Light is Right Joe Campbell I don’t have a supple mind. Unlike some highly trained professionals, I can’t abide contradictions. When a British Columbia judge ruled that the right to life can also mean the right to death, I realized how inflexible my non-professional intellect is. I couldn’t hand down a ruling like that. Of course, I couldn’t. I’m not [...]
Light is Right Joe Campbell I feel like a fool when someone says there are no absolutes. It’s not that I can’t bring myself to respond. I can and I do. It’s just that I feel foolish contradicting something that contradicts itself. To insist on no absolutes is to concede a least one. So it seems a foolish waste of [...]
Light is Right Joe Campbell I don’t understand feminism. Really I don’t. Although I’ve had it explained to me a number of times, I still don’t get it. Oh, I’m making progress, but it’s slow. I was impressed when feminists said that women who serve in combat have to risk their lives for strangers. But I was puzzled when they [...]
Light is Right Joe Campbell Sadly, a Québécois spring seems increasingly unlikely. I say sadly, because I can’t help feeling sorry for Francophones who want Quebec to leave Canada. For a mainly French province in a largely English country the frustration is never ending. Look what happens when unilingual Francophones go grocery shopping. They’re searching for haricots rouges, fromage râpé, [...]
Following the reunion, we reminisced about former classmates who hadn’t attended. “Charlie’s not doing so well,” he said, when I asked about one of them. “He’s living with angina.” “He’s left Gaylene?” “Of course not,” he said. “Charlie and Gaylene are happily married.” As he seemed annoyed, I tried to re-start the conversation. I told him that our old [...]
I prefer waves to wires. It doesn’t matter. Wires prevailed. For more than half a century, I received my television programs over the air, free of charge, via radio waves. Now I get them on the ground, for a price, via telephone wires. This, I realize, is a step backward, technologically and financially. Wireless is on the cutting edge [...]
Was I naïve? In the early 1980s, I mounted an argument against abortion that I thought no one could refute. In a brief to government, I asked: if the unborn do not have rights from the first moment of their existence, on the grounds of their being human, how can we be sure that they acquire rights later on, and [...]
I agree with the critics. We Canadians don’t reflect enough on our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We shouldn’t have devoted more time to commemorating the sinking of the Titanic than the signing of the Charter. The signing of Charter was by far the greater disaster. Oh, I know that the Titanic facilitated a voyage of death and the loss of [...]
Oh, I knew that we had a lot to answer for. But until he enlightened me, I didn’t grasp how much. “Look at our aboriginals,” he said. I looked at them. “We took their lands,” he continued, “and tried to replace their culture with ours. Thanks to our policies, they’re poor today and likely to be poor tomorrow.” “What [...]
I couldn’t imagine what Pierre Trudeau was thinking when he declared that the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation. Oh, the declaration impressed me all right, but not the sense of it, only the sound. The sense puzzled me. I wondered why Mr. Trudeau singled out the bedrooms of the nation. Didn’t he know that the [...]
When polled, Canadians ranked judges among the most trusted professionals and lawyers among the least. “Don’t Canadians know that judges are lawyers?” Dingwall asked, when I showed him the rankings. “Maybe Canadians think that getting appointed to the judiciary makes lawyers more trustworthy,” I suggested. “But politicians appoint them,” Dingwall said, “and the poll shows that Canadians trust politicians even less [...]
When I was a reporter, I would do anything for a scoop. I wonder, though, whether the effort was misplaced. A scoop is an exclusive story. But now that inclusiveness is in fashion, exclusiveness may be on the way out. I hope not. Being first with the news was more fun than gossip. To avoid excluding women, our academic and media [...]
“Yes,” Bidwell said, “I want to take part in the anti-poverty campaign.” “Excellent,” the chairman replied. “We’re meeting here for the next several days to renew our mandate. If you’re interested, we’ve got openings for the right sort of people.” Hoping he was the right sort of person, Bidwell agreed to an interview. “Join me for dinner at my hotel,” the [...]
When I was growing up, my teachers insisted that I strive for excellence. So did my parents. Both neglected to instruct me about the superiority of equality. If I failed a math test, there was no amnesty in pleading that everyone else failed it, too. That’s why I gasped on learning about the travails of a retired provincial premier with a [...]
“You weren’t loud enough,” Molder said. “You should have been on your feet yelling like the rest of us.” “The quarterback was having a hard time making himself heard,” Bimson replied. “I didn’t want to add to his difficulties.” “That’s what the home team fans are for.” “We’re supposed to drown out the quarterback whenever the visitors have the ball?” “Absolutely,” [...]