Gordon Gilchrist and comments about immigrants
The Great Gilchrist has been much in the news lately over his comments in the local press about immigrants. There are calls for his resignation before the Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board. If El Gordo does exit ungracefully and under a cloud it won’t be the first time. Check this link from the Parliament of Canada. On the left side there’s a heading called ‘Deaths and Resignation’. Click on it and up comes alist of the dead and disgraced. Gordon Gilchrist falls into the latter catagory because of his conviction on income tax evasion. Ergo, Gordo’s a convicted criminal. So….how is it he ever managed to get himself on the schoolboard in the first place? Secondly, what kind of ego does a convicted criminal have to have to (a) demand that those under his command -like teachers- undergo criminal record checks, but not him and (b) make blanket public accusations connecting immigrants and criminal activity.Here’s your hat, Gorf. What’s your rush?
March 3rd, 2008 at 3:25 pm
And furthermore, in keeping with family tradition, Steve Gilchrist (son of) got the hobnail boot from Mike Harris when he, Steve, failed to disclose his own criminal record gained with dear ol’ Dad in the same Canadian Tire store income tax evasion scandal.
No, really, ask yourselves, what kind of jerk does it take (or did it take) to get kicked out of Mike Harris’s caucus? I mean….you’d REALLY have to be special, wouldn’t you?
And now….Max LeMarchant, land developer, serves up his whole reputation to publicly ride to the rescue of Gordo. Dyed-in-the-wool Conservatives. What can you do, eh? Sadly, you can’t even save them from themselves.
March 3rd, 2008 at 4:58 pm
So who wants to save them? I certainly don’t. Let them all fall back into the swamp of their prehistoric world view, where the more evolved among us can watch them writhe and bellow in agony as they sink down and ever deeper into their own fetid muck, finally disappearing forever.
Wow, I feel much better now, having indulged in that little fantasy. It’s a heart warming vision too, kind of makes me smile.
March 3rd, 2008 at 9:37 pm
“fetid muck” Hehhehheh…
Yezzzz, Simpson, indeed. We’ll give them fetid muck. Yezzzzz. Fetid Muck. Hehhehheh…
March 4th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Except Conservatives, like all the people you are wanting to save from themselves, are also actual real live people too. And believe it or not, all Conservatives I know, do actually care about other people - they just don’t think the problems of the world are solved by taking money from hard working taxpayers and donating it to others in need. It’s a variation of the old adage - don’t give the poor fish - teach them how to fish. Don’t assume that everyone who disagrees with you is an ogre. You are dead wrong.
March 4th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Actually, it’s probably closer to: teach them how to fish then steal the fish and refuse to testify before a parliamentary ethics committee -investigating missing fish- on what role was played by whom regarding the disappearance of the fish, which, strangely, were handed over in a plain brown envelope in a swank hotel room.
Well….something like that anyway….
March 5th, 2008 at 9:50 am
Now let’s see - teach them to fish. Our Employment Insurance fund, currently standing with a 50 odd billion surplus, has grown fat for many years while payouts to the unemployed, especially in Ontario, have plummeted.
Have the Feds ever used that cash to develop and expand skill training programs so that the unemployed can take their new skills (like fishing) to employers and thrive and prosper in new jobs?
HELL NO!
Better to use it to pay down the debt while denying the disadvantaged any opportunity to succeed. At the same time, the social safety net has been shredded, guaranteeing that once a person falls into poverty, it’s amost impossible to climb back out.
Just to spread credit around for this sorry state of affairs, let me acknowledge that the former governments of Chretien and Paul Martin played a key role in this disaster and deserve a mention here too.
Teach them to fish indeed. A fine sentiment and one I wish our political masters would take up as their most important task. All of us would be better off and we could spend our energies on other issues like the environment, the other big disaster waiting in the wings.
March 5th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
The “environment”? What the heck IS that anyways?
I used to drive trains for VIA Rail. The other day I went over to Cobourg station and picked up a handy little VIA pocket schedule. I picked it up for a friend because, as someone who is concerned for the environment, I refuse to take a VIA train.
The schedule was so treacly sick with its chlorophyll/leaf/green cover motif I just about threw up. VIA ‘green’? What a laugh. Half empty trains half the time all pulled by 16-cylinder diesel powered electrical generators on wheels. Thats right: The diesel turns a huge main generator which produces electricity that gets fed to huge electric motors hanging on the axles. Coal was more environmentally sensitive than these behemoths. Behemothe, incidently, that are allowed to idle for hours on end in Kingston, Ottawa, Windsor, Toronto -you name it.
BUT!!!! Because VIA has, with your money, managed to scare the livin’ bejesus out of anybody thinking of buying a -gasp!- car, we all think we’re saving the planet by taking a VIA train. Believe me, I know, I worked there. How much packaging garbage do you think is created on every train re their crummy sandwiches, their bottled water, their styrofoam plates? How much of that crap do you actually think they recycle?
Go ahead -save the world. Take the train. I’ll drive thanks.
That’s the trouble with the whole ‘environmental’ emergency. It’s half marketing ploy half scare tactic. There’s big bucks in making people think they’re doing the right thing, playing on their built-in guilt complexes. Take a good look -I mean a REALLY good look at the number of products on your supermarket shelf that use the word ‘green’ in their labels. Everything is green. Christ, Selsun Blue is green. Bleach is green. Everything is green. But read the labels. Almost nothing (except the label) has actually changed. Everything is just as toxic now as it was in 1955. But we buy both the product and the hype. We buy it because we’ve been scared into buying it. It’s a hoax. Lay all the world’s experts on global warming end-to-end and I gaurantee you -they’ll never reach a conclusion.
No one has the right to self-satisfaction in this deal unless the live in a Himalayan yurt and eat nothing but smallish rocks. There’s only one kind of pollution on the face of this earth and that’s us.
Yeah….1955. That’s about the same time Pogo, using his inverted telescope from the prow of his flat-bottomed Okeefenokee swamp boat, surveyed the scene and declared “I has seen the enemy -and they is us.”
March 5th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Ah yes - saving the environment. I get the distinct impression that the real objective is to “save” it FOR us rather than FROM us, as the hype would have us believe. Well dear Mother Nature has a few surprises up her sleeves. She knows that we humans, who are creating such a ruckus on her planet are driven more by by self-interest than by any inconvenient concern for something far greater in the overall scheme of things. She knows full well that the very actions of humans that are causing all this ‘harm’ to our environment will ultimately bring about our own demise, thus removing at least some of the true cause of global change. (The ‘harm’ I refer to is actually better described as ‘danger to our own survival’.) Once the perpetrators are removed, things will eventually stabilize and the earth will carry on in its yearly quest of the same spot in its endless orbit about the sun. Of course, somewhere in the perpetual timeline of the greater universe, other threats to earth’s balance will come and go as they too bring about their own demise by the selfish and self-destructive behaviour that seems to drive most living creatures. So, in the reality I see before us, the ‘harm’ we wreak upon our ‘environment’ simply ensures that we will not survive our own selfishness, as that ‘harm’ makes it impossible for us to continue to inhabit this world. To everything there is a cost, and to earth’s wellbeing, the cost is our removal. No big deal to anything or anybody other than humans. Ultimately, problem solved!
March 6th, 2008 at 7:24 am
Thought this post was somehow connected to Mr. Gilchrist and freedom of speech. A little restraint here may go a long way in promoting debate, rather than riding hobby horses off in …
Back to freedom of speech. Would have thought that those who use this blog to speak their minds would defend this freedom to the death. Even freedom of speech for Conservatives, tax evaders, and school board trustees. The man is no mealy-mouthed fence-sitter.
Some respect please and stop piling on.
March 6th, 2008 at 7:46 am
Tell it to The Globe&Mail there, Bucko. They piled on this morning (pg13) in an article by Caroline Alphonso. And yes, they mention the tax cheat stuff front and centre. Wow….between Conrad Black and Gordon Gilchrist who are we supposed to regard as our heroes anymore? Who are we supposed to fawningly admire and to whom are we going to pledge our fealty?
“stop piling on”. Ha! The guy’s crook, plain and simple. The question isn’t should he be removed from the board -it’s how he ever managed to get elected in the first place.
Geez….where’s my wallet? It was right here a minute ago. Gord! Gord! Didja see my wallet anywhere? Gord? Oh, Gordon…..
March 6th, 2008 at 8:46 am
Love the ‘whom’, but use it consistently.
March 6th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
I knew if I hung around here long enough a cunning linguist would eventually show up. My thanks for the advice.
March 8th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Really? Mr Gilchrist represents such a dire threat to our society? His letter allegedly hurt the feelings of some people and even made a grown woman cry. The horror! The horror!
What arrogance that Mr Gilchrist dared to defend himself at the Kawartha School Board meeting, and as a result, the otherwise strong and brave member from the Community and Race Relations Committee, Andrea Fatona, broke down into tears, “I was crying in there as he continued to defend his racism.”
It used to be that when I was on the verge of tears, I’d run to the washroom for a good cry, come out at bit later, refreshed and with my pompadour well groomed, ready to move on. However, we must realize that Ms Fatona’s maudlin breakdown, as Kevan Brownson of the Peterborough Coalition Against Poverty put it, is the reason why it is important to place “needs of the most vulnerable members of the public at the centre.”
After all, we seriously do not want Andrea Fatona to weep and wail again, and if the curtailment of freedom of speech will prevent the most thin-skinned, er, uh, the most vulnerable individuals from ever having to shed a tear again, then by golly, lets gag some dissident mouths and trim the tongues to politically correct mediocrity.
Ms Fatona called Gilchrist’s statements an “outrage” and pleaded for the continuation of “our safe and tolerant community.”
The Coalition Against Poverty weighed in by asserting that Mr Gilchrist’s comments reflected a “deeply racist view.” Wow! It’s worse than I thought. If Mr Gilchrist has a “deeply racist view” then I would be curious how the Coalition Against Poverty would characterize the writings of a Ku Klux Klanista. Perhaps they would say it is a doubly deep racist view. Oh doubleplusgood that we nipped that badthink in the bud.
Councillor Dean Pappas said that Mr Gilchrist’s letter “could actually jeopardize the city’s economic growth.” adding that such letters “are very dangerous.” I can hear the kindling now. I love the smell of political correctmess in the morning, it smells like, . . . totalitarianism.
Mike Ma of the Peterborough Community and Race Relations Committee claimed that Mr Gilchrist’s letter was “racist and ignorant” and has caused “serious damage” to the larger Peterborough and Kawartha community. Finally Mr Ma called on Mr Gilchrist to take “anti-oppression training”. And yes, a grief counsellor will always be on standby in the rare event that client decompression breaks into overwhelming remorse.
The press conference was taken right out of George Orwell’s 1984, specifically the scene of Two Minutes Hate.
People would assemble in an auditorium to express their hatred of Emmanuel (Gilchrist) Goldstein, the Enemy of the People. Orwell described him as a “renegade and backslider”, and “He was the primal traitor the earliest defiler of the Party’s purity. All subsequent crimes against the Party, all treacheries, acts of sabotage, heresies, deviations, sprang directly out of his teaching.”
Orwell had Goldstein ranting in “an attack so exaggerated and perverse that a child should have been able to see through it, and yet just plausible enough to fill one with an alarmed feeling that other people, less level-headed than oneself, might be taken in by it. He was abusing BIG BROTHER”. Orwell noted that his rant was presented “in rapid polysyllabic speech which was a sort of parody of the habitual style of the orators of the Party, and even contained Newspeak words: more Newspeak words, indeed, than any Party member would normally use in real life.”
Thank God [or Allah, if I know what’s good for me] for the unelected bureaucraps and other groups in the pay of the government, they are the avante garde. “A day never passed when spies and saboteurs acting under his directions were not unmasked by the Thought Police.”
Finally, Orwell had this to say about Two Minutes Hate: “The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but, on the contrary, that it was impossible to avoid joining in. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness.”
March 24th, 2008 at 10:32 am
Poetency!!!!! Standing ovation!!!!!!
Has anybody stopped to ponder “Were Mr. Gilchrists comments true or false?”
March 24th, 2008 at 6:17 pm
It might interest those to know that the Press Conference a.k.a. Two Minutes Hate, at which Gordon Gilchrist was the target of hatred by the righteous, can be found on Youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gordon+gilchrist&search_type=
If that url does not work, then put GORDON GILCHRIST into the search box.
March 24th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
Furthermore, listen to Gordon Gilchrist being interviewed about his letters here: http://www.cfrb.com/player/player?mediapath=&type=mp3&fi=files%2Fsrimedia%2FGILCHRIST%20Interview.mp3&nid=679772&