It’s wild that we ever knew a time before “Seven Nation Army.” Rock was moribund, long in the tooth, a phenomenon that existed in quotation marks and was in need of reviving. And yet nobody had ever put those specific notes in that specific order before Jack White, fucking around at a Melbourne soundcheck one evening, was struck by metaphorical lightning. “Seven Nation Army” is an angry, paranoiac song with no fixed meaning, but it sure sounds like Jack White raging against his own encroaching fame and fantasizing about going to Wichita, far from this opera forevermore. And yet “Seven Nation Army” rocked hard enough to ensure its own immortality. Even if he did go to Wichita, Jack wouldn’t be able to escape his own marvelous big-room banger.
Seven Nation Army is undeniably a classic but the song I most associate with this album is “Ball and Biscuit.” In a sentence that sounds positively ancient, I was in a record store when it came on, and that riff made me go up to the front and ask for whatever was playing. I already knew the White Stripes through White Blood Cells but Elephant was something else. Again, in sentences that sound ancient, it was on constant repeat in my CD player and I bought magazines with articles about how it was all done in a few weeks on equipment that would have been available in the 1970s. It was a time when I had longer lasting relationships with the music in my life because it wasn’t so easy to find the next thing. I can’t really imagine listening to an album today as much as I listened to Elephant, to the point that I instinctively know what song, note, lyric is coming next. Part of it’s technology, part of it’s age — I simply can’t imagine something being as exciting as this was to me as a young adult who still didn’t know all the history of blues and punk and garage rock and the influences. But even with that knowledge now, this thing rocks.
Note: If you don’t want to read another take on ~the discourse~ just click out. There’s nothing new here.
I really liked Twitter.
I joined over a decade ago, back when you had to manually retweet people and there was actually a 140-character limit. At the time there were lots of websites: Flickr, Facebook, Tumblr and my online identity was split between them but eventually they all coalesced on Twitter. It was easier that way and it was genuinely my favourite place to hang out on the internet. It exposed me to people and ideas I would have never encountered before. It let me listen in on conversations in other parts of the world and other walks of life without demanding my participation — and when I did weigh in I could get feedback from people way smarter than me, from all over the place. I genuinely believe it made me a better, more emphathetic person.
It was also fun: Memes, trends, worldwide in-jokes, little niche communities, all happening at once. It was, and still is, a thrill to think about some of the people who followed me and, even more surprising, kept following me and sometimes even replying to or favouriting the things I had to say. There have been movie stars, award-winning authors, academics but honestly, just as importantly, people who aren’t well-known and who likely never would be well known except they had this platform where they could also share their thoughts and ideas that I learned from and admired. That idea of it was, and still is, incredibly cool.
But you know why I’m talking about it in the past-tense. I’m not going to argue it was perfect before and I’m not going to argue you should leave, we all have different lines and reasons and I’m not going to pass judgement. But the Twitter that was is not the Twitter that is and we’ve all been able to see it in real-time.
It’s no longer a company that is slow to act or sometimes messes up but at least has checks and balances, both internal and external. It’s a company run on the whims of a man who has demonstrated repeatedly who he is and what he stands for based on who he welcomes, who he bans and the way he wields his words towards people who can suffer harm at his expense.
To be honest the actual experience of being on Twitter has not changed for me — the ability to mute and block and autofilters have all served me well, but the key difference is it no longer feels fun to be there and trying to pretend it is means ignoring everything else that’s going on around you. I stopped using Facebook after it became clear that is rewarded bad behaviour with real-world consequences, I can’t really imagine why I would use a site that is run by somehow who epitiomizes that behaviour.
And here’s the thing: As much as I liked Twitter, it is not some public good. It’s not a home or neighbourhood we can stay and fight for. It is a private website and that website is under new ownership. You can stay and dunk on the new owner all you want but the only consequences are either 1. you will be banned or 2. you will contribute to him being able to brag again and again that engagement is up, actually.
And feel free to do so! But me, personally, I don’t see the upside. If you’re going to post content on a site of dubious moral value at least do it on Facebook or TikTok that have higher user engagement and more real-world reach.
Find me at:
(Some people have asked me about Post.News. My take: If we’re all leaving a website because it was bought up and run on the whims of a billionaire, why would we go somewhere else where the same thing can happen. Mastodon and Tumblr are both either open-source projects that can’t be purchased or in the hands of a company that has proven itself to be a good steward of the open web. As for substack — yeah, some issues, but you can export the subscriber list to any new service you want so there’s freedom to leave without losing the network).
I wrote about Orange Shirt Day and local government and reconciliation, and whose voices we listen to when making meaningful decisions.
I’ve been thinking about it a lot over the last year, and especially as we head into municipal elections.
It’s about my city but probably yours, too.
A reminder that support is available for survivors and those impacted by residential schools by calling 1-866-925-4419. Support is also available at 1-855-242-3310 or by online chat at www.hopeforwellness.ca.
On August 30, 2021 the city of Prince Geoge did two very local government things: Passed a new bylaw, and voted in favour of renaming a street.
Bylaws and street namings are the sort of things that don’t matter to people until they do. Both happen all the time without catching much attention. But this street naming, and this bylaw, were both flashpoints in broader cultural conversations happening not just in Prince George, but across the country.
Three months earlier, the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation announced that they had used ground-penetrating radar to identify up to 200 potential burial sites for children who attended the Kamloops Indian Residential School, which was in operation from 1890 to 1969. Though the stories of children dying at these schools had long been public, this particular announcement prompted public reflection and mourning, with flags lowered on federal and other public buildings and memorials popping up across the country — including the steps of Prince George city hall.
A memorial to residential school victims outside Prince George city hall in summer 2021
Prince George is built on the land of the Lheidli T’enneh, the land taken after forcing the Nation out of their village and onto reserves in the early 20th century. In 2015, Prince George city council voted to change the name of the city’s main civic park to Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park in recognition of that history. The reflection brought on by the findings at Kamloops Indian Residential School would provide an opportunity for another name change.
Shortly after the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc shared their findings, a post began circulating on social media regarding a letter written by the principal of the Kamoops Indian Residential School’s principal, Reverend J. Fergus O’Grady, in 1948. In it, O’Grady informed parents of children at the school that they were to be returned promptly at the end of Christmas vacation, or else they would not be able to see them the following year: “This is a privilege which is being granted,” he said of parents seeing their children over the holidays.
Left: Bishop J. Fergus O’Grady in the Prince George Citizen, 1986, displaying his honourary law degree from UBC honouring him for his religoius work with Indigenous people in northern B.C. Right: A letter from O’Grady in 1946 to parents of students at the Kamloops Residential School informating them that seeing their children is a “privilege” that can be revoked.
O’Grady’s connection to Prince George is a long and complex one, and you can read more about it here. The short version is that after Kamloops he moved furthern north where he served as the first-ever bishop of the Prince George Diocese, opened Prince George College (a Catholic high school that also boarded Indigenous students) and developing land that would come to be known as College Heights, today a residential and commercial neighbourhood marked by big box stores on the edge of town. He was honoured in many ways including having a street named after him: O’Grady Road.
In the aftermath of the Kamloops findings, and the circulation of O’Grady’s letter, Lheidli T’enneh chief Dolleen Logan formally asked the city to rename O’Grady Road to something else: “Our members and other Indigenous citizens of Prince George are forced to relieve residential school trauma every time we shop at stores in College Heights where O’Grady road is located,” she wrote in a letter to council. “If we are ever to begin a journey toward true reconciliation in Prince George, the name O’Grady Road must be changed.”
The other major news story of that summer, in Prince George, at least, was the growth of two homeless camps in the city’s downtown. While the city had long had people sleeping rough, the size and scope of these encampments had not been seen before: Dozens of people building semi-permanent structures on two empty lots: one near the courthouse, and another at the bottom of an embankment leading up to a residential neighbourhood.
An encampment that came to be know as Mocassin Flats built in Prince George over the summer of 2021
In response, the city attempted to take actions to shut down the camps, serving trespass notices and applying for a court injunction allowing them to forcibly remove residents.
This approach also earned rebukes from advocates who said the city was unfairly targeting vulnerable people. Among the groups to criticize these actions were the members of the First Nations Leadership Council, consisting of the B.C. Assembly of First Nations, the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs and the First Nations Summit.
“The homelessness crisis in Canada is complex, multifaceted, and cannot be addressed with these kinds of blunt and short-sighted approaches,” wrote B.C. AFN chief Terry Teegee, who lives in Prince George. “City Hall’s approach continually re-traumatizes these vulnerable people, many of whom are suffering from the intergenerational impacts of residential schools.”
A poster urges people to camp outside city hall to demonstrate unhappiness with policies targeting homeless encampments.
But the city moved forward with their attempts which, ultimately, earned them two losses in court: In October, a judge ruled the city had not been able to demonstrate there was adequate and appropriate shelter space to house everyone living on the streets, and so the larger camp should be allowed to stand. The city later demolished several structures in the camp anyway, earning them an admonishment from a second judge for violating the previous order and forcing an apology and possible future legal action.
In repeated surveys of the homeless population in Prince George, an overwhelming number identify as Indigenous. A 2021 point in time count placed the number at 82 per cent and other reports consistently place the number at 70 per cent or higher. The Indigenous population for the city as a whole is about 15 per cent.
Scholars and people with lived experience continuously link the disproportionate number of Indigenous people who are homeless to the legacy and ongoing action of colonization: Trauma, abuse, broken family ties, a loss of culture and sense of place. In my own interviews with people living in homeless camps, the majority either had parents who attended residential school, or attended themselves. For many people homelessness is, in the words of Teegee, an intergenerational impact of residential schools like the one run by Bishop O’Grady.
And that’s why Teegee was similarly critical of the city of Prince George’s decision to pass something it called a “safer streets” bylaw. The bylaw offered city workers the power to target and fine people sleeping in doorways and ATM shelters, those using drugs in public and those soliciting people for money or goods. Though city staff insisted they would use it for educational rather than punitive purposes, the bylaw does allow for those who violate its rules to be subject to “a maximum of $50,000 in fines” or six months incarceration.
And as luck would have it, both the decision on whether to pass the safer streets bylaw and the decision on whether to rename O’Grady Road would come on the same night.
Council meetings start with presentations from the public before getting down to business. On August 30, people opposed to the safer streets bylaw — many Indigenous, many homeless — gathered outside and drummed. Things got underway inside with a presentation by Teegee and the B.C. AFN, along with an academic from Toronto who provided an evidence-based argumentative that punitive action would not help solve the social problems the city was attempting to address. This was followed by presentations from Together We Stand, a grassroots advocacy group for homeless people and the Millar Addition Connaught Concerned Citizens Committee, which documented the problems people living near the homeless camp were facing and why they wanted more action to be taken. You can watch the meeting in full here and read a recap of it here.
One by one, city councillors hit many of the same talking points: They agreed there were problems, they agreed on a compassionate approach, they advocated for more housing. But they differed as to whether they saw the safer streets bylaw as part of the solution. Three councillors — Cori Ramsay, Murry Krause and Frank Everitt — argued it was simply an attempt to sweep poverty out of public view while failing to address the underlying problems, causing more harm in the process. The rest of those present (Garth Frizzell was away) said they agreed more needed to be done to help those living on the street but in the meantime more tools were needed to target people causing problems for other residents, and they believed this bylaw could help. It passed, 5-3, with mayor Lyn Hall and councillors Brian Skakun, Terri McConnachie, Kyle Sampson and Susan Scott voting in favour.
And then the night moved on to O’Grady Road. And on this, there was full agreement: Residential schools were a terrible thing, we must learn from our past, and even good intentions don’t mean what happened was right. We can’t undo our mistakes but we can learn from them and do better in the future. The road would be renamed. Reconciliation in action. Local government making change.
Today is Orange Shirt Day, the second National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. I woke up this morning and saw corporate accounts, sports teams and pretty much everyone in the public eye posting orange profile pics and talking about the importance of learning from our past and moving forward together. It’s pretty basic stuff at this point.
It’s also something I’m hearing as people campaign for local government elections happening in Prince George and across B.C on October 15. More politicians are being asked how they would commit to reconciliation if they were elected. And the answers are generally similar: Working together, consulting with local First Nations, remembering our history.
But far more attention this election is going to be paid to the issues that people complain about in local Facebook groups and on the news, the same ones that prompted the safer streets bylaw in the first place: Public safety concerns, open drug use, panhandling, people sleeping on sidewalks and setting up camps on public property.
I wrote this a year and a month ago, following that city council meeting:
In a city where 15 percent of the population (Stats Canada) is Indigenous, there are zero Indigenous representatives at the council table. But there were Indigenous people present at the meeting
In a rare step, British Columbia Assembly of First Nations chief Terry Teegee was an intervener in this – opposed to the bylaw. Outside city hall there was drumming and Indigenous people opposed to the bylaw. All of this happened on unceded, stolen, Lheidli T’enneh land
The clear message from Indigenous leadership, as well as grassroots Indigenous people, who made their voices heard on this issue, was to not pass the bylaw.
And, let’s be clear: the people impacted by this bylaw will be predominantly, nearly exclusively, Indigenous. I say this as someone who works downtown, who visits the homeless camps, who talks to people camped on sidewalks (also now illegal)
when you hear about “intergenerational trauma” and the “lasting impacts of residential schools”, this is it. To a person, everyone I talk to is either a survivor or family member of a survivor, of residential schools, of the 60s scoop, of the Millenial scoop, the foster system
none of this is to pretend there aren’t problems. No one sees a tent city as a solution. No one thinks people sleeping on sidewalks is a good thing. And there is violence – of which vulnerable, homeless people are disproportionately victims
But like I said, I’m not looking to relitigate the bylaw itself. It’s about how the decision was made and more importantly – how it was made despite the express wishes and recommendations of Indigenous people who said this will further segment society, target those in poverty..
.. people who are themselves overwhelmingingly Indigenous, with direct and secondary ties to the residential school system.
And then comes the request to rename the street
And did that go quick. Every councillor jumped in the queue to say how terrible residential schools were and renaming this was a no-brainer. Comments about knowing things now we didn’t know then, not being unable to undo the mistakes of the past but being able to do better now
And I can’t help but think about how for generations, political leaders and mainstream/white society ignored the voices of Indigenous people when they were talking about how bad residential schools were. And whose voices were ignored when it came to passing that bylaw
and look, I have no doubt that those in favour of the bylaw have good intentions. That they believe it will help. But we also have a clear illustration of how people with good intentions, wanting to help, have done incredible harm in the past
And that’s something to reflect on
I’m still thinking about it today.
Content warning: Rape, abuse, child death
Note: A national Indian Residential School Crisis Line has been set up to provide support for residential school students and their families. Access emotional and crisis referral services by calling the 24-hour national crisis line: 1-866-925-4419.
Donations to the Indian Residential School Survivors Society can be made here.
On Jan. 2, 1937, four boys — two aged seven, and an eight-and-nine-year-old — were found dead, their bodies frozen trying to cross Fraser Lake northwest of Prince George after running away from the nearby Lejac Residential School in the hopes of seeing their families following Christmas.
On November 18, 1948, Reverend J. Fergus O’Grady, principal of the Kamloops Residential School, wrote the following letter to the parents of children who were forced to attend the institution he ran telling them that seeing their kids at Christmas is a privilege, and one which could be revoked.
Dear Parents,
It will be your privilege this year to have your children spend Christmas at home with you. The holidays will be extend from DECEMBER 18th to JANUARY 3rd. This is a privilege which is being granted if you observe the following regulations of the Indian Department.
1) THE TRANSPORTATION TO THE HOME AND BACK TO THE SCHOOL MUST BE PAID BY THE PARENTS.
The parents must come themselves to get their own children. If they are unable to come they must send a letter to the Principal of the school stating that the parents of other children from the same Reserve may bring them home. The children will not be allowed to go home alone on the train or bus.2) THE PARENTS MUST BRING THE CHILDREN BACK TO SCHOOL STRICTLY ON TIME.
If the children are not returned to School on time they will not be allowed to go home for Christmas next year.I ask that you observe the above regulations in order that this privilege of going home for Christmas may be continued from year to year. It will be a joy also for your children and it will bring added cheer and happiness to your home.
O’Grady almost certainly would have been aware of the deaths at Lejac. He was ordained in Ottawa in 1934 before coming to B.C., and the loss of the four boys three years later was national news, as well as the subject of a federal investigation that uncovered issues of abuse throughout the residential school system.
And yet there he was, informing parents that the ability to see their children at Christmas was a “privilege”, and one that would be taken away should the kids not be returned to the school on time.
* * *
When I was growing up, Prince George was still home to O’Grady High School, a private Catholic school that shut down partway through my grade ten year. We still have an O’Grady Road and last year O’Grady Heights, a major new apartment complex, began welcoming residents. But until this past week, I had never given any thought to where the O’Grady name from until I saw his letter making the rounds on social media following news that the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation believes they have found the remains of 215 children, some as young as three, in unmarked graves around the former Kamloops Residential School over which O’Grady once presided.
I don’t know whether any of these children died during O’Grady’s tenure in Kamloops (forensic analysis is underway in an attempt to learn more details about who they were) but it’s not outside the realm of possibility. The Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc were searching the grounds based on the oral testimony of residential school survivors who said children disappeared, so this is living memory, not ancient history. However, his time in Kamloops was brief compared to his long career in Prince George as the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Northern B.C.
According to an article in the Prince George Citizen written upon his retirement in 1986, J. Fergus O’Grady became the fist-ever Bishop of the Prince George Diocese in 1956 and soon set up about building more Catholic schools across the north and interior in B.C., most notably Prince George College which would later become O’Grady. Most of these schools were not residential and, in fact, O’Grady was praised for having the “foresight and energy” to establish the first high school in B.C. to register “both native and white students.” He also received an honourary law degree from UBC for his “religious work in the area, particularly with Native Indians.”
As for regrets, the Bishop told the paper he has “relatively few.”
I found a more nuanced examination of O’Grady’s legacy in two places: a 2012 Vancouver Sun article looking at allegations of abuse levelled against VanOC CEO John Furlong (for the purposes of this blog post I will note that these allegations have neither been proven in court nor have they been disproven in court) and a 2001 master’s thesis by minister and a former O’Grady High student Kevin Edward Beliveau titled “Belief, Backbone and Bulldozers! Fergus O’Grady’s Vision of Catholic ‘Integrated’ Education In Northern British Columbia 1956-1989“.
The Sun article, by Lori Culbert and Gord Hoekstra, uses the Furlong story to launch into a longer examination of the Catholic Church in Prince George and the surrounding area under the leadership of O’Grady, who recruited thousands of young Catholic volunteers from other parts of the world to work in his schools in northern B.C. which for administrative purposes stretched from the central interior region all the way to Prince Rupert.
“That O’Grady was well-liked and well-intentioned is almost universally accepted, including by many band leaders and former native students.
“But his goal of integration appears to have failed, as many former native students say they never felt equal to white children and complain of mistreatment by some of the nuns and volunteer teachers.
“Some academics argue native students’ experiences at the Catholic day schools were not dissimilar to the assimilation that was the focus of B.C.’s notorious residential schools.”
Indigenous students in this article recall harsh treatment, verbal abuse, physical punishment and the sense that they had no choice but to attend the Catholic schools under O’Grady’s authority. That sort of testimony is readily available from former students elsewhere, including testimony collected in the Truth and Reconcilation Commission of Canada’s final report. I have heard it myself at the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girl’s Inquiry, and virtually any time Indigenous people in the Prince George region are speaking about their history or trauma — if they didn’t attend Lejac they have a parent or grandparent or older sibling or cousin who did, and it continues to impact them and their families.
Unlike Lejac, Prince George College was not a residential school. Nor were the majority of the schools built under O’Grady’s leadership. Instead, according to Beliveau’s thesis, “Three decades of residential school administration inclined him to support the closure of residential schools,” in favour of integrated ones that saw Indigenous and non-Indenous students learning together.
UPDATE: It’s been pointed out to me, and indeed I should have included this originally, that while Prince George College was not a residential school, it has residences on it and Indigenous children from reserves throughout the north and interior were sent to live there. And as is noted by Beliveau’s thesis, having been pushed into the Catholic system themselves, many parents may not have felt that they had any choice but to send their children to the only Catholic high school available.
In my quick search I was able to find several references O’Grady made in interviews of his desire to integrate. Speaking to the Vancouver Sun in 1969, for example, he said, “The Indians want to integrate but they don’t want to lose their identity… we hope to preserve their crafts and traditions.”
But Believeau notes that this attitude may also not have been as wholly progressive as it seems. For one, “integration” was much closer to “assimilation” with Indigenous students expected to adapt to Catholic/Canadian culture and language but white students not being expected to learn much about Indigenous culture. And to the extent that Indigenous culture was incorporated into the school it seems to have been for show: a sort of Disney-fied version of Indigenous culture aimed at drumming up publicity and donations from Catholic communities across Canada and around the world:
“For example, the Los Angeles Times described Bishop O’Grady as “often in a fringed Indian jacket and mukluks”. It reminded readers that the diocese was “adjacent to Alaska and runs freely from the Pacific to Alberta!” An article in the newspaper of the archdiocese of Seattle highlighted “the problems of the poor, almost-destitute Indians of northern British Columbia”. No reference was made to the history of exploitation that caused this destitution. One account from the Glasgow Observer referred to the need to “help the Indian population in the area” of whom there are “about five or six different tribes, the predominant tribe being the Western Danes [sic]” . In time, campaigns claimed to recruit the largest group of lay mission helpers anywhere in the world.”
On another occassion, O’Grady recruited Jay Silverheels, the actor who played “Tonto” on the Lone Ranger television show, to come to town to open Prince George College’s library. In short this was very much a colonial project and the culture of Indigenous people was viewed through a colonial lens, under the wider mission of converting and ‘civilizing’ children.
And it worked: O’Grady is widely viewed as a fundraiser extraordinnaire, buying up land for the Catholic Church in the area of Prince George now known as College Heights. In fact that name came to be because of O’Grady: Prince George College, College Heights, described by the Vancouver Sun in 1979 as one of the then-booming cities largest housing development, being created in conjunction with the Catholic church. Likewise, Domano, the main road in the neighbourhood, was coined by O’Grady by taking the first two letters from the Latin phrase “Domane Mane Nobiscum” (“O Lord, Stay With Us)”. Domano was also the name of the construction company he started.
* * *
But this also brings us to another important point from Beliveau’s thesis: While O’Grady may or may not have had altruistic reasons for creating an integrated Catholic school in Prince George, he certainly had financial ones, as the federal government subsidized private schools for taking on Indigenous students.
“It is possible that Fergus O’Grady knew of the potential economic benefits of Aboriginal and “integrated” education from his days at Kamloops Indian Residential School in the 1930s.
“It was this shrewd business sense that strongly supported the presence of First Nations students, in particular, to offset some of the opening and operating costs of the institution – in essence, subsidizing Catholic education in northern B.C.“Because true integration never existed at Prince George College, First Nations families were in fact financially supporting Catholic endeavors in the region without the corresponding integration. A number of documents attest to this twofold “vision” of integration policies. One plan was to take advantage of federal funds earmarked to build and often maintain “joint” schools. The other plan was to attempt to integrate or in fact assimilate Native students into white society and to a European-created, “pan-Indian culture” by schooling Native students alongside white peers.”
Indeed, Beliveau notes that not long after these subsidizations ended, the number of Indigenous students recruited to O’Grady High declined and by 2001, it was closed forever. Around the same time the local Catholic diocese, which once owned huge tracts of College Heights, was in dire financial straits and selling off land to make way for Wal-Mart and Canadian Tire.
Beliveau’s thesis is well worth a read for anyone interested in O’Grady’s legacy or Prince George history. However, he himself acknowledges that his perspective is limited and does not include much in the way of Indigenous experience. Still, he notes:
“Yet, if Catholic missionaries believed that they had Natives’ “best interests” in mind, their educational work
in Canada and their efforts at working with Aboriginal youth were often destructive. O’Grady remains a complex
figure who appeared convinced that he was acting in the “best interests” of Aboriginal people. It has, however, been difficult to document any “benevolence”, particularly towards local Aboriginal people, because of a dearth of necessary correspondence. His missionary mindset was predicated on the assumption of European spiritual and cultural superiority.”
All of this said, he seems to have been well-liked. A Facebook page for O’Grady High is full of former students, many of whom are Indigenous, reminiscing about their time at Prince George College and the energetic Bishop, and when he died it was reported that members of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc attended to bless his grave.
* * *
None of this should be used to minimize the negative impacts of the Catholic and residential school system on Indigenous people in this region. I’ve already made note of some, but it is difficult to overstate it. Hundreds of lives lost, decades of abuse and trauma and the attempted erasure of entire cultures, well-intentioned or not. And if O’Grady was not among the worst offenders, his successor was.
Hubert O’Connor took over as head of the Prince George Diocese in 1986 and resigned in 1991 when he became the highest ranking Catholic official in the country to be charged with sex crimes. He was charged with sexually assaulting four Indigneous students who worked for him while he was principal of the Williams Lake Residential School between 1964 and 1968. Ultimately, he was convicted of rape and sexual assault against two of his victims.
I haven’t found any research about whether O’Grady was aware of or in any way took responsibility for O’Connor’s actions, although he would have been under his employ. Nor have I found any record of him acknowleding any of the other abuse documented to have taken place within his Diocese by teachers, staff and members of the church during his time in charge here. There have been other court cases and accusations about abuses at St. Mary’s, Prince George College and elsewhere during his tenure, though none I’ve found name him directly. And right now there is a human rights case that RCMP failed to adequately investigate when former students told them about abuses at both Immaculata Elementary and Prince George College. And while a former volunteer interviewed by the Vancouver Sun said she is confident he would not have condoned this behaviour, the fact remains that all of these abuses are said to have taken place while O’Grady was in charge.
* * *
The vast majority of this was unknown to me when I started doing research this weekend. I knew nothing of O’Grady or Prince George College and I had no idea that Prince George had been the site of one of the most significant convictions of a Catholic official in Canada. I’m writing this all down as a way to help organize the multiple sources and pieces of information I’ve been able to find so far.
At the same time, campaigns have already started to have UBC rescind O’Grady’s law degree and for Prince George to remove his name from street signs. I have no doubt this will, again, spark a debate about who we honour, how, who’s left out, and understanding our history as a whole. So here’s some you may not have known. And if there is a part of the story you think I’ve missed, please contact me on twitter or however you’d like.
Selected References:
So that was a year. Once again, I feel like my musical tastes are growing ever more detached from any semblance of the cultural pulse and this is the first time since I started doing this that I didn’t even make an effort at listening to all the big critical lists sifting for songs I may have missed before putting together my own. Instead this is a reflection of what I, personally, listened to and the points in time when I was most interested in discovering new music, namely January and the summer which, as it happens, were the points in time before the pandemic and when it was easiest to ignore.
I also won’t lie to you: a huge part of my musical discovery was done on the Lorem playlist on Spotify. It popped up one day on my feed and I was intrigued by its lack of description and placeholder name, and then thrilled to discover song after song by new artists I’d never heard of but immediately loved. But this isn’t all a curation of Lorem, there’s music from the #BlackLivesMatter movement in Toronto, some that reflects my status as an aging fan of the Canadian indie scene and more British dance stuff than normal.
There weren’t many albums that really got me to listen to them repeatedly but the ones that did I will vouch for strongly. They are:
For now this is just a Spotify playlist. I’ll probably curate the order and put up a Mixcloud link later but until then, if you’re looking for something new, hit shuffle and I hope you hear something you like.
Mura Masa – Teenage Headache Dreams (with Ellie Rowsell)
Tame Impala – Lost In Yesterday
Goody Grace – Scumbag (feat. blink-182) – Absofacto Remix
Caroline Rose – Feel The Way I Want
We Are The City – RIP
Mura Masa – Live Like We’re Dancing (with Georgia)
Selena Gomez – Dance Again
Arkells – Years In The Making
Jessie Reyez – LOVE IN THE DARK
100 gecs – ringtone (Remix) [feat. Charli XCX, Rico Nasty, Kero Kero Bonito]
Christine and the Queens – People, I’ve been sad
The Avalanches – Running Red Lights (feat. Rivers Cuomo & Pink Siifu)
L Devine – Boring People
The Strokes – The Adults Are Talking
Megan Thee Stallion – Savage Remix (feat. Beyoncé)
Fiona Apple – For Her
Clubhouse – Weekend
TOBi – 24 (Toronto Remix) (feat. Haviah Mighty, Shad, Jazz Cartier & Ejji Smith)
Yung Tory – Vancouver
Carly Rae Jepsen – Now I Don’t Hate California After All
mazie – no friends
Kamal. – blue
Froogle – Flow Now
Tycho Jones – Don’t Be Afraid
Jany Green – Little
Remi Wolf – Woo!
Car Seat Headrest – Can’t Cool Me Down
deadmau5 – Pomegranate
BLACKSTARKIDS – MUSIC TO SURF TO
HAIM – Don’t Wanna
Dominic Fike – Chicken Tenders
Justin Bieber – Holy (feat. Chance The Rapper)
Kathleen Edwards – Glenfern
Jamie xx – Idontknow
Danny Bell and His Disappointments – Doing Sound
The 1975 – If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know)
The Big Moon – Barcelona
Frazey Ford – Azad
Pantayo – Heto Na
July Talk – Identical Love
Late last Friday the city put out a news release that mayor and council had reached a “mutual agreement” with the city manager to part ways after five years.
What the news release didn’t say was that the move had come following multiple changes at city hall which included:
You know who did report these piece of information left out of the news release?
The local paper.
Sure, lots of other media outlets reported it as well, including yours truly. But it was the Prince George Citizen that truly led in scrutinizing costs, putting time and money into investigative reporting and filing freedom of information requests, a time-consuming process that involves going through various levels of bureaucracy to get access to documents that government bodies won’t willingly give you.
In a Twitter thread following the city’s release, editor Neil Godbout shared just a few of those articles from past years that allowed the public to know more about how their tax dollars were being spent, and the decision-making process behind them. Regardless of how you feel about that decision-making process or whether the money was being spent well, it’s undeniable that this is information we wouldn’t have had without the once-daily paper.
And I say once-daily with some trepidation because late last year the paper transitioned from a daily to a weekly. Sure, they still publish online every day but no one will tell you this was a decision made because of how robust their business is. There are fewer stories, fewer bylines and fewer opportunities for them to dig into the sort of stuff I documented above.
And what’s the cost? Well, in a massive study of cities that had, then lost, their daily newspapers the indication is that it could be thousands of dollars precisely because no one is watching city hall. As Kriston Capps reports for CityLab:
Without investigative daily reporters around to call bullshit on city hall, three years after a newspaper closes, that city or county’s municipal bond offering yields increased on average by 5.5 basis points, while bond yields in the secondary market increased by 6.4 basis points—statistically significant effects.
It is no exaggeration to say that without the Citizen filing freedom of information requests, the public would have no idea that more than $100,000 went to overtime pay. As it stands, it wound up being an election issue and is the subject of an upcoming review. No paper, and that $100,000 annually could well be a rolling part of our annual budget.
Even diminished, the Citizen is still doing work no one else is. It’s the only outlet regularly providing court coverage, school board reporting and heading out to regional district board meetings. Not all of these wind up being blockbuster stories, but they provide a way for the rest of us to know what’s going on at our public institutions — or, at the very least, know someone else is doing so. We’re lucky enough to have other media organizations with good reporters, but none of them have the institutional knowledge and background of a paper whose history goes back more than 100 years.
I recently bemoaned the fact that without the daily paper, my parents no longer had a day to get a quick scan of the local news. Godbout quickly pointed out that they do in fact have a daily email that replicates the layout of a front page, showcasing the top stories of the day. It’s free, but you also have the option of chipping in a few bucks of month to help support the paper’s continued existence.
Personally, I think it’s a good deal.
Matthew Grimm in the Des Moines Register writing on racism in his home state of Iowa:
There is an absolute correlation between insisting you live in utopia and demonizing people for pointing out hard realities that it’s not.
Stephanie Foo:
I’ve met so many incredible women of color who’ve left their newsrooms because they burned out from this job. These are women who survived war zones, worked 10-hour days for years, didn’t take vacations, had three internships going simultaneously, and sat stone-faced in response to aggressive and outright racist editors. And yes, they eventually decided that their humanity and mental health were more important and left their job — a loss for the journalism world, considering their massive talent. Despite that, many of them struggled with shame afterward: maybe I wasn’t strong enough.
I’m fortunate in many ways, but I’ve approached burnout without having to worry about kids, major money issues or racism. People shouldn’t have to choose between their desired job and their well-being but they often do and when they choose well-being it isn’t a failure on their part.
I’m linking to the discussion in a forum rather than the piece itself because I find people’s reactions more interesting, and there’s lots of good thoughts in the comments. Myself: It’s cool to see the old favourites shook up (The Beatles/Stones/Dylan much lower), especially since I used lists like this to shape my own musical discovery nearly two decades ago. I am surprised at some choices, like why Pet Sounds remains at number two while Sgt. Pepper’s (the former number one) plummets to 24. I’ve always thought both benefited from being technically impressive for their time so as fewer people who experienced that shape these lists, it makes sense for each to drop, but Pet Sounds is the only old favourite to really retain a top spot.
Also, no shade to Harry Styles, but was it even a top album of the year? I can’t help but feel like if this were a couple years ago, it would have been Justin Bieber and if it were the same attitude ten years ago, Timberlake. As one commentator put it:
2000s: Rolling Stone, you need more pop, come on, you need more…poptimisim…
2020s: Oh no Rolling Stone, noooo, too much poptimisim, nooooooo
Interesting interview that challenges some assumptions.
“So if we are going to object to harassment and threats, as we surely should, we should also make sure we have a large picture of where that is happening, who is most profoundly affected, and whether it is tolerated by those who should be opposing it.”
Robert Lloyd in the LA Times:
It’s only speculation on my part, but that its origins are modest rather than muscular, in the industrial sense, may have been to the series’ ultimate advantage, keeping it free from Hollywood glossiness and crushing expectations. If the show had been picked up by ABC or AMC or HBO, rather than Pop, its early numbers might have not been enough to keep it alive.
It’s origins in Canada probably helped, too, as CBC was going to keep making it.
Lloyd’s description of what sets this apart from the typical rich fish out of water story is also exactly right.
The Roses remain very much themselves; the bemusement and frustration with which the family and the townsfolk regard one another is there until the end. But they are less toxic, more trusting, no longer entitled. They are not reformed, because they never needed reforming, only enlarged, deepened and enlightened.
Schitt’s Creek on Twitter:
With Catherine O’Hara, Eugene Levy, Dan Levy and Annie Murphy winning their #Emmys tonight, that means our little Canadian show is the first comedy OR drama to ~ever~ sweep all four acting categories, and that is absolutely wild
So well-deserved. Not just acting but also writing, directing and outstanding comedy series. You can watch each of the acceptance speeches in this thread.
With the pandemic, I’ve been thinking a lot about where I live. In lots of ways I feel validated: when my partner had to stop working the decision to get a place that we knew we could afford on one person’s wages paid off and the proximity of multiple parks was a godsend. I’ve also been relieved we live somewhere that’s still big enough for things to stay open to a degree– lots of local restaurants, a bit of entertainment and so on. I’m not alone in this reflection.
Living in Calgary, Jen Gerson writes In Praise of Second-Tier Cities that, “I discovered that I don’t need very much from a city to be happy in it. I need a good coffee shop; a bookstore to browse; a few fun streets to wander around once in a while.”
And in London, Ontario, Sameer Vasta writes,
“In many ways, quarantine living has put our cities on an equal level. When we spend most of our days in our home, when we cook instead of going out to eat, when we interact with people through the screen instead of in shops, when poetry readings are done online instead of in a bookshop, it almost doesn’t matter what city you call home. What matters, instead, is the space (big or small) you’ve created for yourself…
“Look around you—what kind of town have you built for yourself?”
– Ricky, 25, from Long Island gets to the heart of Why Grown Ass Men Get So Emotional About Carly Rae Jepsen in MEL Magazine.
I wouldn’t say I get emotional but it’s absolutely true: At first I dismissed “Call Me Maybe” as a bit of fluff but at some point the strings got to me. Then E•MO•TION came out and it was like…. wait, this is good? Part of it, too, is if you ARE (or at least if you were, it’s become less strange now) a grown-ass man who likes Carly Rae Jepsen people have more questions for you than if you are hyping up a punk band from Toronto or bedroom indie.
Note: I wrote this in January 2019 for my column in Thimbleberry Magazine. With the recent call from the PGSO for a permanent performance space downtown, I am republishing it here.
In 2017, voters in Prince George gave city council the green light to move forward with plans to decommission the Four Seasons Leisure Pool downtown and replace it with a new one across the street. When that happens, the city will be left with another question that, so far, has gone unanswered: what happens to the existing pool site, a large, publicly-owned space in a downtown that after several decades of decline seems to once again be on the upswing?
This question becomes more interesting when you consider the pool sits in a cluster of public projects constructed over the course of five decades, each reflecting a combination of the city’s ambitions and self-image.
First, the pool: it was the result of a private fundraising campaign held in 1969 which required citizens and businesses to come up with roughly half of the $780,000 price tag for what was considered a luxury item of limited use. By June 1970, the pool was open and the public was lining up two hours at a time to get in, despite an outdoor pool being readily available in the summer months. Soon there were complaints of overcrowding, and swimming lessons were a hot commodity for those wanting to take advantage of what the Prince George Citizen called “a jewel” whose opening meant “Prince George must out-status… the majority of other cities in the province.”
As the pool was being approved, however, another proposal was being shelved: a mini-plaza in the same area, containing benches, shrubs, a clock tower and other amenities aimed at creating an outdoor space downtown. “Local bands could be encouraged to give performances… in the winter it would be a delightful area to have public skating,” wrote an excited councillor Lorne McCuish of the idea before it was voted down due to costs.
The groundwork to create this plaza came in 1981, with the opening of the multi-storey public library. Previously, the city’s “skills and resource centre” was housed in a building on Brunswick Street, but by the 1970s the need for a larger space had become clear. “The library will have to expand or grow or it will stagnate,” chief librarian (and future mayor) John Backhouse told the Citizen in 1977.
That same year, a referendum was held over whether voters preferred to expand the current location or take the costlier step of paying for a new building on the site of what was then being called the Cultural-Convention Centre Masterplan. Voters went with the masterplan and the current library came into being with “the cost per person… less than a package of cigarettes a month,” to borrow the words from an advertisement announcing its opening. Again, the city had decided it was the sort of place to build ambitious public facilities, not simply tape up existing ones.
The next step forward was the opening of the Prince George Civic and Conference Centre in 1994. The “conference” portion of the name is new, added in 2016 to better market the building to event organizers, but the goal has been the same since day one: to turn Prince George into a city that can host large-scale conferences, trade shows and other indoor events. Upon its opening, a multi-page supplement was sent out to subscribers of the Citizen touting the centre’s design, size, and potential. The front page of this supplement was an illustration of fireworks going off while two large spotlights illuminate the clocktower against the downtown skyline with the words, “The Time Has Come”. The message here was much the same as when the pool opened two decades prior: this is no longer a little northern town, this is a City worthy of respect.
That message was expanded on further in 2000 when the Two Rivers Art Gallery opened opposite the centre, acting as a repository of regional art while bringing in exhibits from painters, sculptors and more from across the country, a reflection of the city’s growing cultural ambitions. However, I’d argue McCuish’s vision was most fully realized in 2014 as Prince George prepared to host the 2015 Canada Winter Games.
Until then, the plaza was a largely unornamented cement lot: fine for organized events but not exactly the sort of place where one might go to sit and think on a summer day. But with hundreds of visitors coming to town, change came in the form of both style and function. Scattered seating was added, as were gardens and lights, creating a more welcoming environment day and night. The goal was to present Prince George as a Host City, one which can welcome hundreds of visitors and entertain them besides, which it did night after night during the tournament with free musical acts from across the country. It then repeated the trick in 2017 with a series of summer concerts, bringing in food trucks and presenting a vision for what the area could be: vibrant, welcoming and accessible to people from all walks of life.
The stylistic changes were no less important. Previously blank concrete columns were decorated with stories and archival photos from the city’s history, while others received artwork designed by fellow Thimbleberry contributor Jennifer Annaïs Pighin depicting the clans of the Lheidli T’enneh First Nation. Elsewhere, Dakelh words run along the ground alongside French and English, and at the plaza’s centre sits a work titled The Legacy Prayer Drum which, along with a maple leaf representing Canada, incorporates several aspects of Lheidli symbology.
Again, this is a new version of how the city would present itself to residents and visitors alike. It clearly announces the Lheidli T’enneh existed on this land prior to European settlement which, when you think about it, is something of a revolutionary act considering how long it’s been denied. Whether this symbolic step has come with the tangible change needed to earn this presentation is open to debate, but that’s another column altogether.
For now, let’s go back to the site of the Four Seasons Pool. In the coming years, its possible replacements will likely be the subject of debate, just as every previous addition to this area has been. And in the lead up to that discussion, I’d encourage you to head over to this plaza, take a look around and ask: what should this city become next?
Ad nauseam
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