters against injustice — will triumph, at least in the short term. Those seeking to unravel the institutions that have made the United States a better place are in it for the long term – they have much to lose if they lose. Those energized, as have others before them, by an egregious wrong must maintain momentum over a very long period and must bring others with power with them or, having achieved some new progress, may dissipate, ready to rise again . Living through the ebb and flow of progressive change long ago planted the seed of cynicism, even while it has also lifted me.

Since 2016 and increasingly so, however, I look towards that complicated country and feel sadness. Anger, yes, but sadness that a place that carried promise, however, imperfectly, is risking reaching the end of its own democratic experiment.

Let me wax nostalgic for a while. The first vacation my family took, after coming to Canada, sometime in the first year after we arrived, as I recall, was a visit with my dad’s uncle and his family in Dearborn, Michigan. Uncle Tom had left the UK to come to the United States, although “fleeing” might have been a better term, since he had a price on his head, having served as a Black and Tan in Ireland, at least according to my dad who revelled in family storytelling. The Hughes family was lovely to us and the younger American Hugheses (their older son had a family of his own by then) and my mother kept in touch for quite some time, but eventually the connection lapsed.

That was my first introduction to the United States and from then on my life in one way or another was loosely intertwined, personally, academically, and politically. Travelling began with that trip to Michigan and later family trips took us to Boston, New York City, Washington, D.C. We went by bus or train because we didn’t have a car when I was growing up. Of course, when we visited Niagara Falls, we crossed over to the American side, including with visitors from England. It was so easy in those days.

I recall in high school (or was it grade 8) going to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, for a youngster developing a (casual) interest in art a wondrous opportunity. Our grade 12 history teacher took us to New York City, ostensibly to visit the United Nations, but she also had us accompany her to Greenwich Village to listen to jazz. As I dawdled behind everyone else, I suddenly felt a hand on my arm, which dropped when someone else chortled, “she’s not worth it”. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I spent the little money I had ($5.00 — it seemed a lot and I guess it was for me, since it would be $35 now), on a replica of a small and lively Greek horse, possibly bronze? possibly from the 6th C. BC? (I’ve lost the box with the information), which sits on a shelf in my living room today.

Much later my companion and I took the turns and curves on the Pacific Coast Highway, stayed in a little rooftop cabin in San Francisco with a view of Fisherman’s Wharf (no doubt very different 30 years ago from how I see it described now filled with “schlocky tourist shops, overpriced and underwhelming restaurants, buskers in your face”), spent Canadian Thanksgiving in Vermont at an Inn where they served us all to a Canadian Thanksgiving dinner, made short trips to New York, Boston, Chicago (enjoyed for the first time since I’d attended a political science conference many years before) and again, Washington, DC. Two week driving trips in the east, down to Savannah, Georgia and Charlotte, North Carolina, and thereabouts and to Santa Fe and back were all memorable. On the trip to Santa Fe, for example, a couple at the next table told us about the early morning trip balloon festival outside Albuquerque, where we walked around the huge baskets as the balloonists inflate the balloons and the burners light up as the sun rises.

We’ll never forget the terrifying drive across the mountains during an early blizzard as we circled home from Santa Fe through Wyoming, arriving at the Holiday Inn at about 10 pm, about 5 hours after we expected to, only to have a state trooper come up behind us and check the back of the pick-up truck we were driving because they’d received a call about a truck with a Canadian licence plate with an out of season deer in the back; we figured some hunters who had been at the same gas station and convenience store we had reached coming out of the blizzard had called in illegal hunting, helpfully reporting our licence plate: a prank? that’s the best explanation, so let’s leave it at that. One look and the trooper knew it wasn’t us (if it was anyone). One way to relieve tension!

When I was muddling through a major dilemma in my life, I spend two fall weeks at Goose Rocks Beach in Maine, in the off season, running on the beach every day and cycling to the only place nearby that was still serving dinner. And we enjoyed wonderful big New Year and Labour Day parties with our friends in Ohio who lived on a large property in a log house that made you forget they resided in a subdivision — breakfast and dinner nearly always led us to discussions about US politics (as did their trips to Toronto), although the prospect of a Trump presidency brought us to agreement, albeit perhaps for different reasons. Sadly, our male friend, Doug, died suddenly a few years ago; we keep in touch with Linda who called us recently to check in during the pandemic, which is no respecter of borders.

Back to earlier days and a different connection with the US. By 1968 I was in university and then and later as I began teaching university myself, first in political science and then in law, I took for granted that some of my scholarly work would take place or begin at conferences in the United States. And so they did. In fact, I considered moving there to teach political science. At one interview, a southern gentleman faculty member asked whether I had participated marches — and what I was marching about; I was not surprised to not get that job for several reasons, not least of which they wanted someone to teach American politics! The other interview was at a small liberal arts college in upstate New York and I might have gone there had I been offered the position (I still have the letter that in a most over complimentary way explained they had not received the funding to hire or they would have offered me the position — the road not taken or, more accurately, not offered).

I had the good fortune to exchange ideas with American (and other) academics when I crossed the border to make several presentations during the years I was Chair in Women and Law at UNB Law. The Gender Issues in Higher Education Conference in Vermont in 1995, the Making and Unmaking History Conference at the University of Southern California, the Women and Law Conference in San Francisco and the Institute for Women’s Policy Research in Washington, D.C., all in 1998, and the Feminism and Law Summer Workshop at Cornell in 1999, all of which enriched my work through collaboration with US colleagues.

The trips and conferences make it seem as if my only sense of the US was very much consistent with a pleasant life, but of course this was only part of the picture. Amidst all this have been the events that painted a darker picture and always floated as an undertone to the good times.

By the late sixties, my interest in politics had blossomed both in Canada and the US. I became a “Kennedy kid”, not so unusual, I think, for my generation. All of us worried we were at the edge of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis (I shudder to think what the outcome might have been had the crisis occurred today), a time of tension and fear that rivals any event since. I came out of my physics exam in November 1963 to learn that President Kennedy had been assassinated and spent the weekend immersed in the coverage, unusual in those days for being continuous. I was watching when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald. And less than five years later, the shootings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968 and Robert Kennedy in June (the anniversary of whose death has just occurred as I write this and as the BlackLivesMatter demonstrations fill the news). I was just short of 20 years old and I felt as if the world had ended. And in some ways maybe it had, since Richard Nixon won the election in 1968. Marching against the VietNam and (first) Iraq wars, closely keeping track of the fight against abortion rights and reproductive choice more generally, including the bombing of abortion clinics, the constant efforts by states to water down the impact of Roe v. Wade that continue today.

And all along, both before my own interest and long after it, have been the ongoing injustices against Black Americans. I can remember sitting in my family’s living room with my grandmother watching demonstrations and riots and Gran asking me, “what do these n…..s want?” The killing of Medgar Evers, a black civil rights leader, about this time in June, 1963, by a member of the White Citizens’ Council in Jackson, Mississippi and the murders of four young girls in a church bombing in the same year; the abduction and killing of three civil rights workers in Mississippi as part of the 1964 summer voter registration drive that followed the murder of Evers (one white man was convicted in 2005); and others, including many whose killers were either never found or otherwise escaped justice. (A list of black and white men and women and children killed from 1955 to 1968 by white supremacists can be found on the Southern Poverty Law Center website.)

As for the police — and national guard — brutality against demonstrators protesting, in the immediate the death of George Floyd and in the longer term, the killings of so many Black men and women and children in the United States, it is not the first time we’ve seen it. Seared in my mind are the images of the police using dogs and water cannon against Vietnam War demonstrators during the 1968 Democratic Convention, described by a senator on the Convention floor as “Gestapo tactics”. The police attacked tv commentators, seen on television. The shootings of students by the Ohio National Guard, killing four, at Kent State in May of 1970 during anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, and eleven days later the killing of two students, one a high school student, at Jackson State University in Mississippi, during violent demonstrations. That and more have also been part of the history of America in my lifetime.

And to today. We’ve been here before. I should be clear that I’m not implying that this is only a “United States problem” because of course it is not. Canada has its own history, but that is not what I’m writing about here. In fact, it is not really the history of police and white supremacists’ treatment of Black people in the United States that I’m writing about. I refer to it because knowledge of this, too, along with vacations, scholarly conferences and political interest marks “my” relationship with the United States. And while I was disappointed that a woman with the potential to become the first female president had been unsuccessful in the primaries, so does the election of the first Black president, a thing of joy and excitement. Yet touted as evidence of a post-racial America — it was never that — Barack Obama’s election was, it seems, too much for too many Americans to bear (including Donald Trump who hounded him with the “birtherism” lie), providing in a certain way an impetus, among others, for the eventual emergence of a president who is a throwback to an America of many years before when life was, for those who support him, more clearly defined.

Disappointed though I might have been in 2008, at least initially, how much more devastating was the Electoral College win that gave Donald Trump the presidency over once again, a woman who looked as if she would be president and who did win the majority of votes. (And again, while not the subject of this post, the 2016 election was a reminder of the vexed shape of gender politics.)

Transcending all of this, mixed though it is, what breaks my heart is seeing the United States decline into autocracy. It was obvious that Donald Trump was going to be a president with no respect for institutions that stood guard over the presidency, no respect for other people, no respect for truth, no self-control, no regard for anything or anyone other than himself. But how much worse he has been than that. And more than one man, who might have been contained, who might have been removed, is the sight of American institutions peopled by men — and women — of dishonour in thrall to him and their own pursuit of power and privilege and the pursuit of the disadvantage of others.

It is not only that the president of the United States acts impulsively, on the basis of personal hurt (whether acts directed at individuals or at domestic or international governments); lacks knowledge about the institutions of government and of the norms and practices that are intended to protect democratic governance and does not care to know; surrounds himself with enablers and others who, like him, seek only personal benefit from decisions; governs only to please those Americans who believe themselves to be aggrieved and who sense in him a kindred spirit whose outlook on the world is controlled by his pathetic sense of grievance; while hugging the Stars and Stripes, carries the metaphorical banner of those who brazenly wield torches and guns in pursuit of supremacist and fascist ideologies, who have sought effectively to overturn a state government by force; lacks a moral compass, empathy or compassion; tears apart international alliances yet cozies up to autocrats; brings troops into the streets to abuse peaceful protesters; cynically uses religion in pursuit of support from those who rely on their religious beliefs to bar the equality of others; not only incompetently but also cavalierly botches the response to the coronavirus pandemic; and flaunts his disregard of the rule of law and specific laws.

He is all these things and he is a president who through ignorance, deceit, callousness, avoidance of penalties to come and with the backing of those who align with his goals and benefit from him — including the other institutions that should provide some equilibrium — seeks to destroy the fabric that contained the hope, if not always the realization, of a better nation because otherwise that fabric would destroy him.

These last few weeks, though, have provided the president with the opportunity to display his insistence on the exercise of power, a naked commitment to using militia to destroy those who oppose him and what he represents. His brazen and provocative decisions to hold his first rally in some time in Tulsa, Oklahoma, famous for a 1921 race massacre and his nominating convention in Jacksonville, Florida, where 60 years ago, Blacks participating in a lunch counter sit-in were chased through the streets with ax handles and baseball bats by white segregationists led by the Ku klux Klan are frightening evidence that he intends to continue on the same path.

(Only considerable pushback made him change the date of his rally from Juneteenth, a date commemorating the end of slavery. And Trump’s nomination acceptance speech, to be given on the 60th anniversary of the ax handle riot, has been moved to Jacksonville from Charlotte because the governor of North Carolina, where most of the convention will occur, refused to agree to waive coronavirus precautions.)

Other ways of dealing with everything that is wrong with this presidency have failed. The November election looms. Already, vote suppression has made it clear that a democratic means to returning the United States to a different path is no sure thing. And Trump’s behaviour has not unreasonably raised concerns that even if he loses, he will not easily leave the White House.

One day historians will be able to explain how America reached the state it has reached now and how this state became its way of being. We watch it happen daily, yet it is hard to credit how feeble the institutional checks and the institutions of democracy are, how easily dismantled or ignored. It is hard now to untangle the morass of ongoing conduct that has led the country here.

As I watch the demonstrations and, indeed, the efforts of some segments of American society (and Canadian) to trip over themselves to respond to the allegations of systemic racism, I feel some hope. The demonstrations are more diverse than the many that preceded them, the responses coming from many different sources, including apparently entrenched institutions, and in some cases they have provided the opportunity to register voters. Yet these responses do not come from those who have been dismantling the structures of governance, who have been acting cruelly and deceptively. On the contrary.

And so, despite some hope, my overwhelming response to all that has occurred quickly and unrelentingly, throughout the very few years since 2016, remains the sadness that comes with a broken heart.

As we move through this overwhelming coronavirus pandemic, I have learned a number of things. But one self-absorbed reality I’ve realized — or perhaps confirmed is more accurate — is that I am really quite dull and boring.

I’m not a social media maven, limiting myself to Twitter, but through that (and sometimes through old-school newsprint) I do see what those entrenched at home do to fill time or to convince themselves this time at home is not wasted. I find that I don’t need to cook new dishes, take up a new hobby or prepare short displays of my talents (first, I’d have to discover them). I have no urge to imitate a painting. I’m not looking for this “self-time” to broaden my horizons. I’m not attracted to Zoom cocktail parties. In fact, I’m doing pretty much what I’ve been doing for the last few years. This in itself is proof of how boring I am.

At one time in my life, I baked bread, made soups, cooked a variety of dishes, made jams and pickles and sewed my own clothes; I’ve painted unpainted furniture (never done pottery or taken dance classes). I marched to protest laws against abortion and the Vietnam War, spoke at Take Back the Night rallies, had a wide circle of friends (mostly women, but some men), wrote real articles on a range of topics, travelled to make presentations, had the pleasure of running along rivers in many countries, as well as cities in Canada, held a few relatively responsible jobs and generally had a busy life. That gradually narrowed, but not completely.

After finishing (more than) full-time work nearly four and a half years ago, I spent a busy year, the activities of which petered out. Although perhaps “petered out” is not quite the right phrase: maybe stopped completely is a better way to describe it. (Hard not to internalize that message!)

Finding myself with a great deal of time, I mused about volunteer work, but couldn’t decide what it should be — what could I do that would be of any help to others and did I have to prove I could do it before I actually started? If so, it would be a high hurdle. I made a list of what need to be cleared in the house: I didn’t want to have to do it when I move or want leave it for someone else. Can’t see that much has been accomplished there.

I’d enjoy lunch now and again with a friend, maybe go to the AGO or museum or to a movie. I started to post regularly on Slaw.ca (a legal blog) and started this blog, all my own, totally amenable to whatever I want to write about (exhibit A being this post). Anyone can see idlemusings.blog posts are few and far between.

The Shaw and Stratford Festivals were a highlight of life before I finished my full-time contributions to the legal sphere and have continued to be afterwards. And I devoted myself to my garden when seasons and weather permitted. Fortunate to live near a park, and in earlier lives, near rivers, ravines and running paths, I’ve run (not that everyone recognizes that’s what I’m doing) for years. And even that meagre list sounds fuller than my hours were.

And so six weeks ago, while many people’s lives changed, mine did not — at least, not much. Lunches have been replaced by emails and phone calls, inadequately, of course. I’m able to go out walking (running is less fun when you’re dodging people walking or cycling towards you). I read (but not really much more as I did before, which I find quite shocking). Stratford has called it a day for this year, but the Shaw keeps hoping, although I doubt I’ll venture there even if it mounts the plays I’ve booked.

I’ll be gardening soon, although I’m not sure yet how much of that there’ll be to do. Do I want to whisk through a garden centre the way I do through the grocery store? Will I be willing to whisk through a garden centre rather than order plants on line? I ordered books online for the first time a couple of weeks ago (browsing through bookstores is one of my pleasures), and that went well, but plants are a different breed: who knows whether dessicated begonias will show up at the door?

I should state clearly that I’m very lucky during this time. It’s true age makes me vulnerable to more serious consequences if the coronavirus catches me. I don’t discount that.

However, my dull and boring life is somewhat of a luxury now. I’m grateful that I have the good fotune (so far) to escape the worries impinging on so many Canadians’ lives. And while age makes me more vulnerable, it also has made my life easier. I think of the employees who are now unemployed and who may or may not have a job when “this is all over”. I think of those trying to scrape together the money to pay rent or the mortgage.

I definitely think about those living in long-term care homes and similar congregate settings whose lives have been sacrificed because we haven’t been willing to fund social care adequately. I think about inmates crowded together. I think about the people who are homeless. And I think of the women who are not alone, but live in fear of the person they live with.

I think of the caregivers who are on the front lines of treating patients with COVID-19. I think of those who work in “essential services” so that I can buy groceries or others can travel to their essential businesses.

I think of two parents working remotely glad to have work but who also have kids to care for and for whom they must organize their “schooldays” — and then I think how much worse for the single parent, more likely than not a woman, who might be fortunate to be working, but is also trying to care for children. And how they are all in their apartments or houses nearly all the time. I think of the parents in the park near me whose toddler started running towards the playground, only to burst into tears when told “you can’t go there, it’s against the rules”.

I live in a comfortable house and, like others, my investments are down, but I don’t need them to live on. Someone said to me, “this has told us whether we really want to be with the people we’re with” and the answer for me to that is, “definitely yes”. He and I are dealing with this together, mutually supportive of each other.

Okay, I’m not a complete philistine. I listen on Twitter to the short pieces Yo Yo Ma plays. But my attention is primarily still drawn to the awful state of affairs south of the border (I always play the Randy Rainbow videos); I keep up with news on coronavirus developments; and I think about whether I’ll be willing to leave my stay-at-home life when more and more opens up. Because the life I led before the pandemic pretty much describes the one we’re supposed to be leading right now, staying at home.

Truth to tell, dull and boring seems pretty lucky to me right now, as far as things go.

There’s a large park near me. And so I’m fortunate, along with many others in the area, to be able to go out for a walk every day (or just about). And people are, generally speaking, very conscious of the need for physical separation. This park makes it easy most of the time, since its paths are wide — they meet the six feet/two metre distance requirement. And more people than usual are still smiling, nodding or saying hello as they walk by, or so it seems to me. But inevitably, not everybody seems to realize how easy it is to accommodate one another. So, a short primer on the etiquette that makes physical separation easier might be helpful.

“Etiquette” is different from the “rules” we’re meant to live by these days: it shouldn’t be rigid, but it is intended to make life more comfortable and easier. I start with a couple of general guidelines that making walking or running through the park or on roads without sidewalks easier for everyone all the time. To get to the park near me, I go down a street with a sidewalk (here someone needs to walk out into the road if we intend to observe two metres and people do) onto a road with no sidewalks.

When I was a kid we learned a little rhyme to remember to “walk facing traffic all the while”. We wouldn’t use this rhyme today (or for many years now), but its imagery was effective. Following it means you will see the traffic coming towards you as it comes. Too bad that many people never learned this guideline or a reasonable facsimile or have forgotten, because many people, it seems to me, walk in the same direction as traffic.

Now, let’s step away from the road into the park. The guideline changes and whatever signs there are indicate we should stay to the right.

These guidelines are pretty simple, really, although granted they make shifting gears as you move from road to park necessary. They make walking and running even in the best of times that much easier. No guessing about moving to avoid the person coming towards you on the “wrong” side.

Back to the time of COVID-19. Right now, there are not many people walking in the park. I expect this will change as the weather warms up and we have more bright sunny days. As of today, park amenities have been “locked down”. In the next few days, I imagine we’ll see more playgrounds, dog parks and so on with fencing or just “caution” tape around with notices to “STAY OUT”. And this has happened because people have used these spots to congregate rather than maintain physical distancing. So as more people crowd the green areas, still open, the risk that they will not respect physical distancing will become greater. Perhaps, realistically, it will become impossible, but let’s not assume we will get to that.

SO HERE’S A PROPOSAL FOR PARK WALKING ETIQUETTE IN THE TIME OF COVID-19

• Try to keep to the appropriate side of the road, if there aren’t sidewalks or to the right side of the path;
• as you approach another person, make it clear you intend to keep your distance; if necessary, that might mean stepping off the path if it’s not very wide and if that’s possible;
• walk over to the other side of the path if someone is sitting on a bench near the park;
• don’t go up to someone with a dog because you want to talk about or pet the dog (this probably breaks the physical distancing rule, anyway);
• don’t stand in the middle of the path;
• if you happen to meet friends and want to talk, step off to the side of the path, if you can, and keep six feet from each other while you chat (and if you can’t, perhaps accept you just need to phone each other);
• make sure your kids understand the need for distance (and kids from different families shouldn’t be out together), whether they are with you or not;
• if you’re on a bike, remember people may be moving about more often than usual;
• AND BE FRIENDLY AS YOU PASS OR MOVE TO LET SOMEONE GO BY!

Everything on my etiquette list is based on a real situation, all of which could be avoided and even if not “wrong” means someone isn’t quite as responsive to those around them as they could be. Here are a few examples of when people, not callously, possibly carelessly, maybe inconsiderately, have made physical distancing just that little bit more difficult to satisfy.

I read the other day in the National Post that John Richards is ending the life of the Apostrophe Protection Society’s website. As I’m (“I am”) sure’s (“sure is”) true of many people, I had no idea this society existed. But I wish I had known. The use of the apostrophe seems to be one of those things that just don’t (“do not”) matter anymore. (Mr. Richards is considering dedicating his time to the proper use of the comma. I’m (“I am”) wondering whether he’d (“he would”) put a comma after “matter” in the preceding sentence.)

Also like many people, as it turns out, I decided to check out the Society’s website, only to find it suspended (substitute “find it’s [it has] been suspended”) for “find it suspended”), reduced to the following message:

The Apostrophe Protection Society

3rd December 2019 valid until 31st December 2019

John Richards has announced the he is closing the Apostophe Protection Society.

Since the announcement, this site has had a 600-fold increase in traffic, which is proving expensive. So we have decided to close it until the New Year.

When it returns, Webmaster John Hale intends to keep the site running for a few more years.

Sorry, and thank you for your interest.

We will be back soon!

How many of us will rush back to the Society’s website in the new year: my guess is not many, it’s (it is) the sort of thing we have to be reminded of (if I hadn’t [had not] added this bit, I would’ve [you know what I might’ve put here, right?] ended the sentence with a preposition, something I’m sure would have rightly agitated Mr. Richardson). (With this detour to prepositional use, I feel compelled to cite Winston Churchill’s witty put-down of a bureaucrat’s efforts to avoid ending sentences with a preposition, an effort that can seem very burdensome: “This is the kind of pedantry up with which I will not put!” [Thank you to Paul Russell in the National Post who was in turn citing Seymour Hamilton.])

There are several specific aspects of apostrophe use or non-use, whichever applies, that particularly irk me. One is mixing up “it’s” (the contraction of it is) and “its” (the possessive). At first you’d see this annoyance from time to time, but by the time I was seeing it in the national newspapers, I figured it was the end more or less and I started blaming autocorrect (maybe the person who developed the algorithm for spelling couldn’t use “it’s” [it is] and “its” (very nice on as it is) correctly. Or maybe it’s (it is) not the result of an algorithm at all, I really have no idea.

The second incorrect use of the apostrophe is when it is used in signage when it shouldn’t be and when it isn’t used where it should be. The National Post article about the end of the Society — or maybe it’s not the end, after all, we’ll see — was illustrated by the Tim Hortons sign, which doesn’t use an apostrophe. Of course, at one time Tim Horton owned Tim Horton’s, it belonged to him (who owns that donut shop? I think it’s Tim Horton’s). In this case, it may be that while the heritage aspect of the name is lost, it actually is more correct as it is now, since it now owned by an international restaurant conglomerate. Fun fact: it was once owned by Wendy’s, which still uses an apostrophe.

Street names often have an apostrophe because they start as a track to someone’s property. For example, Brown’s Line, near where I live, links Lakeshore Boulevard to Highway 427. It sometimes appears as “Brown’s Line” and sometimes as “Browns Line”. Curious about its (possessive) origin, I checked Google (here is a different issue: as with Xerox, Google has become so prevalent that one now sees it spelled “google” or “Google”, regardless of whether it is used as a noun or a verb). Back to Brown’s Line: it seems that Joseph Brown was the first permanent settler in the area, owning a farm reached by a dirt track called, you guessed it, “Brown’s Line” (the “line” belonging to Brown) and the name continues to apply to the busy and longer street (see here). You often see “Brown’s Line”, but you also see “Browns Line”, the latter appearing on the highway directional sign.

Indeed, one sees whole towns caught up in the apostrophe quandry. I came across a story about Bright’s (or Brights) Cove in southwest Ontario. Both versions appear in different places and according to the story, there are strong feelings among the townspeople about which is correct.

One sees quite a few homemade signs that use apostrophes incorrectly and it seem churlish to be critical of those, but professional and expensive signs are another matter. Still, if the person or business that arranged for the sign doesn’t care, who else will? Perhaps there are others grumbling as they point these professional signs out, but I confess that I’ve never heard anyone, although it might be that my own exasperated sighs (my own cavils as some would have it – that’s [that is] “cavils”, not “cavil’s”) might have drowned them out as I passed.

The National Post’s (not “National Posts”) article contains some examples of incorrect apostrophe usage that the Society’s website identifies (I’m guessing it still does, we just can’t see them right now). “Fans” of the website have submitted these: “a café advertising ‘light bite’s,’ a warehouse offering storage for ‘boat’s’ and ‘car’s,’ and a restaurant selling ‘snow pea’s’. It’s true that usually we know what is meant, whether there is an apostrophe or not and I’m sure most people would think it very technical if a reader of the warehouse sign asks, “boat what?” or “car what” – what part or attribute of boats and cars will this warehouse store?

A few years ago, Robert Fulford wrote a lovely column on the apostrophe in the National Post (interestingly included in the Entertainment section [I believe my capitalization is correct here, but perhaps not) in which he referenced Mr. Richardson. He mentions that some individuals “who go about armed with thick-nibbed pens and markers so that they can correct advertising signs that contain the most widespread apostrophe errors, the culture-eroding, literacy-destroying blunders” that are quite common. I rather liked his allusion to “a cartoon in which a weeping young woman says, ‘I was willing to overlook his comma abuse but when he started misplacing his apostrophes, I knew it was over.'”

Another column reminds us about “Mother’s Day”, which, as the column suggests, should refer to all mothers. It should, but another way of looking at it might have been that it is a day to celebrate one’s own mother (“My mother’s day”). Of course, if this was ever the case, it certainly doesn’t wash now when it is quite common to have more than one mother.

Russell Smith in a column in The Globe and Mail now eight years old (oh, dear, apostophe on years or not?) writes about the complexity of apostrophic use based on the Globe‘s style guide. I was surprised at his description of the use of the mark with proper names ending in “s”; he explains the Globe‘s approach, as well as his own “vague” memory, that it depends on whether the name was one syllable or more. My own memory is that is depends on whether the name ends in a soft “s” or hard “s” or “z”, although I’ve never found that rule easy to apply, so that I’m relieved I might be wrong. (It is worth noting that Russell’s column has a little caveat note indicating that the information in it (probably about the Globe‘s style guide, as Russell refers to it – or should it really be Globe style guide”, Globe being descriptive?) is eight years old (no use of an apostrophe on “years”) and may no longer be “current”. On this point, see How to Use Apostrophes by Scribendi, which makes the whole thing seem complicated indeed! (As is too often the case, one refers to online sources without knowing whether they’re authoritative, but it certainly seems as if it is.)

Enough on what appears to be a losing tussle (saying how I feel as gently as I can) arising from the incorrect use of apostrophes (no ‘, just a simple plural). There are other struggles to undertake, such as the dangling modifier or participle, something Marcus Gee says is “driving him up the wall”. Me too. It usually doesn’t take much to get it right: a quick review of the sentence tells the writer whether the person or object in the modifier is the subject of the main part of the sentence. But as Gee vividly writes,

Using [the dangling modifier] doesn’t just violate some musty grammatical decree. It obscures the writer’s meaning and leaves the hapless reader confused. If good prose is like a windowpane, the dangling modifier fogs the glass.

So many grammatical issue to consider: when “I” or “me” or “who” or “whom” is (singular because of the use of “or”) correct are just two examples. Of course, we tend to be more lackadaisical when speaking and being grammatically precise in ordinary conversation does often sound stilted. So much writing today is more like speaking and takes on that informal tone; that has seeped into newspapers and other more formal writing, it seems.

Inevitably, people who learn English as a second language may well be concerned about the proper use of English grammar, but they also may focus primarily on conversation. When I spent time trying to learn French in a sustained way, I found refuge in grammar, including some of the more difficult French constructions. But I had much greater difficulty with conversational French, partly because I found spoken French hard to understand (having what is best described as a “tin ear”) and because I was so determined to speak correctly. The result: I hardly spoke at all and never really achieved the level I might have done had I given myself a break.

We all know and acknowledge that language evolves; we know English is different in different countries, despite being a first language , or within a single country. We know spellings change. We are aware English has become more simplified, as anyone who might have read or listened to a play by Shakespeare certainly knows. Yet as we veer more and more towards the colloquial and the easier way of writing (short sentences with a single thought, for example), we also lose some of the pleasure of language. At least some of us think so. Robert Fulford quotes David McNamea, who wrote, “I have always admired the apostrophe. It floats anarchically above the rigid baseline that most other characters limp along. It looks cute too.” As Mr. Richardson says, “To do without [the apostrophe] would be confusing, as well as inelegant.” Yes, language must be functional, but how wonderful to also maintain its beauty and variety.