Kill the Beast

Sports, Politics and Entertainment

 

Sunday June 15^th, 2008

 

Politics

All Apologies – Fritz Kenwood

            The Canadian government recently made a formal apology for its residential school policy, designed over a century ago to assimilate Native American children into the colonial Canadian society. Following the example set by the Australian government in their own briefer apology for residential schools, for reasons political and moral, Stephen Harper’s Conservative minority decided that now was the time to make amends for the damage caused by an institution aimed to “Canadian-ize” the first Canadians. While the residential schools were not necessarily unique among boarding schools at the time in-so-far as abuse was concerned, they were explicitly racist and cruelly obligatory. Children were taken from their families against the parents’ will and it is a sad chapter of Canadian history.

            To say, however, that the residential schools extinguished Native American culture is to place blame on too few shoulders. For a present day government to attempt to make amends for so deeply rooted an anthropological occurrence is arrogant beyond expression. Native American peoples were once dominant across the entire continent of North America. The language of the apology is such that it seems to place responsibility on the residential schools specifically and, by extension, the Canadian people as a whole, for the decline of whole cultures’ independence and sovereignty. What’s more, the people that arrived in the “New World” who apparently bear responsibility for the Native’s dissolution are themselves a disparate group. There was no collective objective for the original explorers, settlers, capitalists, royals, soldiers, pilgrims and fur traders, or the later homesteaders and working class immigrants from a thousand different countries, religions and stations in life. Are they all equally culpable? Are the descendants of Europeans more to blame than Asians because the Europeans, for the most part, arrived earlier than the Asians? The group “Canadians” is such a complex and assorted tribe that their representative government could hardly assume any meaningful responsibility for the decline of the previously autonomous North American societies.

            Human anthropology is often a matter of luck and geography. Take, for instance, the race to sail the seas in the 1400s. In the west, the newly powerful European nations; in the east, the much older and more technically advanced Chinese Empire. The Chinese sent fleets of ships to East Africa long before a Portuguese explorer found his way around the Cape of Good Hope and charted a sea route to India. Later that century, the Europeans would “discover” America, while the Chinese had outlawed all fleet construction and exploration efforts. Because the Chinese Emperor did not compete for power, expect with rivals in China, there seemed to be nothing to gain from expensive overseas voyages. On the other hand, the various sea going nations of the Mediterranean and North Atlantic were constantly trying to gain an edge over one another. Hence, if a Portuguese sailor finds a way around Africa, an Italian sailor must later try to sail around the world. The various monarchies, so divided due to the geographic obstacles of fractured Europe, had to out-do one another so as not to fall behind the pack. If the King of Spain takes American colonies so must the Kings and Queens of England. The rivalry continued for five hundred years to the present day when the Native American cultures are all but vanished and Stephen Harper is supposedly apologizing for it all: “Sorry, our mistake.” It’s ludicrous.

            An apology for a misguided and abusive government institution was needed for those who felt its bitter effects. But it is a mockery to attempt to apologize for a struggle begun hundreds of years before a Canadian government even existed and the roots of which are found in the geography of continents and the intricacies of humanities’ halting and violent diffusion over the planet. Perhaps the ill-conceived scale of the Canadian apology reveals it for the political posturing is appears to be and a mere obligation at that, since another former British Dominion set the example, though with more appropriate, confined understatement.

 

Sports

Boston, City of Champions – Christopher Alberta

            Boston is the place to be a committed sports fan in this decade. The Red Sox have won two World Series, the Patriots have been the cream of the NFL for better part of the millennium, and now the Celtics are one win away from joining their Massachusetts brethren in post Y2K greatness. Hell, even the lowly Bruins made the NHL playoffs in 2008.

            You’ve got to wonder what it’s like for kids in Boston these days. They are all going to grow up expecting championships on a regular basis like the young Bulls in Chicago in the nineties or the little Edmonton Oilers fans of the eighties.

If there’s one thing we know for sure, it’s that Boston’s recently immaculate sporting record can’t continue indefinitely. What have they done to deserve all this? Even the moderately successful sports towns like Detroit and New York are wondering what the athletes in Boston have been eating. For sad sack, four-sport cities like Washington, Philadelphia and Chicago, the eventual fall of the New England squads will be oh-so delicious. The failure of the Patriots in the Super Bowl was, hopefully, just the beginning of the end. Another eighty years for the Bo-Sox and federal lock-up for the whole Patriots organization would be fine. Go Lakers!

 

Features

Fenton’s Choice (Part 1 of 4) – Marie Sulford

            Of course Mr. Wynne put the blame on me and so there I was on the horse-hair seat, watching the clock waiting for him to come back to the Main School office.

            Mr. Wynne had insisted on the train for Fenton, cutting it fine for the ferry. The wind blew round the little halt. I wondered if I would know the boy at once. People change suddenly I thought, turn a dozen pages at a go – and it had been more than a year since I’d seen him.

            If I had still thought of any of the boys with pleasure, it was of Fenton. I remembered that June afternoon when he’d lain flushed and worried while old Wynne pounded up and down the sick room with a telegram and I watched a lilac plume of wisteria waving across the open window. A silly time to have measles, just at the end of term.

            “It’s your choice Fenton. Make up your mind, boy” the old Housemaster grumbled; just as he’d bark out “tea or coffee” at breakfast. “Shall we say Wales or South America?” Mr. Wynne was speaking with his back turned, as he always did when something important was on and he’d been fond of the boy.

            Fenton’s hesitations were maddening of course. “You’d better accept your Uncle’s offer”. Mr. Wynne said. “You could do with a man’s advice and a new background. I don’t want to lose you, you are the only boy we have in this House with a real chance of an Oxford scholarship, and South America would put paid to that, but really for your own sake you’d better go.” I knew what Mr. Wynne meant. Fenton’s anxious eyes, the way he had of always looking over his shoulder, of jerking his hand up to his mouth, marked him as a boy afraid.

            Afraid of what? As his parents were dead perhaps of that Welsh grandmother he lived with during the holidays. She looked to be a sour old woman with a mouth like a puff ball and small eyes staring harshly from under heavy beetle brows.  Fenton kept a picture of her at the back of his locker. I had seen a picture of Fentons’ rich cattle-rancher uncle who lived in the Argentine. He had an easy-going malicious smile. He’d had no children, and suddenly offered to take Fenton on. He’d written that he wouldn’t offer twice. But would Fenton dare offend the old grandmother?

            “I’ll go to South America then, sir”, Fenton said wearily. Mr. Wynne had hardly left the room before the boy turned to me and said beseechingly, “But I’d rather stay in Wales, Matron.”

            And so he did. Mr. Wynne put the blame for everything that happened consequently on me, even though I retired a year previously, here I was still picking up the pieces… I’d suddenly got a letter from Mr. Wynne – not a word about me of course, “Fenton’s won his scholarship. Done very well, but something is wrong with the boy, he needs a complete change the doctor says and we are not to send him back where he comes from, not done him one bit of good and he’s become increasingly fidgety and nervy, how about taking him to Italy for a bit? Fenton can afford it.” (To Be Continued)

 

Horoscopes

Aries: Hurry up.

 

Taurus: Slow down.

 

Gemini: Do not attempt to turn right or left as you risk toppling like a wobbly Jenga stack

 

Cancer: Spinning in circles is the cause of dizziness. But it sure is fun.

 

Leo: Jumping up and down can induce nausea. So keep it up and excrete that rat poison.

 

Virgo: Fishing is a relaxing way to relieve stress. But who wants the boredom that comes with relaxation and relief?

 

Libra: Run free in the wild this week. Next week will be the time to work hard in the field you are prancing through today.

 

Scorpio: In, out. Repeat if necessary.

 

Sagittarius: Act decisively except when uncertainty prevails. Some advice that is, eh?

 

Capricorn: Watch out for flying rodents. No one ever got rabies from a flying squirrel, but its probably about time then.

 

Aquarius: Look for the divine guide in the coming darkness.  The divine guide will be light switch-shaped

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Pisces: Jumping jacks keep the undertaker away.