June 16, 2020

To STOCKWELL DAY: Open letter on Systemic Racism (Cardozo)

By Andrew Cardozo, President, Pearson Centre

Open Letter to Stockwell Day

Dear Stockwell:

The comments from you on systemic racism on June 2 are an occasion for a thoughtful discussion on the issue. I kind of regret that you resigned from Telus and McMillan LLP and your spot on the TV show, and I’ll come back to that.

It is a wonderful country this Canada. And like all others we have our strong points and our weak points. It’s not disloyal to point out our deficiencies, rather it gives us a chance to get better.

I think of l‘Affaire Stockwell Day in three distinct acts. Frist there was “The Diatribe” on CBC television’s Power and Politics. The second act was “The Apologia” on Twitter the next morning. The third act was the “The Exitus”, when you left the CBC show, and your corporate roles that afternoon.

THE DIATRIBE

So I get it. It’s the Power and Politics panel and you have to stand up for your party and attack other parties. You have to be pithy and punchy and you are popular if you push the boundaries, be controversial and say crazy shit. You don’t even have to mean it. You become popular for those over the line comments, usually in a good way, and then once in a while in a bad way. Bites you in the bum! Damn!

You said, and I paraphrase: “I reject the Prime Minister’s insinuations that all Canadians are racist because somehow our system is systemically racist. It is not.” And you added, “ Are Canadians largely in majority racist? No we are not.” Of course that was only part of the problem. It was the comments likening your being teased for wearing glasses as a kid with racism.

You said: “Should we all be more sensitive about any kind of hurting or insulting people whether it’s racist or not? Should I have gone through school and been mocked because I had glasses and was called ‘four-eyes’ and because of the occupation of my parents? Should I have been mocked for that? No, of course not.”

I’m guessing it was one of those comments where after you made it, you thought: Aw shit, hope that wasn’t too much, let’s hope no one noticed it. Happens to public figures all the time. You have to talk so much that its really easy for the mouth to say stuff the brain has not fully filtered. Happens to them all.

The thing about being racially different is it’s nothing something you can’t take off. There is no real contact skin like there are contact lenses. Calling someone names goes to the very core of who you are. Many of us have felt it, and regardless of who called you a name, regardless of how drunk they might be, or how idiotic they may seem, it is a put down meant to relegate a person to a lower status of human.

Here’s a quick example. It’s the Canada Day weekend a few years ago and I’m in driving downtown Ottawa. I’m approaching a crossroad with a red light and a guy on my left tries to butt in in front of me as we both want to turn right. I don’t let him in. My right of way and all that. He rolls down his window and yells at me to go back to where I came from. Seriously? I had the right of way according to the law of this land, shouldn’t it be him to go back to somewhere else? But in his mind he had the right of way because….he was white and I was brown, and he told me who belonged and who did not. It’s his privilege. Now, I called back to him, smiled as big as I could and wished him Happy Canada Day a couple of times, which only made him madder as he sped off after the light changed, then pulled in front of me and established his superiority, His privilege. I felt I “won the argument” taking the high road, but damn he still left a knife wound, and all I got was a moral victory….on the Canada weekend. I was kidding myself, I didn’t really feel I had won.

Now in the life of race relations, that is a minor aggression (more than a micro aggression) and for me not a regular occurrence. Some people get a lot more, a lot more often, they get beaten up, and sometimes shot. Or a knee on the neck till they can’t breathe.
Why an open letter

I am writing this as an open letter, because part of it is spoken to you and part is spoken to everybody who reads it, myself included it and I work my way through some of the issues. As I write this I am coming to terms with some things, because it is writing that forces the writer to think through complex issues and come to some conclusions which one can otherwise avoid.

And I thought this would be a short letter. It’s much longer than intended, because it’s all so complex. (Hard to deal with in TV panel discussion.)
What is systemic racism?

What is System Racism?

So, systemic racism. Here’s the thing the term is thrown around, but like racism, I believe there is a degree of subjectiveness.

Just to be clear, to say there is systemic racism in Canada does not mean all Canadians are racist. Systemic is different from systematic – not necessarily that much difference but systematic means organized and very determined. Kind of like the Nazis, who systematically went after the Jews, or Idi Amin who systematically expelled every Asian, although he was nicer, he gave them a deadline to leave! There are many examples all around the world – so sad this failing among human beings.

So, systemic is perhaps not as systematic and determined, but still pretty bad. Sometimes it is unintended and sometimes very intended, but it is baked into our system – our system of government, of employment, of media, of sports, of culture, of law enforcement, of justice, etc. It gets baked into attitudes – and then even when you change the policy the attitudes take a long time to die, the USA being a case in point.

Racism is when one group assumes its superiority over another group that it deems to be inferior and through some means is able to maintain its supremacy. Through history many peoples have subjugated other peoples all over the world.

Systemic racism can be intended or unintended. The Indian Act or residential schools are intended, no question about it. They were intended to establish the supremacy of one group and the subjugation of the other.

You know Stockwell, may be not even to establish. To maintain what the dominant group just knew so well. As Prof. Wesley Crichlow said at a recent Pearson Centre webinar, colonialization is never innocent. It’s always based on some form of one group establishing its supremacy other another, and I think always by the use of power, arms and killing the people who are to be subjugated. It is often done in the name of making things better for the natives, like the schooling system the British took to India, but the main winners are the colonizers, hand down, and the losers are the native population, hand down.

Now, in these policies – the Indian Act and residential schools, the RCMP has been the instrument of enforcing that supremacy. Some say this iconic force was created to subjugate the “Indians”.

You can see then, that all attempts to create a more diverse force constantly don’t work so well. The supremacy/subjugation relationship is so baked in, so deep in the culture. It attracted people who believed in that relationship at the outset 150+ years ago, and one wonders if it still has some with such attitudes – although I would guess most of the recruits each year join for the right reasons. But remember in the Mulroney days when there was that big debate about wearing turbans in the RCMP, it was also about First Nations officers being able to keep their hair long or have braids. The European immigrants, a.k.a., the settlers who set up the RCMP just could not adjust to the culture of the people who were here first, and enforced their image of what a respectable police officer needed to look like. It was only in the 1980s that Mulroney changed that. And in so doing helped give rise to the Reform Party.

I know this might sound treasonous to say, but our national police force who are so much a part of our identity was born out of a supremacy/subjugation value. Most of its work as Europeans expanded across Canada was to establish a system of law and order that was overtly and deliberately based on race. In other words racist – even if I use that word without attaching a value to it. Systemically racism. Damn, it hurts to say that, but I’m not sure there’s another way to evaluate the creation of this wonderful country. Discovering and settling large parts of the country was about pushing back the Indigenous residents of several thousands of years. Sometimes the colonizers were able to get some First Nations on their side to fight other Nations, and still they remained disenfranchised. Foof!

The Commissioner of the RCMP needs to come to terms with this.

Many will point out though that if one stands by and do nothing when the system is racist, you are enabling racism and that makes you racist. If a man is beating a woman in a public park and we all look away we are most certainly facilitating that. We are enablers. There was a time when people would say domestic violence was a private issue, but we changed our view of that just a few decades ago. That’s what that slogan means: SILENCE=SEXISM. SILENCE=RACISM.

I am reminded of former Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin has called the history and conditions “cultural genocide: Systemic racism is a much lesser charge, seems to me.

Unintended racism.

Simply put, systemic means it is in the system. A good example of unintended systemic discrimination was the height and weight restriction for police men. They kind of wanted only big and burley guys to be police officers because they needed to physically take on the bad guys and wrestle them to the ground. The same went for firemen.

To briefly unpack, i used the male form of the profession only, because we believed these needed to be male professions. And the good Lord knows these habits don’t die easily. The sexism, no, let me say misogyny (which is sexism with an added dose of violence), in these two professions continues to be horrendous and the upper brass just can’t get a hold of the situation. Why, Stockwell, why?

You and I would not want our daughters to join either of these forces. And don’t forget these are both paid for and accountable to you and me as taxpayers. What gives men the right to join a public service that we all pay for and treat our daughters and wives in such a disgusting manner. What gives? I know you have been a good ally on gender inequity. You tried to deal with it when you were the federal Minister in charge of the RCMP. But this is serious inequity. First there is (may be) an unintended barrier, but it then breeds a culture and an unsanctioned bigotry against one group, namely women.

So the big and burly guy theory meant that anyone not a big and burley guy could not join these male bastions, these exclusive men’s clubs. Coincidentally, most of these men had origins in Europe, let’s just call them white guys, kind of the way the good Lord made us. He made most women smaller and many other ethnic groups smaller too, think people of Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Indian, South American origin etc. There were a few larger Black men who made the cut, but, how do I put this, they didn’t feel terribly welcome in the ranks. Over time human rights folks challenged these systemic standards and the courts and politicians (gradually) came to see that physical strength and mental agility, were what counted. In other words, “size did not matter”. Ouch! That’s a blow to real masculinity and till this day it’s a very raw spot for some of the guys.

Stock, I hope you don’t mind a little bit of humour, I don’t want to come across as belittling you. I am at times addressing a large swath of our fellow male humans who have male superiority issues – and that cuts across all cultures. Actually sexism is really baked into many cultures and laws the world over, whether we look at fire fighting in Canada, Royal succession in England, who can be a leader in most religions, or who can drive in Saudi Arabia.

And then I think of that guy at the gym the other day (before Covid closed the gym), who was weighing himself and yelled at the weighing scales, “Fuck! You’re just like a woman, always lying.” Reminded me of the locker room talk a US president was involved in. Somehow locker room talk is ok, because as we leave that inner sanctum, we become modern egalitarian men again. I truly believe you and I are on the other side of this kind of bone headed shit. My point is there is a continuum here. When we allow some things, where does it end? Where does a comment in a locker room lead to a policy in the system.

Systemic racism, some examples

Now here are some examples of more definitive “systemic racism”. This is the more determined variety.

– The Fathers of Confederation, God bless their good hearts, they were visionaries who developed this great country, that we all benefit from. They did know there were “Indians” around then (not my kind of Indians), who we know they were around Turtle Island thousands of years before any of these Fathers or their ancestors got here. The ones that even the God-fearing church referred to as savages/sauvages dans les deux langes officielles. Here’s the thing. These English and French guys got together and either never thought of inviting the Indians, or thought of them and decided not to include them. I think it was the latter.

– And here’s the crazy thing, from his pedestal, Sir John A. Macdonald then went on to support and develop the residential school system. You know Stockwell, I have studied Confederation in my university days and ever since, the Charlottetown conference of 1864, the relations between Macdonald and George Etienne Cartier, Canada’s first coalition government with the Parti rouges, the Parti bleu, the Clear Grits and the Tories, etc. etc., and I marvelled at these guys for what they did, I have always admired them and held them in high esteem. When I was in university, Professor Jack Granatstein, a preeminent historian told us we should admire them. And Canada agreed. By the way a few years later when people started to write other chapters of history, like contribution of immigrants, the history of women, residential schools, stories about the sexism and racism of some of our history, he wrote a thundering and dismissive response in his book, “Who stole Canadian history?”. Funny isn’t it, how some people claim their version of history is the only true one, and anyone else’s is “re-writing history”. May be Jack had a bias or he wasn’t a very thorough researcher to have missed so much. I have come to believe history is actually never fully written. History is only a series of observations made by each historian.

– Another point about residential schools. It is sad that Sir John A. Macdonald, the leading Father of Confederation, also saw to it that the first peoples of the land, who he did not include in the Confederation talks, instead helped create residential schools. And he himself was an immigrant but yet assigned himself more rights that the folks who HAd been here since the dawn of time.

– Here’s a couple of other systemic things the Government of Canada did – that government that you and I worked for, although you in loftier ways. It did not allow certain people to vote. “Certain people” isn’t close to the right term, when I start with mentioning it did not allow women to vote – fully half of the population. And while one might say, that was the way of the world back then, since the beginnings of democracy, the government did face off against women’s groups for many years who made the point long and clear. What’s funny is that if the European settlers had looked at the Indigenous peoples, they might have found there were many matriarchal societies which had existed for ages, and very successfully so and may be the men among settlers should have refrained from voting to keep up with the natives. The government did not allow Indigenous People to vote until the sixties, it did not allow Chinese Canadians and Japanese Canadians to vote. That is systemic sexism and racism.

– Another example, there was a law on the books for several years that required that any ships bringing immigrants to Canada had to sail directly without any stops. This ensured people from my ancestral land, India, could not come here because no ship from India could make it in a direct voyage back then.

– During World War I the federal government interned many Italian Canadians and Ukrainian Canadians as they determined them to be enemy aliens.

– During World War II they interned all Japanese Canadians and confiscated all their property. Folks like David Suzuki and Joy Kogawa grew up in internment camps with barbed wire.

– Carding. All things systemic are not in the distant past. A police practice that allows policy to stop and check anyone who they have suspicions about. A logical practice until it became clear that with Black men and white men in similar circumstances, it was Black men who were being carded way more than their white counterparts. This in an example of untended systemic racism which through its continuation became very intended systemic racism.

– La loi1 21. Quebec’s Bill 21 systemically disallows people of various religions to show any signs of their religion, whether it’s on over symbol such as cross to a head covering. It knowingly discriminates against those groups. And now that face coverings are banned, I am not sure if Muslim women are not allowed to wear masks? If a top epidemiologist wears a yarmulke would they not hire him during this crisis? Hmmm. Funny but stupid.

These are all problems with our system. Systemic problems.

Bushels of bad apples…or bad bushels

The problems with police are legendary. But when the evidence is incontrovertible, police brass will say well there are just a few bad apples. I sometimes wonder if there are in fact more that a few. One officer kneeled on George Floyd’s neck till he died and three others helped holding him down, and not one said, “Hey fellows, did I head this guy say ‘I can’t breathe’. Do you think kind gentlemen of the highest standing, do you think one might allow him to breathe now that we have him handcuffed and four of us strong fellows are holding him down?” That’s four officers and they now they have all been charged.

And if Minneapolis sounds far away, what about the guy who held Abdirahman Abdi down with metal reinforced (illegal) gloves till he died, while several colleagues helped him, just a couple of miles from Parliament Hill in Ottawa – while being recorded, in 2016?
Isn’t it more like bushels of bad apples? Bushels of apples who don’t mind being recorded when they are doing bad shit! Bad bushels

Imagine residential school for immigrant kids.
Coming back to residential schools, which so many people say…Well it was bad but in the context of the times, things were different then. The objective of residential schools, put nicely, was to get the kids ready to operate in the Canadian mainstream. “Kill the Indian in the child” or “get rid of the Indian problem” were the actual terms used widely.

So I try to analyze it by thinking of another group. Let’s apply the same rule to immigrants. Lord knows some of them come with different ways. They have brought their foods like spaghetti, and chowmien, and butter chicken. And now kimchee and kombucha, Khorasan grain, tofu, Chilean wines. People get tired of them not just doing things the way we do them here. Some people in your party talked about their “barbaric practices”.

And those immigrants some of them cover their faces. OMG what next? They will soon be telling us all to wear masks when we go out.

Sorry I got distracted there. Immigrants. Yes.

Imagine if within a few days of arriving, a RCMP officer, a priest and a stern woman in a black coat came and took the kids away. And if you tried to hide them they might bring more police to do what needed to be done.

When my family arrived in Canada, I was a few weeks over 18 so I would have been okay. But my sisters would have been taken away from us to a boarding schools so they could become good Canadians. Their hair would be cut, their names changed. My parents would have no contact with them. Although on occasion they may come home briefly in the summer, not at Christmas. Discipline would be harsh.

I need to take this out of the sphere of my family here, as I cannot stand to think of what would have happened to my own sisters. So let’s just say the discipline in residential schools at large was harsh, and many God-fearing priests did more with the kids than they were supposed to, and not just an inappropriate glance or touch. I’m talking full fledged and very regular, like nightly, sexual assault and rape of young girls and boys.

Then when they turn 18, they are turfed out, with no real work skills, and definitely no family and nurturing skills. But they are deemed to be good capable Canadians. So instead of assimilating them into a strong culture of education, workskills, nurturing abilities, they were turfed out as broken and abused young people. And then the state would come back for their kids some years later, and this carried on.

Stockwell, here’s where the system was so wrong, so corrupt, so unethical, so damaging. It is hard to think that this went on for several generations and no one realized how bad this was. Really. That this was the most state-facilitated church-run abuse of children imaginable. The state put this system in place for one “race”.

And here’s the kicker – actually there are many kickers, but here’s one: We then expect them to just “get over it”.

I’m not much of a drinker Stock, and something tells me neither are you. But think about it, if your kids were taken away from you, or you were the kid who was taken away, would that not just drive you to drink? I mean how else do you cope with nightly raping, abuse, having your culture beaten out of you – literally beaten on a regular basis. The drunken Indian stereotype. Who made him that way? The state, the church, the system.

Systemic racism at is most extreme.

And here’s another kicker – they were here first. Immigrants, whether they were here for generations, or new immigrants with foreign accents (like Sir John A.) , felt they had the right to tell the original residents how to behave. Imagine the gall of immigrants who not only bring their old ways over, but enforce it on the folks here, sometimes brutally so.

The way the Canadian state, made up of white people from Britain and France, systematically subjugated the first peoples? It’s more than systemic. It was very systematic. The RCMP were used to enforce the subjugation, and the breaking up of families in a very systematic way. One by one. One by one.

So when Indigenous people say, Canada was built on the back of Indigenous Peoples, that what they are talking about. The settlers took their land and brutally subjugated them, claiming it was all for their good. The church was involved, what could go wrong?

Being open with you

Stockwell, I feel I can write this open letter to you because I feel like I know you. You have been in our lives for so long. (Apart from just being a Canadian, I am also a political junkie, so I have watched you for a long time and we have met briefly at some large event when such things were allowed .) Your participation in Power and Politics as an avuncular jolly partisan with good humour, makes me feel like I can jostle with you a bit. But know that I still respect you, as I do most politicians, who give so much of their lives to serve us. Further anyone who almost became prime minister and withstood all that entails deserves our respect.

I started this letter as my intention of having discussion of what systemic racism is. You see, like you, I love this country dearly. My family, we often stop and say, OMG are we not so lucky for having come here and settled here and done reasonably well. But that does not prevent me from seeing our flaws and work toward making us a better country – in fact are not all political junkies focused on that single cause. I also think that makes me a better citizen.

Conservative PMs recognizing past injustices

A curmudgeonly tweeter, I think it was Norman Spector (apologies if I have it wrong) recently tweeted that he longed for the day when a Prime Minister stood up for Canada. It’s a cheap shot at Justin Trudeau as he talks about systemic racism in Canada. Spector was Brian Mulroney’s Chief of Staff who did a lot about correcting past wrongs. The Meech Lake Accord was all about Quebec having been “left out of the constitution”. He lauched the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, which was part of the deal coming out of the Oka crisis of 1990. He issued an apology to Japanese-Canadians for their internment during World War II – the first of many other apologies that would be issued for past government wrongs, and yes Stephen Harper’s government, in which you served as a senior minister, issued some apologies too. Stockwell, what you were doing was to correct for past policies and laws passed by the Parliament of Canada and implemented by the Government of Canada, that discriminated against particular groups. You were acknowledging past bad practices in the system, past systemic racism.

Kinda wish you had remembered that in The Diatribe. It would not have made for as good television, bit I would not be writing this letter to you.
For his part Justin Trudeau has addressed anti-Black racism long before it was fashionable. He has spoken often against all forms of racism and bigotry to the extent that opponents call it virtue signally. I kind of think all politicians should virtue signal on a wide range of issues – provided they also do some real work on those issues.

You make Canada greater by clearing out the rot.

“Racialized Canadians”
This is not an issue you have commented on, but I want to take the opportunity to comment on this term which Maxime Bernier has knocked for being an awkward term. It is awkward, I agree. But this is what it means. There is a growing belief that race is an artificial and dangerous social construct. While yes, people were visible different, the concept of race, and to some extent, ethnicity, have been sued to separate people and to claim superiority of some and inferiority of others. So to “racialize” someone is to assign them a lesser status or maintain that they have lesser ability. Rather than being a racial minority, with does connote numbers and power, racialize suggests an artificial assignment of status and ability.

It’s not right to say white people in Canada and more dangers than non-whites because all mass murderers in Canadian history are white. They are not more prone to be violent. There is nothing genetically to suggest that. There is no racial or genetic flaw in white people.

Privilege
One more thing I want to touch on is privilege. White privilege. I know that terms gets some people’s backs up.

Although first, let me say lots of us have privilege. At various times in my life, I travelled a lot so I earned Air Canada status and got to visit Air Canada’s Maple Leaf Lounge at the airport. I had privilege – they told me I had earned it! And it always struck me as strange that we with privilege got free newspapers and nice snacks and an open bar, and most of us could certainly afford to buy those things. But the other hard working people who just about had a few dollars to rub together to take a flight, had to pay for their own Tim Horton’s and newspapers and drinks. It was like we had this privilege that we didn’t even need.

Male privilege. An example is being able to park in any underground parking lot and never worrying about coming back late at night to get the car. No women in Canada or any where in the world have that privilege. Women face greater danger than men, period. Men have other privileges too. On average we earn more than women….just coz we’re dudes! Doesn’t matter if we are less qualified, lazier and less competent. We’re dudes so we get privilege.

Now think of a Black man driving a nice car that he has earned through his hard work. Actually wait, where was that case the other day? Regina. The Black guy came out of his home on his bike, stopped at his car parked on the road, got something out of it, then rode off on his bicycle. Pretty boring, right? Some white guy observing this, recorded it and posted on Facebook that a Black dudes was breaking into cars. This doesn’t happen to white dudes. Never. That’s white privilege.

Then imagine if it’s a ritzy neighbourhood and the police come and stop any guy on a bicycle, especially if they have a backpack. The offense? Riding while Black. Double jeopardy for him, because he could just as well be stopped for driving an expensive car. Driving while Black. Black privilege.

Not far from Regina, in Biggar SK, was Coulton Boushie, shot by a farmer on his property and was acquitted.

That guy who cursed me on Canada Day. I should have given him his way. He’s white. I’m brown. That was white privilege.
Affirmative action? That’s when systems try to level the playing field. The biggest problems comes when the privileged group ceases to have it so easy. They have to meet the standards when in the past it was who you know, not what you knew. You have to obey the rules of the road all of a sudden. Because some uppity brown guy thinks the rules apply to white folks. Ooof

THE APOLOGIA

I think your apology was good. It seemed sincere and it was quick and to the point.

Twitter text:
(((Stockwell Day)))@Stockwell_Day
By feedback from many in the Black and other communities I realize my comments in debate on Power and Politics were insensitive and hurtful.I ask forgiveness for wrongly equating my experiences to theirs.I commit to them my unending efforts to fight racism in all its forms.
535
4:03 PM – Jun 3, 2020 • Kelowna, British Columbia
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Here’s my thing on saying silly shit and apologizing. In my humble opinion, of the things that are said, your diatribe was insensitive, rude, but not racist. It suggested you just wanted to drive a partisan point. Or you didn’t have much of a clue as to what systemic racism is and how deeply it cuts for so many. It suggested you live in a world, may be a bubble that is separate from the lives many of your fellow citizens live. Yes you have been a senior minister of our government and you should know better. You were in charge of the RCMP and CBSA and Lord knows there are racial problems there. (Ironically the present head of the RCMP just said she did not think there was systemic racism in the force, and then said oh there is. OMG, really? Was she not working on this blight for the past two years that she was head and before that when she was the deputy?)

But Stockwell you asked for forgiveness and said you would commit to fighting racism in all its forms. Wow, overnight. All its forms….to me that includes overt racism, that’s covert racism, systemic, systematic, the whole shebang. It’s good to have influential white guys as allies.

THE EXITUS

My view, you should have stuck it out. I know sticking it out has cost you before, when you had a revolt when you were leader and they just about killed you. What was remarkable was that after that night of the long knives, you lived for another day and went on to do fine job as a senior minister. I understand if you are done with sticking it out.

Still, I ask you to stick with your pledge. You see you do have the prominence and with the apologia, the new and unplanned credibility of one who wants to make this country better. I hope we can chat sometime soon.

This Canada. It’s complex story, this Canada. In some ways like any other country, and in some ways like no other.
Like no other, because, we do work at getting better. If there is a fault in modern Canada, it is that we talk more than we do. But compared to many other countries – most others – our talk is better and we talk about things that many other countries won’t allow any one to say. We can benefit with some more doing. And we have accomplished much to make things better.

I started to write this as about you, and as I have written this I realize I have explored a lot about me and my values and what I think about this amazing country Canada.

The wrongs pain me. But they do no dull my love for Canada or the pride I have for being Canadian. Nor do they dull my belief that we can improve, because there are lots of people who want to improve.

I remember this woman in Havana who spoke some English, who asked where I was from, and when I said Canada, her eyes lit up and she said, “I learned English so I could sing Celine Dion songs”. I learned to have a new love for Celine that day and determined I would never again roll my eyes when her name was mentioned! In this narrow street in Havana, this poor but happy Cuban made me feel proud of Celine and so happy to be Canadian. People out there like us. It’s a big complex country and you never know what will make your heart skip a beat!

It is a wonderful world Stockwell…in so many ways. Let’s keep working at it.

Sincerely,
Andrew Cardozo

President, Pearson Centre

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