Bell talks about ending the stigma surrounding mental illness. But when I needed time off to deal with my mental health, a Bell radio station fired me.
Journalists at Nova Scotia’s paper of record are heading back to the bargaining table with management. But after an acrimonious year on the picket line, can the two sides find labour peace?
Author Joseph Boyden ended his silence Wednesday, giving interviews on his claims of Native heritage to Globe and Mail and CBC Radio.
In both interviews, Boyden chose his interviewer. For the Globe it was Books editor Mark Medley. You can read the Globe interview here. For CBC’s q, Boyden’s interviewer was his “friend” Candy Palmater. You can listen to the full q interview here.
Boyden defended his claims to Indigenous ancestry in both interviews in a the same way: “A small part of me is Indigenous, but it’s a big part of who I am.”
Here’s some reaction to the two interviews:
APTN tweeted Wednesday it has asked Boyden on multiple occasions for an interview. Boyden has yet to take the outlet up on its requests.
Author @josephboyden is in the media responding to this story by @JorgeBarrera https://t.co/wyQ5ojPQh4@APTNNews has requested a # of invus pic.twitter.com/NXByRJTJ52
— APTN News (@APTNNews) January 11, 2017
Robert Jago is a researcher who was one of the first to raise question about Boyden’s claims. He’s written for CANADALAND why he did. Jago tweeted as he listened to the interview starting here. His concluding thought:
https://twitter.com/rjjago/status/819374219083579392
Adam Gaudry, on the faculty of University of Alberta’s Native Studies department, had a detailed breakdown of the CBC interview, starting here:
https://twitter.com/adamgaudry/status/819349934201769984
Author Aaron Paquette was not impressed:
https://twitter.com/aaronpaquette/status/819364277676961792
CANADALAND publisher Jesse Brown wonders why CBC let Boyden use them to further his PR push:
1. So it's quite clear that CBC played ball with @josephboyden in an exchange of "exclusive" access for friendly coverage on his terms.
— Jesse Brown (@JesseBrown) January 12, 2017
5.Of course the opposite is true. An accountability intvw comparing what has been represented to what is factual would be far more "real"
— Jesse Brown (@JesseBrown) January 12, 2017
Author and educator Debbie Reese added some context to Boyden’s claims of community adoption:
In his interview, Boyden referenced Native families that adopted him. That's complicated/complex topic that gets used in not-good ways.
— Debbie Reese (tribally enrolled, Nambé Pueblo) (@debreese) January 12, 2017
Comedian Ryan McMahon—who recently guested on Short Cuts—said:
https://twitter.com/RMComedy/status/819349309292511232
Elsewhere:
https://twitter.com/FancyBebamikawe/status/819341668478488577
Those Boyden interviews are painful. Why would CBC & Globe pander to that? Dude, buck up & sit down with APTN. Your life & career will go on
— sarahpetrescufernandes (@sarahpvictoria) January 12, 2017
https://twitter.com/Ian_Mosby/status/819514150141444096
Christie Blatchford wrote a column, published Friday in the National Post, excoriating UBC for cancelling an appearance by John Furlong at a fundraising event.
The university had received a complaint asserting that Furlong shouldn’t be given a platform to speak at UBC, because he’s been accused of abusing Aboriginal children when he was a teacher at Immaculata Elementary School in Burns Lake, B.C. You can read about those allegations in an article by freelance journalist Laura Robinson in the Georgia Straight. You can read more in CANADALAND’s coverage, too.
As we’ve written previously, none of the allegations in Robinson’s article have been tested in court. There were two independent civil claims against Furlong that were eventually dismissed. Those suits were brought by individuals who were not written about in Robinson’s story.
Robinson sued Furlong for defamation after he said she had a personal vendetta against him. Robinson lost that suit last year.
Furlong’s lawyer, former lawyer, and speaking agent have all made the case that Furlong has been treated unfairly by UBC in the pages of the Post and the Vancouver Sun. In her column, Blatchford takes up their cause, writing UBC should never have caved to any public complaints, as Furlong had been “vindicated” following Robinson’s defamation lawsuit. You can read Blatchford’s whole column here.
What follows is Robinson’s response, which she sent directly to Blatchford. Robinson also provided a copy to CANADALAND. We’ve lightly edited it to put some of the links directly in the text, correct a typo, and add a photo to provide context. Excerpts from Blatchford’s column have also been bolded to better differentiate them from the text of the letter.
Dear Ms. Blatchford:
Please find below corrections re: your December 30, 2016 column.
“The judge said, of the purported multiple declarations from alleged indigenous victims of Furlong’s alleged abusive conduct, only three had ever been ‘even minimally tested in a way that we, as a society, believe our system of justice requires when a citizen faces such serious and devastating allegations.’” Unfortunately, Justice Wedge made dozens of errors in fact. She incorrectly connected allegations of sexual abuse by Mr. Furlong, to my Georgia Straight article, which contained no allegations of sexual abuse. Two months after my story came out Grace Jessie West spoke to me for the first time and at no time did she allege sexual abuse to me. My reference to her was in my Jan. 2013 Response to Mr. Furlong’s Notice of Civil Claim that alleges she was afraid of him when he yelled “Don’t talk Indian” and that he “kicked her bottom.” While class lists do not show Ms. West at Immaculata School, Mr. Furlong has stated he traveled Hwy 16 in that time period as the diocese sent him to a number of schools “along the corridor.” Ms. West attended St. Joseph’s, in Smithers, just off Hwy 16.
Immaculata class list, highlighting West’s name, entered as evidence in the Furlong trial. Handout/National Observer
Daniel Morice contacted me for the first time ten months after the Georgia Straight article appeared. In September, 2013, a year after my article appeared, he gave me a signed on-the-record statement alleging, amongst other abuses, sexual abuse. Not surprisingly, he is not listed in the Georgia Straight story or my Response. Unfortunately, Justice Wedge wrote that he did not attend Immaculata when Mr. Furlong was there when in fact, the school’s class list, which Father Gregoire Beaudette swore in an affidavit was accurate, shows him in gr. 2 in 1969 and gr. 3 in ’69-70. This exhibit was before Justice Wedge. I testified that in his affidavit, Ronnie West swore he witnessed Mr. Furlong abusing “Dan Morris”. The class list shows Mr. West was in Dan Morice’s class. Justice Wedge disallowed all statements/affidavits made by First Nations people as hearsay; she would not let me speak to the details of my research such as how many people gave me affidavits/statements or what they said and when they said it. In dozens of instances she made incorrect statements about First Nations people: what they said, why they said it and when they said it. I reported Justice Wedge to the Canadian Judicial Council. Unlike affidavits from First Nations people, Father Beaudette’s affidavit was accepted by Justice Wedge and she still erred in the reading of the class-list. It was common practice to shuttle First Nations children from school to school. Mr. Morice could have easily been at Lejac Residential School, which was at Fraser Lake, three lakes east of Burns Lake, in the same years he attended Immaculata. One tragedy of this story is that, despite all his years in diocese schools, Mr. Morice is illiterate. He could not read the lengthy legal documents that stated when he attended Lejac.
Beverly Abraham was the third person to sue Mr. Furlong for sexual abuse. She dropped her claim, citing family stress as a number of people had recently died and her mother’s leg also had to be amputated. Mr. Furlong discontinued his suit against me, citing family stress.
The RCMP are presently conducting an investigation into Cpl. Mackie, who was responsible for the investigation of allegations made by Ms. Abraham. In July 2013, the RCMP’s Serious Crime Unit of Division K of Edmonton made 28 recommendations about Cpl. Mackie’s investigation: 22 of them were to open new investigations concerning allegations of abuse by Mr. Furlong made by other First Nations people. The 28th recommended a polygraph for Mr. Furlong: here and here. At trial Cpl. Mackie characterized these as “…general abuse or general hardship at Immaculata School” and “…just general practices and abuse at Immaculata School, if there was any.”
“There, attached to Kirchmeier’s three-page letter, among 50-odd pages, are some of the discredited sworn declarations, including the one from the woman whose criminal case was dismissed and who consented to her civil case also being dropped. The letter itself includes an excerpt from that declaration, and Kirchmeier wrote, ‘There has never been a forum in which the allegations were tested.’ The woman’s complaint was investigated and police couldn’t substantiate it, in large part because her story shifted so often. That decision was reviewed by the Alberta RCMP, lest the B.C. Mounties had goofed.” There are no discredited excerpts in Ms. Kirchmeirer’s letter to Dr. Ono. As stated above, Ms. Abraham dropped her case for reasons similar to Mr. Furlong. The RCMP’s investigation will, in part, determine whether or not Cpl. Mackie actually followed up on the 28 recommendations made by the Alberta RCMP concerning the investigation of Ms. Abraham’s allegation. The other seven affidavits cited in Ms. Kirchmeirer’s letter were not investigated or tested in court: they were disallowed by Justice Wedge.
“The male complainant, attempting to be paid twice, was clearly riding the residential school train.” As stated above, Mr. Morice is on the class lists of Immaculata School during the time period Mr. Furlong taught there: this fact is sworn to by Father Gregoire Beaudette, in an affidavit supplied by Mr. Furlong. Records in University of Manitoba’s National Centre for Truth & Reconciliation show a significant decrease in students attending Lejac during that same time period.
“Yet there was Kirchmeier, coolly asserting that this wasn’t so, and asking, ‘Why does UBC want to associate with a man whom at least 45 people say abused children,’ and worse, far worse, there was UBC cravenly caving to her demands within days.” Many more people contacted myself or the Georgia Straight after my story ran. Some of those statements, but by no means all, were excerpted in my January 2013 Response. Forty-five is a significant underrepresentation of the real number. They have not been investigated. The Assembly of First Nations passed Resolution #34 in July [2016]. It stated in part,
1. Direct the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) to urge the federal government and the RCMP to conduct, as expeditiously as possible, a thorough and impartial investigation into the allegations of abuse brought by Mr. Furlong’s former students.
2. Direct the AFN to urge the federal government to meet, as expeditiously as possible, with the affected members of Lake Babine Band Council, Burns Lake Band Council, and any other affected former students to hear their concerns about the conduct of investigations and to discuss with them acceptable remedies.
Perhaps UBC should use the funds that were to go to Mr. Furlong towards an invitation so the First Nations people who allege Mr. Furlong abused them at Immaculata or Prince George College can speak. Their voices may help dispel the endless speculation by those who have never interviewed or listened to them.
Sincerely,
Laura Robinson
***
editor@canadalandshow.com
To a growing number of newspaper and magazine pundits, the Joseph Boyden controversy is about political correctness run amok, a public “lynching,” outrage culture, a racial witch-hunt and petty literary jealousy from bitter Indigenous writers.
The rhetoric and name-calling seems to have obscured the question that must surely lie at the core of the matter: has Joseph Boyden misrepresented himself, or hasn’t he?
To answer that, let’s look at the various affiliations he has reportedly claimed over the years:
“Mi’kmaq”
Boyden says:
“To the best of my knowledge, I’ve never referred to myself as Mi’kmaq but in some interviews in the past I assume my Nipmuc heritage was misheard as Mi’kmaq.”
On its face this seems believable. Mi’kmaq is arguably a better known Nation than Nipmuc, so perhaps Boyden was simply misquoted, an honest mistake made not by him but by uninformed journalists.
Meanwhile, according to APTN investigative journalist Jorge Barrera, there is no record of Boyden calling himself “Nipmuc” until 2014.
What this means is that in order to believe Boyden, you must believe that until 2014, every journalist who called him Mi’kmaq was either mishearing him in the exact same way or copying and pasting from someone else who did. It also means that Boyden never took the time to correct any of these misquotes, which put false words in his own mouth about his own heritage.
This seems very unlikely — but perhaps not impossible. Then Peggy Blair dug up this Boyden quote, from a 2005 interview with New Orleans newspaper The Times-Picayune:
“[I’m] Mi’kmaq on my father’s side. They’re an east coast tribe in Canada,”
This is where Boyden’s explanation falls apart. The Nipmuc Nation is not Canadian, they are from parts of Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island. The Mi’kmaq are an east coast tribe from Canada, just as Boyden said.
This seems to prove that despite what Boyden recalls “to the best of [his] knowledge,” he did publicly claim he has Mi’kmaq ancestry, which (as he now concedes) he does not.
“Métis”
Here’s how Boyden explains why he has repeatedly called himself “Métis”:
“I’ve used the term Métis in the past when referring to myself as a mixed blood person. I do not trace my roots to Red River, and I apologize to any Red River Métis I’ve upset.”
This too seems credible at first glance. “Métis” is often used to describe anyone of mixed Indigenous and European heritage. But that catch-all use of the term tends to piss off members of the Métis Nation, one of the three recognized Aboriginal peoples in Canada.
By apologizing to the Métis Nation, Boyden is pleading guilty to a misdemeanour. Many people don’t know that “Métis” is such a specific and contentious term. But Boyden is not one of those people.
In fact, he’s literally an expert on Métis history. He wrote a book about it.
So it’s simply not credible that Boyden called himself “Métis” without knowing that he was claiming a connection to a Nation he has no link to.
“Wasauksing First Nation”
After APTN’s exposé, another claim made by Boyden surfaced. Muskrat Magazine editor Rebeka Tabobondung wrote about meeting Boyden at a writers’ conference and asking him what his home nation was.
“Wasauksing First Nation,” he replied.
But Tabobondung is from Wasauksing First Nation, and was in a position to easily check this claim.
“I later asked a respected community geneologist what his connection was,” Tabobondung wrote, “and she said she didn’t know.”
Boyden has yet to clarify whether he in fact claimed to be of Wasausking First Nation, and if so what he bases that claim on.
“Two Spirit”
Boyden has called himself “a bit of a two-spirit person.” In an interview with Nuvo magazine, he explained the term:
“I think I’m a bit of a two-spirit person. Home for me has to be both places—it has to be New Orleans, it [also] has to be Ontario. I would be very incomplete without either of those. It might be a little schizophrenic, but it works for me.”
But this is not what “two-spirit” means, as Boyden surely knows. The term applies to gender identity — people who are neither strictly male or female.
Calling himself “two-spirit” seems to be not so much a case of Boyden misrepresenting himself as much as it is a case of him casually appropriating an Indigenous term and bending it to his own purposes and brand.
***
editor@canadalandshow.com
2016 was another awful year for media in Canada.
Legacy newspapers continued their slow march to oblivion, laying off dozens of journalists in markets big and small. Postmedia executives took bonuses as its employees took buyouts. Reporters, editors, and photographers from Nova Scotia’s Chronicle Herald entered their second bitter winter on strike. The Guelph Mercury and the Nanaimo Daily News, two of the oldest regional newspapers in the country, ceased publication.
In a grasp for survival, Canadian newspapers stuck out their hands, hoping for a government bailout.
Maclean’s was diminished to a monthly schedule, where it will be slowly starved to death along with a handful of titles Rogers Publishing was unable to either sell or kill.
An owl was fucked to death in the fiction pages of The Walrus.
We covered it all and much more, but one media story dominated the traffic at CANADALAND: the sexual assault trial of Jian Ghomeshi. We know this because three of the top five most-read stories on our site were about the disgraced former Q host.
Here’s what you read the most this year:
1. Why Did Jian Ghomeshi Keep Lucy DeCoutere’s Letter?
The former CBC host kept DeCoutere’s handwritten letter to him for 13 years. She was never his girlfriend. They never had sex. Given what was heard at Ghomeshi’s trial, it’s hard to imagine he was carrying a flame for her. So, CANADALAND publisher Jesse Brown asks, why did he hold on to it for more than a decade?
2. Let’s Talk About How My Job at Bell Gave Me Mental Health Issues and No Benefits
Bell makes a big show every year of how much it cares about mental health issues with it’s “Let’s Talk” campaign. But what’s Bell doing for its own employees? Karen K. Ho tells her story of needing help while working as a “permalancer” for the media giant.
3. Thoughts on Lucy DeCoutere from Jesse Brown
“At the time she came forward, Lucy had no reason to expect anything but scorn, doubt and anger from the public. She did it anyway.” A brief tweetstorm from our publisher on the strength required of DeCoutere to publicly take the stand against Ghomeshi.
4. We Found Out How Much the CBC Really Pays Mansbridge
Publicly, the salary listed for CBC’s chief correspondent is in the $80,000 range. But that can’t be right, can it? We found out what he’s really paid.
5. When Your Friend Is On the Stand at the Ghomeshi Trial
Writer Stacey May Fowles tells the story of what it was like to be there with, and for, DeCoutere in the courtroom as she testified.
***
editor@canadalandshow.com
EDITOR’S NOTE: APTN questioned Joseph Boyden’s claim to Native ancestry in an investigation posted to their website Friday headlined “Author Joseph Boyden’s shape-shifting Indigenous identity.” Boyden did not agree to an interview by APTN reporter Jorge Barrera, instead requesting they participate in a sharing circle. Boyden also provided a written statement to APTN defending his claims:
“Over the last few decades I, along with some siblings, have explored my family’s heritage. We’ve uncovered and traced a fascinating and personal genealogy, a genealogy often whitewashed of our Indigenous ancestry due to the destructive influences of colonialism…. While the majority of my blood comes from Europe and the Celtic region, there is Nipmuc ancestry on my father’s side, and Ojibwe ancestry on my mother’s.”
Robert Jago was one of the researchers who found evidence to question Boyden’s claims to Indigenous ancestry.
CANADALAND asked Jago to expand on a number of his tweets. His piece follows.
Two days ago I was given the opportunity to guest host at the Twitter account @IndigenousXca; it’s a shared account that each week is hosted by a different First Nations person. It’s a larger and more influential audience than I’m used to, and I chose to use it to bring out into the open what a lot of us Natives have been saying about Joseph Boyden privately, that we question his Native identity. What led many of us to think this is that the way in which Boyden has described his indigenous background is confused.
On his Speaker’s Bureau Profile, where you can hire Boyden to give his signature speech titled “The Aboriginal Experience”, Boyden is described as Metis, an identity he also claimed when he won the 2005 McNally Robinson Aboriginal Book of the Year Award and its $5000 prize. At Carleton University’s Voicing Aboriginal Stories conference, Boyden was described as Ojibwe. To CBC Aboriginal, he presented himself as Anishinabe and Nipmuc. APTN’s Jorge Barrera dug into Boyden’s lineage, and found nothing to substantiate any of these claims.
I've prepared a video to explore this issue some more. 30 pic.twitter.com/bMvrjTgKP8
— IndigenousXca Archived (@IndigenousXca) December 23, 2016
Boyden first came to my awareness a few years ago when I was dating a native woman named who shared a name that appeared in Boyden’s work.* This woman is a brilliant, and driven, PhD student in a field that Boyden effectively colonized with his loose retelling of the stories of Kateri Tekakwitha and Jean de Brebeuf.
Through her I got to see the Boyden effect up close. Boyden is very prominent, and a darling of Non-Native Canada. When he takes on a topic of importance to First Nations people, he drowns out other indigenous voices. For her it meant seeing herself and her work disappear from internet search results, replaced by Boyden’s work; work which Native writers such as Hayden King have criticized for their tired stereotypes of First Nations.
What brought me back to him and the issue of his identity was a tweet by Margaret Atwood in late November:
Confirmed @josephboyden that Steven Galloway is #indigenous + was adopted. @ubcaccountable Well known but not so far mentioned in the convo
— Margaret E Atwood (@MargaretAtwood) November 24, 2016
That tweet, bestowing indigeneity on former UBC professor Steven Galloway was part of her response to the controversy surrounding the letter that Boyden, a former UBC instructor, wrote in Galloway’s defense (covered by CANADALAND in more detail here). Galloway was fired after an investigation by UBC over claims of sexual impropriety.
I found that tweet to be literally, shout-at-the-screen enraging. In part because of the low regard it showed for First Nations people (was he assuming that we would overlook sexual harassment because the accused was “one of us”?), but more because Joseph Boyden seemed to have given himself the right to hand out “#indigenous” identity to whomever he pleases. Instead of treating it as a valuable inheritance that our parents and grandparents suffered and fought to maintain, Boyden trivialized it and cheapened it.
Many others were upset too:
https://twitter.com/GwenBenaway/status/801996378570444804
It seems like @MargaretAtwood is trying to make some weird lateral violence argument? (it's not rape culture/sexism if he's indigenous?)
— Gersande La Flèche (@gersandelf) November 25, 2016
https://twitter.com/BinesiM/status/801900079942684672
Fuck you, Atwood, and fuck you, Boyden. I am so absolutely done with you both.
— âpihtawikosisân (@apihtawikosisan) November 24, 2016
Following that controversy, Native people started more actively sharing information on Boyden and his background — working to answer the question: “what gives him the right?” It’s from that research that I discovered “Injun Joe.”
File photo of Injun Joe’s teepee.
There is no shortage of people who play Indian for notoriety. Grey Owl, Ward Churchill, and countless figures throughout history. For every white family that had a great grandma with high cheekbones, there was someone to spread the news that she was secretly a Cherokee Princess. The phenomenon was so widespread that in segregationist Virginia they had to amend their “racial purity” laws to add the “Pocahontas exception” which saved “good” white people from being lumped in with the “coloreds” and discriminated against just because they had a mythical Indian Princess in their distant past.
What native impersonators like Grey Owl and Ward Churchill shared, besides a love of feathered head gear, was a persona very similar to Boyden’s. That is to say, dour, and focused exclusively on grievance and tragedy. Look at Boyden’s Maclean’s articles about First Nations, and you’ll see that it all fits into the 3-D (drum, dead, drunk) stereotype. Contrast Boyden’s public persona with his equally safe but unquestionably Native equivalent, Wab Kinew’s. With Kinew you see more love of culture and people than focus on grievances.
Less dour, but still reflecting the Indian stereotypes of his era, Injun Joe, AKA Erl Boyden, was a figure in the same vein as Grey Owl. He impersonated a Native in Algonquin Park in the 50s. Working from a teepee, under a sign that said ‘Ugh Indian Souvenirs’, Erl Boyden was eventually confronted by Macleans who did a lengthy expose on him titled “The Double Life of Injun Joe”.
The Double Life of Injun Joe, a Maclean’s article published in 1956.
The article showed Erl disparaging Canadian First Nations, admitting he had no Native blood, and laughing at the people who “Idiotically” took him for a real Native.
Erl’s lack of Indian blood was cited again in the reports of his trial. One day, while playing Indian in his teepee, Erl accidentally shot and killed a tourist, an event the tourist captured on film:
“Then the tall figure of Injun Joe … emerged from the trading post and slowly placed an Indian War bonnet on his head.… Slowly Injun Joe raised the rifle to his shoulder and at the second that the rifle was pointing straight at the movie camera the film broke into a white splotch and it was all over” —The Ottawa Journal, August 1, 1956
A 1956 Ottawa Journal article on the shooting death of a tourist.
Erl is a person that Boyden said he was inspired by, both by his traditional lifestyle and his love of travel and adventure. Erl’s past as Injun Joe had an early and lasting impact on the Boyden family.
“The [Boyden] family also owned an uncle’s war bonnet, and whenever kids in their suburban Toronto neighbourhood played cowboys and Indians a Boyden usually wanted the Indian part.” —The Walrus, April 17, 2014
As he’s on his father’s side, Erl is described by Joseph Boyden as either Ojibwe, Mi’kmaq, or Nipmuc. However, in every article on Injun Joe and in admissions by Erl himself, he had no Native blood whatsoever. I know some people might say that he chose to hide his Native blood because of the racism of the era, to those people I would say: the man lived in a teepee.
If Joseph Boyden had confined himself to being the official “Indian Friend” of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and George Stroumboulopoulos, we wouldn’t be discussing this now. But when he took it upon himself to cheapen an identity that he may have a tenuous or non-existent claim to, then we find ourselves forced to demand that Boyden clear up his inconsistencies and prove that he has the right to speak for us.
In the “Reconciliation” Era, Boyden has taken on a very prominent role. The path that he proposes for Reconciliation isn’t one I would choose, and before Non-Native Canadians latch on to it, they should find out if it comes from an actual Native, or from a fabulist.
***
@rjjago
*EDITOR’S NOTE: We removed a name from the story as the person mentioned preferred it was kept private.
Postmedia has removed a story about the Muslim Brotherhood’s ties to Canada from its SUN websites after settling a lawsuit.
In a statement posted to Facebook, Wael Haddara, a London, Ont. man briefly mentioned in the story, said he sued reporter Brian Daly and Quebecor Media Inc. over an article headlined “Muslim Brotherhood under the microscope in Canada.” The SUN papers were bought by Postmedia from QMI in 2015.
A link Haddara provided to the story leads to an error page on the Toronto SUN website. The story also appears to have been removed from other Sun papers. There is no retraction, correction, or any other sign of what was once published there, or why the link has gone dead.
“I am happy that the matter has now been settled in a mutually satisfactory manner. The terms of the settlement are confidential and hence I will not be able to share any further details, other than to say I am very satisfied with the outcome,” said Haddara, a former advisor to deposed Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi who lives in London, Ont.
When reached for further comment, Haddara said his Facebook statement was all he could say on the matter.
James Wallace, Postmedia’s vice-president in charge of the SUN papers, said he had “no comment” when asked about the story. He was also asked about the story’s disappearance, and whether an apology or correction would be issued, but only offered a “no comment.”
While the Brotherhood story can no longer be found on the Sun’s websites, CANADALAND was able to access a copy in Google cache. It focuses on an investigation by Daly into the Muslim Brotherhood’s fundraising activities in Canada. (The whole story can be read at the bottom of this post.)
Haddara wasn’t mentioned in the body of the story, but was listed at the end in a section titled “Other figures in Canada linked to the Muslim Brotherhood”:
Dr. Wael Haddara, intensive-care physician, London, Ont.
Key adviser to Egyptian president and Brotherhood stalwart Mohamed Morsi in 2012. Denies Brotherhood membership.
As president of the Muslim Association of Canada in 2011, Dr. Haddara endorsed the Brotherhood and the teachings of founder Hassan Al-Banna.
He was a founding director of IRFAN-Canada, and a board member until 2002. IRFAN was audited in 2004 and banned in 2011 for allegedly donating millions to Hamas.
When contacted by QMI Agency, he said he had no knowledge of IRFAN sending money to Hamas.
The whole story, as retrieved through Google cache:
Muslim Brotherhood under the microscope in Canada
BY BRIAN DALY, QMI AGENCY
FIRST POSTED: SATURDAY, MARCH 07, 2015 05:00 AM CST
MONTREAL — The federal government is coming under increased pressure to declare the Muslim Brotherhood a terror outfit, as more evidence piles up that the group has tentacles in Canada.
Its two main offshoots, Hamas and Egyptian Islamic Jihad, are listed as terrorist organizations in Canada.
The last Canadian organization to be added to the list is the alleged Hamas fundraiser IRFAN-Canada, which has worked closely with the Brotherhood, according to an RCMP warrant.
A source tells QMI that the Brotherhood itself, long considered the ideological godfather of Islamist terrorism, has also been under close watch by security officials.
A QMI investigation found that top Brotherhood leaders have lived in Canada for decades. They have led pro-Sharia organizations and sent money and resources to groups that the RCMP and the Canada Revenue Agency say are owned or controlled by Hamas.
Brotherhood-linked facilities have invited extremist speakers to Canada who defended child suicide bombers, amputation for thieves and stoning for adulterers.
A U.S. terror financing trial heard a secret Brotherhood plan for North America calling for a “grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house.”
Stockwell Day, who served in Stephen Harper’s cabinet for five years, tells QMI that Islamist ideology is being propagated in Canada by Brotherhood “sympathizers.”
“The government really has to drill down and look at statements from the Brotherhood,” the former public safety minister said from Vancouver, where he works as a consultant.
“If they find in fact that there’s a preponderance of evidence that shows that they are actively promoting, encouraging, glorifying, killing of Canadians … then they should be labelled as a terrorist group.”
Coptic Christians, whose churches have reportedly been torched by Muslim Brotherhood backers in Egypt, asked the Harper government last year to ban the Brotherhood.
School teacher Hassan Al-Banna founded the Brotherhood in Egypt in 1928, calling for a global Islamic caliphate.
Its intellectual leaders have gained worldwide renown as preachers, scholars and activists but Brotherhood supporters also have a long history of violence dating back to the 1948 assassination of Egyptian prime minister Mahmud al-Nuqrashi.
The Brotherhood creed, shared by Hamas, is: “Allah is our objective, the prophet is our leader, the Qur’an is our law, jihad is our way, dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”
While Brotherhood analysts say the group is unlikely to launch attacks on Canadian soil, there’s evidence the group is spreading extremist messages in Canada, aside from its alleged financing of terror abroad.
Documents tabled at a U.S. Hamas financing trial indicate the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) played a key role in spreading the Brotherhood message.
The Brotherhood lists ISNA U.S.A. as one of its 29 key North American affiliates. While ISNA’s Mississauga, Ont., office claims to be independent from the Indiana-based umbrella group, it shares board members both past and present with ISNA U.S.A., as well as a name and a logo.
QMI Agency found extremist materials at two ISNA locations in Canada.
A book advocating Palestinian terrorism and suicide bombings was displayed at the ISNA-owned Muslim Community of Quebec mosque in Montreal.
U.S. prosecutors at the 2007 Holy Land terrorism financing trial also tabled a phone directory, seized from a Brotherhood operative, which lists five Canadians among the top Brotherhood leaders in North America.
One of them, Dr. Jamal Badawi of Halifax, is a noted Muslim scholar, speaker and television host. His name appears three times in evidence at the Holy Land trial, the largest terrorist financing case in U.S. history.
Badawi has publicly preached nonviolence and tolerance. However, a compilation of his teachings on jamalbadawi.org makes it clear he believes establishing an Islamic state is a duty for Muslims.
“The Qur’an is full of indications that are direct, indirect, explicit, implicit that show without any shred of doubt that the establishment of Islamic order or rule is mandatory that Muslims must establish,” the website reads.
QMI Agency reached Badawi at his Halifax home, at the same phone number listed in the Brotherhood directory tabled at the Holy Land trial.
He insisted his links to the Brotherhood are “a myth” and that “there’s no Muslim Brotherhood in Canada.”
The longtime Haligonian described his own views as “no fanaticism on one side or no looseness on the other side.”
The Prime Minister’s Office wouldn’t name the Muslim Brotherhood when asked for its official position on the group.
“Our government is taking strong action to protect law-abiding Canadians from those who wish to harm us,” PMO spokesman Jason MacDonald said in an e-mail. “The Criminal Code terrorist entity listing process is an important tool in preventing terrorist attacks from being carried out.”
OTHER FIGURES IN CANADA LINKED TO THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD:
Dr. Wael Haddara, intensive-care physician, London, Ont.
Key adviser to Egyptian president and Brotherhood stalwart Mohamed Morsi in 2012. Denies Brotherhood membership.
As president of the Muslim Association of Canada in 2011, Dr. Haddara endorsed the Brotherhood and the teachings of founder Hassan Al-Banna.
He was a founding director of IRFAN-Canada, and a board member until 2002. IRFAN was audited in 2004 and banned in 2011 for allegedly donating millions to Hamas.
When contacted by QMI Agency, he said he had no knowledge of IRFAN sending money to Hamas.
Rasem Abdel-Majid, fundraiser, Mississauga, Ont.
General manager of IRFAN-Canada and its predecessor, the Jerusalem Fund for Human Services (JFHS).
Attended a secret Brotherhood meeting in 1993 at which Hamas funding was discussed, says an RCMP warrant.
U.S. officials say IRFAN was part of the “the Global Hamas financing mechanism.”
Calls to Adbel-Majid were not returned
CHARITY ENDS AT HOME
Aside from IRFAN, two other Canadian charities with links to the Muslim Brotherhood have had their status revoked, or been denied charity status:
World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY) was a donor to Brotherhood-linked groups in Canada. It was delisted in 2012 for alleged ties to Saudi-based organizations that funnelled money to al-Qaida and the Taliban.
ISNA Development Foundation (IDF) was delisted in 2013 for allegedly giving more than $280,000 to an agency linked to Jamaat-e-Islami, a Pakistani Islamist group that’s an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.
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editor@canadalandshow.com
DISCLOSURE: Wallace was my boss for a time at Postmedia’s Editorial Services in 2014. We got along well enough, and he even gave me, and everyone else in the building, a raise one time.
The Walrus Foundation’s paid subscription numbers were over-inflated in two government grants filed with the federal Heritage Department this year.
In the foundation’s Canada 150 grant application, The Walrus claimed the magazine has a paid circulation of 60,000, while an independent audit shows the paid readership has declined below 40,000.
In the magazine’s 2016-2017 application for a federal publishing grant of $291,850, a program officer at the Heritage department noticed “the subscription seem[ed] to be over evaluated.” The officer noticed that the new circulation report had “changed dramatically in different categories” from the 2015-2016 report (exact figures were redacted from documents obtained by an access to information request).
Screenshot of an email to The Walrus from the federal Heritage department, regarding the magazine’s circulation numbers.
The Walrus magazine’s circulation and marketing manager Bryan Maloney apologized for the discrepancies in a follow-up email. “Sorry for the oversight. I used the previous year’s form as a guide, not taking into consideration that audit revisions.”
Screenshot of an email sent by The Walrus magazine’s circulation and marketing manager Bryan Malone.
According to brand audit reports of an independent auditor of Canadian publications, Canadian Circulation Audit Bureau (CCAB), The Walrus’s paid circulation has steadily declined from its 2009 Overall circulation of about 48,000. In the 2013-2014 report the average paid copies per issue were 44,392, 39,002 of which were paid subscriptions. The magazine had 35,075 individual paid subscribers, the other 5,147 multi-copy same addressee issues were corporate subscribers supplying waiting rooms, lounges and lobbies. The magazine also sold an average of 5,390 copies from magazine stands each month.
In another grant application with Canadian Heritage, this one for $650,000, the foundation claimed inflated circulation numbers once again. The Canada 150 grant was awarded to the foundation for hosting the Walrus Talks in 2017. In the Walrus Foundation’s application staff wrote the magazine has “a paid print and tablet magazine readership of 60,000 [and] a readership of approximately 250,000.”
A screenshot from The Walrus Foundation’s application for a Canada 150 grant.
In CCAB’s 2014-2015 report the total paid copies per issue had dropped to 42,538, paid subscriptions were down to 38,257 (32,800 individual, 5,457 multi-copy same addressee), and single-copy sales were down to an average of 4,281 per issue (some months seeing single-copy sales as low as 2,135 and 2,698).
The Walrus’s circulation continued to decline in the CCAB’s next six-month report, for the period ending in March 2016. Average paid copies were down to 39,383, average paid subscriptions slid to 35,414 (individual 30,314, multi-copy same addressee 5,100), and single-copy sales were down to an average of 3,969.
These reports have numbers well below foundation’s claim of a paid circulation of 60,000.
Casting the foundation’s inflated numbers further in doubt is CARDonline’s (another auditor of Canadian publications) measurement of the magazine’s web traffic at 160,000-185,000 unique visitors per month, well below the Walrus Foundation’s stated 250,000 visitors.
Walrus publisher Shelley Ambrose and circulation and marketing manager Bryan Maloney were both contacted last week by CANADALAND for comment, neither have responded to questions regarding the discrepancies. If they do respond, we’ll update our story.
The foundation also failed to deliver on some of its proposals for its Walrus Talks. In the initial application they proposed to host some of the 13 talks (one in each province and territory) in unique venues like a “naval ship, Via Rail trains, traveling geodesic domes, and historic forts.” Only the ship and one train event are now happening, with the rest of the talks being hosted in theaters and lecture halls.
The foundation’s application also said it wanted the travelling interview and lecture events to be available to all Canadians. Twelve of the talks have no entrance fee, but a VIA Rail round-trip from Ottawa to a luncheon in Montreal costs $788.70 a ticket, with a ticket just for the luncheon costing $106.60.
Heritage department spokeswoman Catherine Gagnaire said in an email “Heritage is helping to pay for marketing and promotion. The goal is to make events free of charge or to keep the price of admission low, so the events are accessible.”
Gagnaire explained changes to The Walrus Talks National Tour as common with government-funded projects: “The Walrus Foundation is following-through on the activities that were funded. Canadian Heritage closely monitors projects and is aware of the changes to the plans. It is normal for projects to evolve between conception and delivery.”
Heritage is giving the foundation $300,000 for marketing, $100,000 for travel, $100,000 for venue rentals, $100,000 for equipment rentals, and $50,000 for speaking fees. The talks are also sponsored in undisclosed amounts by: the Order of Canada, Indspire, CBC, The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, The Governor General’s Performing Arts Award Foundation, Labatt, CN, Rethink, Suncor, Enbridge, CPAC, and universities across Canada.
The Walrus Foundation said in its application it wanted to take the “road less travelled” when choosing locations, proposing to host talks in places “like Kingston instead of Toronto.” The Ontario talk is being held in Toronto. The other talks are being held in Whitehorse, Yellowknife, Iqaluit, Nunavut, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, St. John’s, N.L, Charlottetown, Fredericton, Halifax, Surrey, B.C., and Banff, Alta.
In the foundation’s 2014 donor report, which was included in its grant application, the amount of charitable government grants listed under revenue was $50,000. The total amount of government grants for the foundation in 2014 was $382,500, according to other application documents supplied to the Heritage department.
In the past, magazine co-founder Ken Alexander told CANADALAND the foundation had mislead donors by saying its circulation numbers were 60,000 back in 2009. At the time of the interview, Alexander said the foundation’s claim “was horseshit, plain and simple.”
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@GraemeCGordon
PHOTO: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/Flickr
Walrus Aid to Publisher Grant Application
Walrus Canada 150 Grant Application
Prime minister, foreign leaders among those given immediate care
