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@if-you-fan-a-fire
âJanuary 20, 1911 - Meeting Hall (Workingmenâs home?), 59 Frederick Street, Toronto.â
Photograph by Department of Public Health, investigating/surveilling/condemning the slums and working class of Toronto. City of Toronto Archives. Fonds 200, Series 372, Subseries 32, Item 8.
A network of retired academics and think tanks is chipping away at established truths.
"Residential school denialism, while always present in the community, had emerged from the background and blown up âlike a match to tinder,â according to Paul, in the wake of the demonstration. Months later, Paul said, the shift is still noticeable.
âEven now... thereâs not a Facebook post that goes out about Indigenous events in Kamloops where thereâs not at least one person in a comment section on a shared post saying something about how our experiences as Indigenous people are fabricated,â said Paul.
The Thompson Rivers University event was not an isolated one, nor did it emerge in a vacuum. It was one of a series of events led by Frances Widdowson, a former Mount Royal University professor, on university campuses across Canada.
Widdowson has not been alone in her efforts to generate skepticism about Canadaâs residential school history. She is part of a group of roughly two dozen retired academics, lawyers and writers from across the country who collaborate with one another in an email group to construct a more positive version of residential school history.
Collectively, the members of this group are having an outsized impact in sowing doubt about the harms of the residential school system.
They have published over 500 articles about residential schools on various platforms in the last five years and have published three books in the same time span. The books, as well as many of the groupâs articles, have been published through the charitable think tanks Frontier Centre for Public Policy and True North Centre for Public Policy.
The two books published by the True North Centre have made bestseller lists in Canada.
In October 2025, two years after it was published, Grave Error: How the Media Misled Us (and the Truth About Residential Schools) was No. 2 on Amazon Canadaâs bestseller list for Canadian literature. In December of the same year, the newly published sequel, Dead Wrong: How Canada Got the Residential School Story So Wrong, was No. 1 on that list while Grave Error was No. 2. A couple of months into the new year, those two books held the top two spots of the bestseller list.
... [a link connecting many of these people is they worked at or had family who worked at residential schools.]
The network the email group has formed with each other has been labelled by researchers Tahmineh Farnoud and Justin Harrison as a closed community that cites each other in a loop to suggest legitimacy.
Take, for example, this section of a Frontier Centre article about residential schools by Clifton and fellow group member Hymie Rubenstein:
âAs for the genocide accusation, a large and growing body of evidence found here, here, here, and here shows no confirmed evidence of even a single child murdered at any [Indian residential school].â
Each linked site leads to a body of work developed by an email group member, the first by Jacques Rouillard (contributor to Grave Error), the second by an author under the pseudonym KamRes and the last two by someone under another pseudonym, Nina Green.
The arguments of these articles overlook the nuanced definition of the term âgenocide,â which does not only include mass killing. While the Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded the residential school system was part of a policy of cultural genocide, a 2022 House of Commons resolution recognized the residential school system as, simply, genocide."
- Emily Enns, "Whoâs Behind the Residential School Denialism Movement?" The Tyee. May 8, 2026. @allthecanadianpolitics
"The distinction between carceral state and nation state may be itself overly semantic. As Micol Seigel argues, for example, "Police and state are differentiated by degree: police are the human-scale expression of the state." 'Criminal justice," Lawrence Friedman adds, "is, literally, state power." Anthropologist James Ferguson points to the ways that the state is more a "way of tying together, multiplying, and coordinating power relations, a kind of knotting or congealing of power." Similarly, Stuart Hall and others, building upon Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci, describe the state "not so much an entity, or even a particular complex of institutions, so much as it is a particular site or level of the social formation." As critical geographer Brett Story summarizes, the carceral state can be "conceived less as a thing and more as an organizer." See Micol Seigel, Violence Work, 9; Lawrence Friedman, Crime and Punishment in American History, quoted in Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Golden Gulag, 174; James Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine, quoted in Seigel, Violence Work, 18; Stuart Hall, Policing the Crisis, quoted in Brett Story, Prison Land, 16."
- Garrett Felber, Those Who Know Don't Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: The University of North Carolina Press, 2020) footnote 11, p. 195.
May Day Rally in 1936 in Winnipeg at Market Square, looking west from King Street and William Avenue. City of Winnipeg Archives. From this article.
"Four adults and six children, from Passaic, N.J., picket the White House following President Coolidge's refusal to listen to their complaints about wage cuts in the textile industry," April 15, 1926. Library of Congress LOT 12298, v. 2.
Source. See also the movie made by the CP-USA about the Passaic strike here.
The Galaxy Globe bulk carrier and the Luojiashan tanker sit anchored as Iran vows to close the Strait of Hormuz, in Muscat, Oman. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier
Locomotive of the Port Arthur, Duluth and Western Railway, stuck in the snow, Iron Range Hill, 1915-1916. Source.
âNotorious Prison Vacated,â The Day. February 10, 1936. Page 09. âThe last prisoners from notorious Welfare Island prison - the New York city penitentiary - are pictured as they left the institution to be housed at Rikerâs Island, location of the cityâs new penal institution.  The 110-year old prison, called a âblack smirchâ on the New York penal system, will be demolished (Associated Press Photo).â
As the Ukraine war drags, Moscow is transforming the economy of the occupied Donbas region, residents and analysts say.
In 2025 I read 168 books.
That total is not counting unpublished theses or long articles. To be included in this list, I had to have read 75% of the text, and this year I counted rereads that met that threshold, especially if I was rereading to take notes. Some of these I don't entirely recall - read in a few days for a class discussion or skimmed rapidly. Others I allowed myself to luxuriate in, or am simply proud to have finished. At least two of these were slightly different editions of the same book I was writing about...
168 is a lot of books. Not something likely to be repeated. I was finishing a well-funded Master's and working on several article drafts, and generally almost monomaniacally focused on academic research. I'm not sure what to say about having a passing familiarity with the 'canon' of Canadian academic history, except some of it is very good, some very dull, and some remarkably shallow. Which is better than some of the amateur history I read - the book on the 1980 New Mexico Penitentiary riot I read was one of the worst books (in terms of organization, clarity of writing, contribution to scholarship, and general reading pleasure) I have read in many, many years. I also learned that a lot of literature about the Soviet gulag is remarkably myopic, unconcerned or unaware of other incarceration systems (except the Nazi one) and their similarities or parallels. (Not good when one of these only cites Foucault on Western European prisons, but gets the citation wrong!) I also regret that I was a little too focussed on Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Below the cut is a full list of every book. Ones marked with an asterisk (*) are re-reads, and those with an + are my favourites this year. Titles are listed row by row, top to bottom, left to right.
Local history Facebook groups are fascinating places. Iâm a member of the Kingston, Ontario, one, called Vintage Kingston. Most of the time itâs just people remembering locations or sharing historical events. Or today, itâs a bunch of old white people getting outraged â âitâs an attack on our heritage!!!â â âhistory happened! You canât change it!â â âthey are hiding our heritage!â â âa minority is out to control usâ - (all actual quotes) because ... checks notes ... the City of Kingston is considering renaming âIndian Road,â part of a suburban development created in the late 1950s by developers - other themed names include Mohawk and Arrowhead. -- the post and discussion has since been nuked, but it tremendously revealing though hardly surprising of what heritage means to many Kingstonians, that is the freedom to unproblematically celebrate bigotry; the invention of tradition (to the point that posters older than the subdivision believed it was an important part of Kingstonâs history); and the extremely low level of historical consciousness of contemporary society
from a comrade on FB:
1st post earlier this morning
The bombing of Venezuela and the kidnapping of its President is a flagrant act of war and an illegal act of aggression under international law (as were the extra judicial killings of people on boats). This should be condemned no matter what people think of the Venezuelan government. This is going have far-reaching implications.
The Canadian government should not be allowed to hide behind weasel words of wanting more facts etc. They should forcefully condemn this. Especially since Trump has clearly threatened Canadian sovereignty before.
We desperately need an antiwar movement in this country. To do that we need to build a movement that aims to speak to the wider working class not just left.
2nd post later today after the Canadian government official response:
Anita Anand's statement is outrageous
"Our long-standing commitment to upholding the rule of law and democracy, Canada calls on all parties to respect international law."
The U.S. just flagrantly violated international law in bombing Venezuela and kidnapping its President and Canada didn't condemn it. So obviously we are not committed to international law. Does the Canadian government support the bombing sovereign countries and kidnapping of sovereign leaders at the whim any government?
///
From my friend DJ:
Canadians are not even remotely clued into the prospects of an American Anschluss facilitated by a whole array of Quislings, from the board rooms of the Business Council of Canada and old line party elites down to the Freedom Convoy organizers and Yankee-loving separatists. You don't need to wrap yourself in the Canadian flag to recognize the return of the National Question with Trump's threats of "economic" annexation.
Five years after the colossal pandemic defeat of the left, so easily facilitated by union brass and NDP leaders, we once again go to war with the army we have: a bunch of corporate Liberals elites propped up by a zombie NDP with its "left-wing" being the rantings of a fool, Charlie Angus, and a largely useless, corrupt, and rightwing union leadership. Defeat is all but guaranteed.
The Anglo-Canadian left in particular remains so deeply wedded to the NDP through active support or through an opportunsitic retreat from mass politics into NGOs masquerading as "social movements", that we go into this new period as the only imperial vassal state with no independent left-wing experiment appealing to the masses through class struggle unionism, anti-war organizing or electoral action...save a few which are small and fragile and don't need their names splashed here.
The prospects of a democratic self-governing Canada, freed from the shackles of the British North America Act and allied to those around the world fighting America's barbaric world order, lie with everyone labouring away, without recognition or fanfare, in educating, organizing and agitating among the working-class majority.
We might as well use the dark clouds as cover while we keep building an independent left and experimenting and working towards new assaults on Canada's Quisling-capitalist consensus.
Venezuela holds the world's largest proven oil reserve. Today they got the Iraq treatment, and the US is bombing their civilians and toppling their government as the whole world watches. No authorisation from congress, no defensive maneuvering, no pretences of legality just the world largest, most criminal hegemonic power deploying cruel weaponry on people of colour time and time again to rob them of their resources and their futures.
Source
Source
The US government's military operation in the Caribbean is supposedly intended to target "narco-terrorists." In my latest article, I explore the history of the term to argue that "narco-terrorism" is mostly a mythâ a "political slogan" which does not accurately describe the world. By focusing our attention on foreign suppliers, this myth distracts us from more important factors, including the US government's own history of supporting drug trafficking.
Framing âOperation Southern Spearâ as a battle against ânarco-terroristsâ is a desperate attempt to commit new violence using old excuses, o
To say that ânarco-terrorismâ is a myth is not to deny the obvious violence associated with the black market drug trade, but to acknowledge that the term does more to confuse than to clarify. The idea does not accurately explain the complex dynamics of the global drug trade; instead, it radically oversimplifies the problem. By portraying military intervention as a response to drug trafficking, the ânarco-terrorismâ myth allows politicians to ignore all of the ways in which military intervention is a cause of drug trafficking... Perhaps the greatest flaw of ânarco-terrorismâ is that it encourages us to believe that complex human problems have simple military solutions. Sociologist C. Wright Mills once astutely criticized US elites for accepting a âmilitary definition of reality,â a distorted perspective which prevents them from imagining policy solutions that do not involve military intervention. So long as the government insists upon seeing non-military problems through a military lens, they will never be solved.
It is important to remember that the US governmentâs case against Maduro is almost entirely fictional
"At present there are a few more than three hundred bulk freight steamers in the trade. A few carry limestone. The rest carry iron ore and coal, with some traffic in grain at the end of the season. They are a famous fleet around the world - famous for the skill with which their men handle them in winding rivers and narrow harbors, famous for the speed with which their cargoes are loaded and discharged, and famous for the fresh meats and vegetables, fruits and pastries that go onto the tables in their mess rooms.
Life aboard those vessels is half marine, with the hazard and movement of any sailor's lot, and half like life ashore. Mostly they call their big ships "boats," and at mealtime a porter goes along the deck in a white apron ringing a dinner bell, like a cook in a construction camp. The officers wear straw hats and street clothes. The only way to tell them from business men in Chicago or Cleveland or Duluth is by their weathered faces and the fine lines around their eyes. They stand on their own decks and wave to their families on the veranda at Marine City or Port Huron. Many a mate carries a megaphone for a bit of conversation with his wife as the ship sweeps past. As his voice grows louder the deckhands wink and snicker. He drops the megaphone and waves a handkerchief till they round the bend. Then he says, a little sheepishly, "Beats writing a letter, anyway."
Beneath their twenty, thirty, thirty-five hatches those vessels carry ten, twelve, fourteen thousand tons of cargo. Across Ohio the long coal trains are always moving on the C. and O., the B. and O., the Norfolk and Western, the Pennsylvania. Their roadbeds are sanded black with coal dust and the switching yards are gritty underfoot. The swaying strings of gondolas labor over the gradual height of land and then coast down to Toledo, Sandusky, Cleveland, Ashtabula. At the docks the coal rigs turn them over. The black fog drifts up while the thunder rolls in a steamer's yawning hold.
At the same time in the rough wooded country that rims Lake Superior other trains are coasting down to blue water. They are smaller gondolas, heaped with the dull red rock and sand of iron. The Duluth, Mesabi and Northern, the Lake Superior and Ishpeming, the Great Northern, the Soo Line - their roadbeds are sifted red with ore dust and the cement docks are red as brick. The engines toot and the trains creep out like toys on the red-stained trestles. They stand against the blue northern sky at Escanaba, Marquette, Ashland, Duluth, Two Harbors.
There are red pits in the earth of Minnesota and black shafts in the West Virginia valleys. Red hills of ore line the Ohio waterfronts and black hills grow on the coalless shores of Lake Superior.
So a big freighter steams out of Toledo filmed with coal dust. The long deck is gritty underfoot. The black tracks into the crew's messroom and through the companionways and onto the thick rug in the observation lounge up forward where the captain is shaking hands with the company's guests. The deckhands are closing the hatches and a watchman drags a hose behind them, washing down. Four days later it is a red cargo coming aboard, and a red iron dust tracking into the companionways and messrooms and finding its way, like a subtle, creeping stain, down the ladders and onto the oiled steel decks of the engine room. With a hoarse blast echoing the ship pulls away. The pumps begin to throb. On deck the hatches bang shut and the hose is washing down. Another red cargo heads for the harbor mouths of Ohio."
- Walter Havinghurst, The Long Ships Passing: The Story of the Great Lakes. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002 (originally 1942, revised 1976), p. 38-40.
"We trudged wearily to the car, and were soon forgetful of the road.
We slept, we knew not how long, when we were awakened by aman with a flashlight in one hand and a blue-steel revolver in theother. He handcuffed us quickly and marched us to the city jail.
Our simple belongings were left with the desk sergeant. They consisted of a knife, a comb, and the stray things that find their way to aboy's pockets. We were then taken by a policeman to a large roomwhich contained many cells. The doors of our cells damped shut witha heavy bang. The policeman sprung a lock on each cell and wentshuffling down the dimly lit corridor. The sound of his feet died away,and we were left with our own thoughts until morning.
I sat on the edge of my iron cot and watched Dutch remove his coat and roll it up for a pillow, going nonchalantly about the task ofpreparing for bed. "I hope to thunder they let me get my sleep out thistime," he said.
"They will," I replied.
...
"Oh, well, let's flop. They may not hang us," said Dutch.
I stretched out on the iron cot and watched the stars peek through the bars of the window, and wondered what the next day would bring.
The heavy breathing of prisoners could be heard all around me. A bed creaked as its occupant rolled over. In a short time, Dutch slept, his conscience unbothered by the memory of a battered man in an alley.
Dawn crept through the barred windows of the smudgy prison, and was greeted lustily by the inmates in their cells. A prisoner called out the number of remaining days he had to serve. "Five more days tomorrow." "One moah yeah to-morreh," yelled a negro prisoner's voice. This was kept up until each prisoner had announced the remaining days ofhis sentence."
- Jim Tully, Beggars of Life. New York: Albert & Charles Boni, 1924. p. 103-104.
