[Peace-discuss] Oh, Canada...

[John W.]

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 9:02 PM, C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>wrote:

The history of political migration from the US to Canada is significant for
> both polities -- war opponents in the 1770s*, escaped slaves before the
> Civil War, the farmers you mention here, war opponents in the 1960s. There
> are undoubtedly others who noticed the contrast between theory and practice
> in the Land of the Free...
> ____
> *Including relatives of mine: half the family went to Nova Scotia after the
> unpleasantness at Lexington and Concord (where the first man wounded in what
> came to be called the American Revolution was a member of my family, a slave
> called Prince Estabrook).
>

So Prince Estabrook took the slug from the "shot heard 'round the world?"
That's extremely interesting, Carl.




> David Green wrote:
>
  From /Main Currents/:
>>  "Perhaps most disturbing of all to conventional wisdom is sthe fact that
>> between 1898 and 1914 about one million American residents, the vast
>> majority of whom had been previously in states with large agrarian radical
>> movements, moved to Canada, predominately the rich wheat-growing provinces.
>> Many had been Populists, and some outstanding former Populist political
>> leaders were among their ranks, and this constituency and its inheritance
>> became an important strand in the Canadian social democratic movement. .....
>> but the fact that one of the reasons agrarian radicalism disappears is due
>> to departure from the United States entirely of a significant portion of its
>> adherents is a reality too important for all but a few specialists to
>> ignore."
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> *From:* C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>
>> *To:* David Green <davegreen84 at yahoo.com>
>> *Cc:* Peace Discuss <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, September 16, 2009 5:53:23 PM
>> *Subject:* Re: [Peace-discuss] Oh, Canada...
>>
>> I hadn't known that -- but I bet they do in Saskatchewan.
>>
>> David Green wrote:
>>  > I apologize for perseverating on Kolko, but one thing that jumped out
>> at me is his discussion of the (little recognized or remembered) mass
>> migration of farmers from the Plains states to Canada, especially
>> Saskatchewan, subsequent to the Populist revolt in this country and the
>> consolidation of agriculture that dispossessed many of them--this may have
>> contributed eventually to the success of socialism in that province.
>>  >
>>  >
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>  > *From:* C. G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu <mailto:
>> galliher at illinois.edu>>
>>  > *To:* peace-discuss <peace-discuss at anti-war.net <mailto:
>> peace-discuss at anti-war.net>>
>>  > *Sent:* Wednesday, September 16, 2009 4:02:19 PM
>>  > *Subject:* [Peace-discuss] Oh, Canada...
>>  >
>>  > Canadian PM Stephen Harper has 42 minutes of face time with Barack
>> Obama in Washington today.  While Canadian institutions (notably healthcare)
>> are being compared favorably with those of the US, quite rightly, here are
>> some other things to remember:
>>  >
>>  >  1. On dozens of occasions since 1915 Canadian gunboats have been
>> deployed to the Caribbean and Central America.
>>  >  2. Canada has been the 5th or 6th-largest contributor to the U.S. war
>> in Iraq.
>>  >  3. Ottawa asked London for its Caribbean colonies after World War I.
>>  >  4. Days after elected President Salvador Allende was overthrown,
>> Canada's ambassador to Chile called victims of dictator Augusto Pinochet's
>> repression the “riffraff of the Latin American Left.”
>>  >  5. In a number of countries Canadian “aid” has been used to rewrite
>> mining codes to the benefit of Canadian mining companies.
>>  >  6. Canada had between 250 and 450 nuclear-armed fighter jets based in
>> Europe in the 1960s.
>>  >  7. Washington did not press Ottawa to break relations with
>> post-revolution Cuba because it wanted Canada to spy on the island.
>>  >  8. Throughout Pierre Trudeau's time in office and before, Canadian
>> companies were heavily invested in apartheid South Africa.
>>  >  9. Canada helped depose Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, one
>> of Africa's first independence leaders, who was then killed.
>>  > 10. Many commentators ... consider Lester Pearson [PM 1963-8] a war
>> criminal.
>>  >
>>  > That's from Yves Engler, "The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy"
>> (Fernwood Books Ltd., Halifax).
>>  >
>>  > Still, there's something to be said for a country that was the real
>> land of freedom for slaves in the 19th century and refuge for war resisters
>> in the 20th (and in the 18th).
>>  >
>>  > In 2004 the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation ran a television series
>> to determine who is considered to be the greatest Canadian of all time. (The
>> project was inspired by the BBC series Great Britons.) It included a series
>> of documentaries, with 10 Canadian celebrities acting as advocates and
>> presenting their cases for The Greatest Canadian.
>>  >
>>  > The winner by vote was not a military leader or PM, but the man
>> responsible for bringing Canada universal healthcare (i.e., the equivalent
>> of Medicare for all, not Obamacare), Tommy Douglas.  (A Scottish-born
>> Baptist minister, Douglas was Premier of Saskatchewan from 1944 to 1961, and
>> as such head of the first socialist government in North America; from 1961
>> to 1971, he was the leader of the social democratic New Democratic Party.)
>>  >
>>  > That's unimaginable in the thoroughly propagandized US.  --CGE
>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/archive/peace-discuss/attachments/20090916/041aa5ee/attachment.htm