Monday, July 03, 2006

The Horned God

Lets see last month we had the the satanic panic about the birth of the anti-christ on 06/06/06 .





He apparently made an appearance at the end of the month at the fashion walkways in Milan. No not the anti-christ but the Great God Pan. Who did not die contrary to the wish of his Christian detractors

The Gods of old are silent on their shore,

Since the great Pan expired, and through the roar

Of the Ionian waters broke a dread

Voice which proclaimed "the Mighty Pan is dead."

How much died with him ! false or true --- the dream

Was beautiful which peopled every stream

With more than finny tenants, and adorned

The woods and waters with coy nymphs that scorned

Pursuing Deities, or in the embrace

Of gods brought forth the high heroic race

Whose names are on the hills and o'er the seas.

Aristomenes -- by Lord Byron


The return of the horned god and the rebirth of paganism in the public meme of pop culture.


Art reflects and resolves the eternal human dilemma of order versus energy. In the west, Apollo and Dionysus strive for victory. Apollo makes the boundary lines that are civilization but that lead to convention, constraint, oppression. Dionysus is energy unbound, mad, callous, destructive, wasteful. Apollo is law, history, tradition, the dignity and safety of custom and form. Dionysys in the new, exhilarating but rude, sweeping all away to begin again. Apollo is a tyrant, Dionysus a vandal. Every excess breeds its counterreaction. So western culture swings from point to point on its complex cycle, pouring forth its lavish tributes of art, word and deed. We have littered the world with grandiose achievements. Our story is vast, lurid, and unending. (Sexual Personae, pp. 96-7) Apollo, Dionysus and Camille



The return of the repressed, as it began with the advent of the modernist era of last century, a century that saw the rebirth of magick.


Pan being the conciousness of liberty is the inspiration of libertines and libertarians.
In ancient times they used to say that those who had lifted the veil of physical phenomena had seen the great god Pan. The upheavals of our time that have revealed a solution of continuity in the evolution of mankind have given rise to a panic literature. Dada is without doubt a pessimistic movement. But its pessimism is based on the danger of human ambitions. It is in de la Rochefoucald and Schopenhauer that we must search for the preliminaries to an international agreement. Dada is the only possible link between men since its fundamental principle consists in being right about nothing. Not to know Dada is not to know our time. In a century when Lenin falls after Wilson, Dada has nothing that can surprise us. Dadas are deliberately out of their depth. But if they are fools they are not stupid. They say nothing for a laugh and take nothing seriously.Art As Anarchy

Picasso never lost his sense of art as "magical," that is, a defense against inner and outer reality, and, more crucially, a way of influencing or controlling, and even changing, them, that is, modifying the reality of one’s internal objects -- the spirits within oneself -- and of external objects, which have their own spirits. This is sheer fantasy -- hence what I call fantastic realism, for it involves both the defense of fantasy and what Freud called "omnipotence of thought," the magical thinking that is characteristic of childhood. It survives in art, as he said -- especially in modern magical/fantastic art, of which Picasso’s is an extreme example, especially his Surrealist-inspired work of the ‘30s. As Charles Brenner writes, the child assumes that "all the objects" in its "environment. . . have thoughts, feelings and wishes just as he himself does. All nature is animate until experience, and his parents, tell him otherwise."(3) When Picasso said that "I use things as my passions tell me"(4) he shows his reluctance -- inability? -- to give up childhood thinking. It seems particularly evident in the still lives that proliferate throughout his art, from Guitar on a Table (1915) through Mandolin and Guitar (1924) to Still Life with Horned God (1937), and beyond. The objects in these pictures, whether natural or man-made, not only seem to be alive, but to have an inner life, that is, to be tense with inner drama.
And the goat-gods like Pan have their origin in the working and lower classes.

Momus. This is really most gratifying. Such encouragement is 4 precisely what I should have expected of a king of your exalted spirit; I will mention the name. I refer, in fact, to Dionysus. Although the mother of this truly estimable demi-god was not only a mortal, but a barbarian, and his maternal grandfather a tradesman in Phoenicia, one Cadmus, it was thought necessary to confer immortality upon him. With his own conduct since that time, I am not concerned; I shall have nothing to say on the subject of his snood, his inebriety, or his manner of walking. You may all see him for yourselves: an effeminate, half-witted creature, reeking of strong liquor from the early hours of the day. But we are indebted to him for the presence of a whole tribe of his followers, whom he has introduced into our midst under the title of Gods. Such are Pan, Silenus, and the Satyrs; coarse persons, of frisky tendencies and eccentric appearance, drawn chiefly from the goat-herd class. The first-mentioned of these, besides being horned, has the hind-quarters of a goat, and his enormous beard is not unlike that of the same animal. Silenus is an old man with a bald head and a snub nose, who is generally to be seen riding on a donkey; he is of Lydian extraction. The Satyrs are Phrygians; they too are bald, and have pointed ears, and sprouting horns, like those of young kids. When I add that every one of these persons is provided with a tail, you will realize the extent of our obligation.Works of Lucian, Vol. IV: The Gods in Council






Pan(Greek, Roman):
Io Pan, the shout in the hills,
Io Pan, the hooves on the rocks,
Io Pan the song in the wild:
Io Pan, Io Pan.
Io Pan, the scattering of the flocks,
Io Pan, the singing of the pipes,
Io Pan, the roaring in the fields:
Io Pan, Io Pan.
Io Pan, the goat,
Io Pan, the man,
Io Pan, the god:
Io Pan, Io Pan.

Song by Aphra Behn

Pan, grant that I may never prove
So great a Slave to fall in love,
And to an Unknown Deity
Resign my happy Liberty:
I love to see the Amorous Swains
...Unto my Scorn their Hearts resign;
With Pride I see the Meads and Plains
...Throng'd all with Slaves, and they all mine:
Whilst I the whining Fools despise,
That pay their Homage to my Eyes.


Hymn to Pan


SING his praises that doth keep
Our flocks from harm.
Pan, the father of our sheep;
And arm in arm
Tread we softly in a round,
Whilst the hollow neighbouring ground
Fills the music with her sound.

Pan, O great god Pan, to thee
Thus do we sing!
Thou who keep'st us chaste and free
As the young spring:
Ever be thy honour spoke
From that place the morn is broke
To that place day doth unyoke!

John Fletcher

Hymn Of Pan

Percy Bysshe Shelley

 From the forests and highlands
We come, we come;
From the river-girt islands,
Where loud waves are dumb,
Listening to my sweet pipings.
The wind in the reeds and the rushes,
The bees on the bells of thyme,
The birds on the myrtle bushes,
The cicale above in the lime,
And the lizards below in the grass,
Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was,
Listening to my sweet pipings.

Liquid Peneus was flowing,
And all dark Tempe lay
In Pelion’s shadow, outgrowing
The light of the dying day,
Speeded by my sweet pipings.
The Sileni and Sylvans and Fauns,
And the Nymphs of the woods and waves,
To the edge of the moist river-lawns,
And the brink of the dewy caves,
And all that did then attend and follow,
Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo,
With envy of my sweet pipings.

I sang of the dancing stars,
I sang of the dædal earth,
And of heaven, and the giant wars,
And love, and death, and birth.
And then I changed my pipings—
Singing how down the vale of Mænalus
I pursued a maiden, and clasp’d a reed:
Gods and men, we are all deluded thus!
It breaks in our bosom, and then we bleed.
All wept—as I think both ye now would,
If envy or age had not frozen your blood—
At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.

Thoreau's Flute



by Louisa May Alcott (written after Thoreau's death)

We sighing said, "Our Pan is dead;
His pipe hangs mute beside the river
Around it wistful sunbeams quiver,
But Music's airy voice is fled.
Spring mourns as for untimely frost;
The bluebird chants a requiem;
The willow-blossom waits for him;
The Genius of the wood is lost."

Then from the flute, untouched by hands,
There came a low, harmonious breath:
"For such as he there is no death;
His life the eternal life commands;
Above man's aims his nature rose.
The wisdom of a just content
Made one small spot a continent
And tuned to poetry life's prose.

"Haunting the hills, the stream, the wild,
Swallow and aster, lake and pine,
To him grew human or divine,
Fit mates for this large-hearted child.
Such homage Nature ne'er forgets,
And yearly on the coverlid
'Neath which her darling lieth hid
Will write his name in violets.

"To him no vain regrets belong
Whose soul, that finer instrument,
Gave to the world no poor lament,
But wood-notes ever sweet and strong.
O lonely friend! he still will be
A potent presence, though unseen,
Steadfast, sagacious, and serene;
Seek not for him -- he is with thee."

(Henry's flute is on display in the Concord Museum. It's made of
fruitwood, a warm reddish-brown wood. It has metal stops on it, and
Henry's and his father's names carved into it - Amy Belding Brown)

Pan - Double Villanelle

by Oscar Wilde

O goat-foot God of Arcady!
This modern world is grey and old,
And what remains to us of thee?


No more the shepherd lads in glee
Throw apples at thy wattled fold,
O goat-foot God of Arcady!


Nor through the laurels can one see
Thy soft brown limbs, thy beard of gold,
And what remains to us of thee?


And dull and dead our Thames would be,
For here the winds are chill and cold,
O goat-foot God of Arcady!


Then keep the tomb of Helice,
Thine olive-woods, thy vine-clad wold,
And what remains to us of thee?


Though many an unsung elegy
Sleeps in the reeds our rivers hold,
O goat-foot God of Arcady!
Ah, what remains to us of thee?

II


Ah, leave the hills of Arcady,
Thy satyrs and their wanton play,
This modern world hath need of thee.


No nymph or Faun indeed have we,
For Faun and nymph are old and grey,
Ah, leave the hills of Arcady!


This is the land where liberty
Lit grave-browed Milton on his way,
This modern world hath need of thee!


A land of ancient chivalry
Where gentle Sidney saw the day,
Ah, leave the hills of Arcady!


This fierce sea-lion of the sea,
This England lacks some stronger lay,
This modern world hath need of thee!


Then blow some trumpet loud and free,
And give thine oaten pipe away,
Ah, leave the hills of Arcady!
This modern world hath need of thee!



Pan With Us
Robert Lee Frost

Pan came out of the woods one day,--
His skin and his hair and his eyes were gray,
The gray of the moss of walls were they,--
And stood in the sun and looked his fill
At wooded valley and wooded hill.

He stood in the zephyr, pipes in hand,
On a height of naked pasture land;
In all the country he did command
He saw no smoke and he saw no roof.
That was well! and he stamped a hoof.

His heart knew peace, for none came here
To this lean feeding save once a year
Someone to salt the half-wild steer,
Or homespun children with clicking pails
Who see so little they tell no tales.

He tossed his pipes, too hard to teach
A new-world song, far out of reach,
For sylvan sign that the blue jay's screech
And the whimper of hawks beside the sun
Were music enough for him, for one.

Times were changed from what they were:
Such pipes kept less of power to stir
The fruited bough of the juniper
And the fragile bluets clustered there
Than the merest aimless breath of air.

They were pipes of pagan mirth,
And the world had found new terms of worth.
He laid him down on the sun-burned earth
And raveled a flower and looked away--
Play? Play?--What should he play?

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Athens, Democracy and Humanism

490 BCE To punish mainland Greeks for their support of the rebellion in Asia Minor, Darius the Great of Persia sends a fleet across the Aegean Sea and lands soldiers near Marathon, twenty-six miles north of Athens. A runner covers the distance to announce the arrival of the Persians. A coalition of city-states defeats the Persians at Marathon, and the Persians withdraw. In Athens, the god Pan is said to have given the Greeks their victory, to win back from the Athenians their devotion, which he had seen as diminishing.

Soon it was said that the god Pan had given the Athenians their victory by his causing panic among the Persians. It was said that Pan had done so after having seen a slack in devotion to him among the Athenians, Pan wanting to regain their devotion - a tactic different from Yahweh's reaction to the lack of devotion he had found among his Hebrews, and one that apparently worked better.

The Original of Religions by Sir Isaac Newton
Mars is sometimes called Mars Silvanus & thence Silvanus or Silenus is the same God with Mars or Bacchus for both were drunkards, & Pausanias tells us the oldest Satyrs were called Sileni, & Diodorus that Silenus was the first king of Nysa where Bacchus was born & that they were contemporary. Whence it follows that they were originally the same person though afterwards the two names became split into two persons, & the one made the Tutor & companion of the other. Another name of this God was Pan or (as the Latines called him) Faunus. For Pan was a sheepherd & painted like a Satyr & by consequence he was an Arabian. The p Note: p Phurnutus de nat. Deor. in Baccho')" Goat was sacred to Bacchus & satyrs were his perpetual companions & the ancients used to paint the Gods in the form of such animals as were sacred to them. Dionysus saith pPhurnutus, was delighted with the sacrifice of Goates δια το ’εαυτον ’ειναι τον τραγον because he himselfe was a Goat. He was h Note: h Herod. l. 2') one of the 8 first Egyptian Gods, lived i Note: i Diodor. l. 1. p. 16.a.')" with them in Ægypt in the days of Osyris & in their war with the Giants was among them & was then so terrible to their enemies that he is ever since accounted the author of terror & Panicus terror is still a Proverb: d Note: d Apud Anonymum de incredibilibus Fab. 11.')" Polienus commemorates that Pan first found out military order & constituted the right wing & the left (whence his effigies was formed with horns, & that he was the first that by wisdome & art cast terror. He was k Note: k Epiimenides Aristippus & alij apud Natalem Comitem l. 5. c. 6.') the son of Iupiter & l Note: l Theocritus in Phurnutus de nat. Deor. in Paus Thyrside') addicted to hunting, & carried in his hand a siccle which he used in pruning vines. All which characters can agree to none but Chus the God of wine & war. He was worshipped in Egypt by none but the Mendesij, a people of the lower Egypt where the Arabian Sheepherds sometimes reigned.

Commentary on Bacon's Wisdom of the Ancients
& Lord Bacon's Interpretation of Myths
by Manly P. Hall

Wisdom of its own nature being the principle incorruptible, the relationship of knowledge and learning to wisdom becomes important. Knowledge and learning are expressions of the ascent of human intelligence rising along the steps of what Bacon called his "Pyramid of Pan." Knowledge is like the rungs of a ladder upon which men climb. It is also a road with many paths as in the table of Thebes in which persons of every walk of life, every degree of intelligence, every type of conviction are groping along;always in search of that which is better. They are constantly striving toward wisdom. Their strivings are forever changing.

Bacon, being somewhat of a scientist, liked to point out that the strivings of science are forever changing. One day w have one belief, the next day another. One scientist supports another, a third contradicts them both. Yet each one ina way is dedicated to truth, but to each truth is only what he is capable of experiencing. Therefore, Bacon points out that the greatest handicap to the advancement of learning is the human mind. Here he comes very close to the concepts of Buddha. He points out that as long as the individual is in captivity to the tryranny of mind, mind will hold him to the conditions with which it is familiar. The biologist will continue to grope along the lines of biology, the physicist along the lines of physics, the astronomer will continue to build larger lenses with which to view the heavens; but all these are not going to end directly in wisdom.

Paperback

(ISBN-13: 9780521578929 | ISBN-10: 0521578922)

Shaftesbury’s Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times was first published in 1711. It ranges widely over ethics, aesthetics, religion, the arts (painting, literature, architecture, gardening), and ancient and modern history, and aims at nothing less than a new ideal of the gentleman. Together with Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Addison and Steele’s Spectator, it is a text of fundamental importance for understanding the thought and culture of Enlightenment Europe. This volume presents a new edition of the text together with an introduction, explanatory notes and a guide to further reading.



Midas, and other Folktales of Type 782

Montesquieu, Temple of Gnidus: The Online Library of Liberty

Hume, The Natural History of Religion (1757)

IV. Enlightenment and Religion

It was an age of reason based on faith, not an age of faith based on reason. The enlightenment spiritualized the principle of religious authority, humanized theological systems, and emancipated individuals from physical coercion. It was the Enlightenment, not the Reformation or the Renaissance that dislodged the ecclesiastical establishment from central control of cultural and intellectual life. by emancipating science from the trammels of theological tradition the Enlightenment rendered possible the autonomous evolution of modern culture. Diderot said, if you forbid me to speak on religion and government, I have nothing to say. Hence natural science occupied the front of the stage.

Most of the philosophes wrote on natural science. To Diderot, d'Holbach and the encyclopedists all religious dogma was absurd and obscure. LeMettrie and d'Holbach were consistent determinists. Voltaire disagreed with them and said they had a dogmatism of their own. Diderot too insisted on the free play of reason. But he was an unashamed pagan and believed in a kind of pantheism or pan-psychism, not pure atheism or materialism. He was humanistic, secular, modern and scientific. He expected from his method a regeneration of mankind.

English deism, however, was more pervasive in the Enlightenment. It emphasized an impersonal deity, natural religion and the common morality of all human beings. Deism was a logical outgrowth of scientific inquiry, rational faith in humanity, and the study of comparative religion. All religions could be reduced to worship God and a commonsense moral code. There was a universal natural religion.

Yet, it was David Hume, the Englishman, who cut the ground from under his deist friends (Natural History of Religion). Natural religion rested on the basic assumption that man is guided by the dictates of reason. Mind is the scene of the uniform play of motive. The motives of man are quantitatively and qualitatively the same at all times and in all places. An empirical study of the nature of man, said Hume, reveals not an identical set of motives but a confusion of impulses, not an orderly cosmos but chaos. The elemental passion, hopes and fears is the root of religious experience. Religions may be socially convenient but being rooted in sentiment they lack the validity of scientific generalization. A rational religion is a contradiction in terms. Hume here comes close to demolishing the entire rationalist philosophy of the Enlightenment--its natural rights, its self-evident truths and its universal and immutable laws of morality.

Voltaire is in the middle between the materialism of the Encyclopedists and the skepticism of Hume. His ruthless and comic deflation of theological sophism prevented him from recognizing the deepest drives of Catholicism. He conveyed the power of intellect to his generation, but also saw the limitations of reason. Reason was, after all, a poor instrument, but it was the only weapon that raised man above the animals. He believed in the argument from design or "first cause." But this no longer sufficed Diderot and Hume. Voltaire accepted the classical ideal of the brotherhood of man and the universal morality of man. He was essentially a humanist--the greatest humanist of the Enlightenment. He had not the depth of David Hume or Immanuel Kant, but they could not have done his work. Voltaire had only one absolute value: the human race.

The central theme of the Enlightenment is the effort to humanize religion. All philosophes rejected original sin. Here Pascal became a problem for them. For Pascal used their method of analytic logic to prove the existence of original sin and the utter inability of the unaided human reason o solve the problem without accepting the authority of faith. How do you explain the "double nature" of mankind? It becomes intelligible only through the doctrine of the fall of man. Pascal haunted Voltaire all his life. The cruel laughter of the Candide could not suppress the problem of evil. In the upshot he accepted Pascal's analysis of human nature. By becoming an agnostic he became prisoner of Pascal's argument--reason without faith ends in skepticism.

Rousseau had a more original solution to Pascal's problem. In his two discourses he painted a picture of depravity of society that would have delighted Pascal. If he accepted degeneration how was he to explain radical evil? He discovered a new agent of degeneration--the "fall of man"--not god or individual man but society. Thus salvation comes through the social contract. Man must save himself. In social justice is the meaning of life. It was neither a theological or metaphysical solution but a modern solution.

GK CHESTERTON: THE EVERLASTING MAN
The idea was concealed, was avoided was almost forgotten, was even explained away; but it was never evolved. There are not a few indications of this change in other places. It is implied for instance in the fact that even polytheism seems often the combination of several monotheisms. A god will gain only a minor seat on Mount Olympus, when he had owned earth and heaven and all the stars while he lived in his own little valley. Like many a small nation melting in a great empire, he gives up local universality only to come under universal limitation. The very name of Pan suggests that he became a god of the wood when he had been a god of the world. The very name of Jupiter is almost a pagan translation of the words 'Our Father which art in heaven.' As with the Great Father symbolized by the sky, so with the Great Mother whom we still call Mother Earth. Demeter and Ceres and Cybele often seem to be almost incapable of taking over the whole business of godhood, so that men should need no other gods. It seems reasonably probable that a good many men did have no other gods but one of these, worshipped as the author of all.


Poetry

Syrinx, by John Lyly

RPO -- William Wilfred Campbell : Pan the Fallen

32. Endymion. Keats, John. 1884. The Poetical Works of John Keats

Solitude -- from Walden by Henry Thoreau, with notes and analysis

RPO -- Algernon Charles Swinburne : Atalanta in Calydon

La Muse malade by Charles Baudelaire

'Pan and Luna' :: A poem by Robert Browning :: PoetryConnection.net

A Musical Instrument by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Aleister Crowley 'Hymn To Pan'

Aleister Crowley 'Pan to Artemis'


Other References

Folklore: Pan

Chapter 43. Dionysus.The Golden Bough

Golden Bough Chapter 49. Ancient Deities of Vegetation as Animals ...

God of the Witches
by Margret Murray

The Temple of Solomon the King

The Goat Foot God and Dion Fortune

Witchcraft Today By Gerald B. Gardner

Pan (mythology) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Capricorn the Goat

" On the Destiny of the Soul" by FS Darrow

JSTOR: The Survival of Pan

Many sculptures in Manhattan are linked to important dates in U.S. or world history. Here are a few for May; Time to Panic

Carnival Carnaval Mardi Gras Bacchanalia Lupercalia

Bacchus Autobiography of a Demi-god

Dionysian Mysteries - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Karl Marx and Human Self-Creation | libcom.org library

A Time of Reconquest: History, the Maya Revival, and the Zapatista Rebellion in Chiapas


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Internet Spying


Not to be left out; The Tories approved internet monitoring by the Canadian Security State after Bush had done so in the U.S., the Chinese join in. And with all the right reasons, just like their American and Canadian counter parts.

China launched a campaign in February to "purify the environment" of the Internet and mobile communications, Xinhua said.




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Stanway's Sombre Reflection on Somme

Edmonton Sun editor Paul Stanway gives serious sobre reflection on the importance of the battle of the Somme for Canadian military strategy.

Ninety years on, losses remembered Sun, July 2, 2006

Despite the loss of life, the meaning of the Somme was lost on Haig (who considered it a victory) and British newspapers that hailed it as a triumph (as did the Toronto Star). Its meaning was not lost on the troops, who called the Somme a name that is unprintable here. Nor was it lost on Arthur Currie, the commander of the 1st Canadian Division who was horrified by the slaughter.

Currie, tubby and unathletic, was an unlikely battlefield commander. Yet by the time his troops arrived on the Somme in August, the 42-year-old former B.C. teacher and realtor had already formed strong opinions about the string of suicidal frontal attacks that had already cost thousands of Canadian lives.

When Currie was asked to plan an attack on heavily defended Vimy Ridge, he did everything Haig had not done before the Somme. The four divisions of the Canadian Corps trained throughout the winter on a recreation of the Vimy battlefield behind their own lines. Enormous tunnels were built to deliver men and equipment to the front out of sight of the Germans on the overlooking ridge.

And having seen the fiasco of the Somme artillery barrage, Currie had his officers develop new tactics that would cover the Canadian advance and concentrate on destroying enemy strong points and guns.

The result, on April 9, 1917, was perhaps the most significant Allied success in three years of war. New fuses meant shells actually destroyed the German wire, and the meticulously timed barrage kept the enemy troops in their shelters until the Canadians were virtually on top of them. Three-quarters of the German guns were silenced before the attack even began, and instead of massed ranks of slow-moving infantry, Currie's men attacked in platoons, moving rapidly from one objective to the next.

Vimy was the anti-Somme, and established the Canadians' reputation as the most effective Allied troops. Currie was knighted and became commander of all Canadian soldiers in France. In the fall of 1918, his Canadian Corps would use its new tactics to lead the final Allied assault of that dreadful war, to eventual victory.

Our greatest military strength has not been our Airborne, nor our Sea or Airforce, rather it has been our engineers.

And the Somme gave them the model of both what to do and what not to do when it came to taking Vimy Ridge.

Ironically it was a very real Colonel Blimp, Arthur Currie, who would devise the solution to taking the ridge that had cost so many lives.

It was an engineering problem, the seige, as it has been since the middle ages. All forteified warfare is an engineering problem.


One of the most important functions of the Sappers during the war was to dig tunnels underneath enemy trenches, with which to plan explosives to destroy them. At the Battle of Vimy Ridge, several such mines were used to win the battle.Canadian Military Engineers - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


And the Canadian Engineering Corp gets little recognition that it is due for its feats during both wars.



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Sunday, July 02, 2006

Alberta Is Republican Lite

The Edmonton Journal editorial board is shocked to discover Alberta is a Republican Province. Just like California. If they had read this blog they would have known that.

WHO KNEW ALBERTA WAS REPUBLICAN PROVINCE?

Many Edmontonians were probably as surprised as U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney last week to hear Ralph Klein describe Alberta as Canada's "Republican province," and to discover that the Alberta premier believes a trip to our oilfields would help American Republicans win extra votes in this November's midterm elections.

But Republican? Not so much, Cheney could have told his guest during our premier's visit to the American capital last week.

Heck, Alberta's government even tolerates same-sex marriages, albeit grudgingly. From the point of view of a lot of the so-called Republican base, Alberta's premier probably looks more like a dangerously liberal, big-government Democrat.

Actually he acts just like Schwarzenegger and that other Californian Ronald Reagan, a populist, all things to all people and just a regular guy.

One is an actor the other
is a former TV weatherman.

Hmmm does that sound like a conspiracy theory media/hollywood produces media savvy politicians.


















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Wrong!



A comment from last year. When oil was at $55 dollars U.S.

Analyst Fadel Gheit of Oppenheimer & Co in New York compared behaviour in the oil market to the run-up in Nasdaq stocks that ended five years ago. "The higher oil prices go, the closer we get to bursting the bubble," Mr Gheit said. "At some point the circuit-breaker will kick in and the price will come down. I would not be surprised to see oil come back to $US30."
Analysts warn oil gusher is volatile
By Simon Romero in Houston
March 16, 2005



I wouldn't trust this guys investment advice, better to use the magic ball that tells
you yes/no.

Today oil is at the record above what it was in 1981!

Oil rose to nearly $74 a barrel on Friday, within sight of record highs, on a positive outlook for oil demand and economic growth in the US, the top consumer.Reuters



While gas prices rose at the pump prior to the long weekend, as usual, the apologists for big oil say thats supply and demand. Not so!

"We are in the mode where the fundamentals of supply and demand really don't drive the price," Lee Raymond, the chairman and chief executive of Exxon Mobil, the world's largest energy company, said last week.



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The Myth of the NEP


I have said this before about the phoney hysteria around the NEP and its impact on Alberta and others have disputed my claim, so sad too bad. The truth is still the truth. Nice to see it confirmed by an independent source.

Re-inventing the NEP

Larry Johnsrude looks at the memory of the National Energy Program in the Conservative race.

The fact is the NEP did drain more than $1 billion from Alberta. But it also coincided with the drop in world oil prices to about $8 US a barrel from over $40. The two are inextricably linked in peoples’ minds, and Conservative politicians have done nothing to change the perception the NEP somehow caused the world price to tumble.Many of the economic benefits Alberta is seeing now are the result of the NEP’s promotion of non-conventional energy sources such as oil sands, heavy crude and off-shore oil.

Also See:

Living In The Past


Nationalize the Oil Industry


It's Time to Take Back Our Oil and Gas


Corporate Welfare for Big Oil


Dark Prince of Oil Decries Dark Side of Oil


Alberta's Tar Sands Gamble




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Pro-Life Pro-Death


Thought I would add a few of my posts to the Canadian Blog Exchange topic Pro Life since Syncategorematic noted this posting space has become a spam spot for one view and one blog.

So riddle me this what is both pro-life and pro-death?

Why the average Christian right winger. Who, if they are American or wannabe Americans (like Michael Coren), hate Canada for our libertarian position defending a womans right to choose.

Libertarian, something that many Blogging Tories and Conservatives claim to be but aren't. Cause they are inconsistant. Libertarianism is an outgrowth of classical liberalism, which is the very political ideology the right wing hates.

For consistency on the right see Anti-War.com



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Coren Hates Canada

Gee what was that red neck saying during the Viet Nam era, oh yea Love It or Leave It.

Mujahideen Coren sounds like the wives of the Ontario Terrorists, with his shrill anti-Canadian rantings on Canada Day; Our home and naive land


Hey Coren, if America is sooooo much better go there.

Canada Day. Denial Day. Complacency Day. A day for playing with fireworks while the country burns. Wave the flag. Wave a cloth adorned with a piece of vegetation in the colours of the Liberal Party, one with little tradition and less meaning.No. Many Canadians remember the great emblem that once adorned our dominion, containing the cross, the symbol of ancient and eternal wisdom and truth.

And it just gets more shrill and bitchy as self hating Queen Coren rants on.

Remember what I said yesterday about the neo-conservatives who are more tradtionalists than their forebearers. Crapulous Coren hoists that old canard about the Canadian Flag being a Liberal Flag. Which by the by is the same rant that this guy used to go on and on about.


Also See:

Historical Revisionism


Gun Nutz




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A Day Late


Better late than never as the saying goes, it appears Google missed Canada Day by a day. They didn't have this up yesterday on Google.ca but lo and behold up it pops today, July 2.

Of course they will not do the same thing on their American home page on July 4, that is miss America's birthday.Nope the s*** would hit the fan.

Just another example of branch plant mentality from our southern neighbours who own the Internet and it's companies.


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Saturday, July 01, 2006

The Best Laid Plans


Today is not only Canada Day but the 90th Anniversary of the battle of the Somme. A battle which saw the Royal Newfoundland Regiment all but wiped out.

A day of infamy later to be repeated at Dunkirk and Dieppe by the Imperious Colonel Blimps of the British Command who viewd their colonial troops as expendable.

Just as they had at Gallipoli where the Royal Newfoundland also fought.

Blogger Galloping Beaver remembers this fatal day.

While most of Canada celebrates Canada Day, in one province this date holds a different significance. In Newfoundland, this is Memorial Day, a commemoration of one of the greatest human disasters to ever befall that independent British dominion. On this day 90 years ago, the armies of the British Empire, along the line of the Somme River in France, stepped out from the cover of their trenches and into one of the worst slaughters in military history. The infantry assault against the German positions on the Somme started just after breakfast on the 1st of July, 1916. By sunset of that day, approximately 60,000 Allied troops had fallen - 20,000 of them killed - something which remains a one-day record of losses to this day. The armies of the British Empire were led by perhaps the most incompetent generals the British army has ever produced. General Sir Douglas Haig, a cavalry officer, planned the Somme
Beaumont Hamel Newfoundland Memorial - Veterans Affairs Canada

Bronze Caribou

  • Of the five memorials established in France and Belgium in memory of major actions fought by the 1st Battalion of the Newfoundland Regiment, the largest is the thirty hectare site at Beaumont-Hamel, nine kilometres north of the town of Albert. This site commemorates all Newfoundlanders who fought in the Great War, particularly those who have no known grave. The site was officially opened by Field Marshal Earl Haig on June 7, 1925.


It would be battles like the Somme that would instill in the German soldiers the belief that they could have defeated the allies in WWI and the German High Command had betrayed them. It was this belief that led to the formation of the right wing military FreiKorps after WWI and their heirs the Nazi's.


Also See:

The Vimy Myth


Christmas in the Trenches


WWI Xmas Mutiny


Support Our PeaceMakers



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Religious Hate In Canada



On Canada Day, which the Blogging Tories true to the neo-tradition of their Protestant, Union Jack, Queen and Imperialist British origins like to call Dominion Day, it is important to note there are those in Canada of a religious fundamentalist background that hate our country.

And its not just Muslim women, as the Globe and Mail tries to foist on us this week in their series
Hateful chatter behind the veil

One can find the same hatred of civil society and social democratic Canada, not only in the rantings of the wives of those Ontario Muslims recently arrested as terrorists, but by simply checking out some right wing conservative blogs and websites.

Ms. Farooq's criticism is often directed first at other Muslims. When another poster writes about how he finds homosexuality disgusting, Nada replies by pointing out that there are even gay Muslims. She then posts a photo of a rally held by Al-Fatiha, a Canadian support group for gay Muslims. "Look at these pathetic people," she writes. "They should all be sent to Saudi, where these sickos are executed or crushed by a wall, in public."


Gee not unlike comments that can be found here.

In late April of 2004, a poster asks the forum members to share their impressions of what makes Canada unique. Nada's answer is straightforward."Who cares? We hate Canada."

Yep and so does the right-wing, both share a knee jerk reaction to liberal social democracy.


"Are you accepting a system that separates religion and state?" she asks. "Are you gonna give your pledge of allegiance to a party that puts secular laws above the laws of Allah? Are you gonna worship that which they worship? Are you going to throw away the most important thing that makes you a muslim?" Ms. Jamal's list of forbidden institutions goes beyond politics. Banking, membership in the United Nations, women's rights and secular law are all aspects of Canadian society she finds unacceptable.


Sounds like she is a member of Real Women, or a columnist for the Western Standard. In fact her hatred of the UN is shared by the ultra-right in the US.

All patriarchical monotheistic religions are bigots they hate the laws of man since they only believe in the laws of their God.

Women are the backbone of most churches, synagogs, temples, etc. Religious women are conservative in politics, they are the root base of the movements against choice be it abortion, childcare, same sex marriage, etc. They are the real force behind not only the veil but the bigotry of religious extremism.

The reason is simple, while women on the whole are more spiritual than men as studies show, politically
the number of women who are liberal in social attitudes out numbers their more fundamentalist sisters.

Those that lead these right wing movements are a minority whose screeching is out of proportion to their number. Hence the vehemence and hatred they show their opponents; real or imagined.

The Globe and Mail series merely exposes that fundamentalist muslims share much in common with their contemporary conservative religious fundamentalists of other patriarchical monotheistic faiths.



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Happy Canada Day/Jour heureux du Canada

Let us always remember that our current 'parliamentry democracy' was the result of the Great Rebellion of 1837.

This rebellion was part of the mass movement of workers, mechanics, artisans and small farmers against the British Crown in the UK and in the colonies. The infamous Peterloo Massacre in Manchester led to the cry for freedom, and reform in England and in Canada.

The Blackheath Connection
In discussing the development of Britain's modern police force, Whitaker notes: "In England in 1742, Horace Walpole thought the greatest criminals in town [London] were in fact the officers of justice." It was a society where after being farmed out, few offices offered sensible salaries. There was "the nearness to crime of gaining private benefits from public service". ([15]) After the Peterborough massacre in 1819, many MPs began to agree with Robert Peel about the need for a police force, as preferable to fear of the mob or to using the militia (a reference to the 1780 Gordon Riots). In 1812, Britain had to keep a standing army of more than 12,000 to contain industrial unrest in the north of England, more troops than Wellington used in France against Napoleon! Whigs however always feared police forces as an extension of powers of the Crown. William Pitt attempted in 1785 to found a metropolitan police, but London (the City) resisted the idea; such plans were postponed for 44 years. In 1829 when police were formed, the City was exempted, and today it still has its own separate police force. (Patrick Colquhuon's marine police on the Thames were established in 1798).

The conservative ruling class in Canada then turned to Britain to ameliorate the situation, which they did to the benefit of the ruling merchant families. This amelioration would then become the con which is our federation today.

The rebellions occurred in two Canadian colonies:

Thus Canada was born in the class struggle for popular democracy that was the creation of the working class movement. The history of our country is the history of class struggle, not language rights, nor narrow nationalism, but the class struggle for liberty, fraternity and equality.

The Great Canadian/Canadien, reformer and one of the Rebellions leaders; Louis Joseph Papineau thus defended these rights and revealed the con job that is our current federation.

He also noted that Canada was becoming far more pluralist, due to the importation of Chinese labourers to work (and die) on the construction of the Great Canadian Railway. Just as the Irish Catholic navvies were brought in to work and die building the Great Lakes Canals.

1867 Speech of Louis-Joseph Papineau at the Institut canadien


There are men of genius and knowledge in great number in a body as numerous as that of the United Kingdom, whose special education is the science of government. May they give a proof that they are better qualified to govern men than those who gave admirably good constitutions to the general government of the Union and those of the thirty-six States of the American confederation! It is not the precipitated acceptance of the butched Quebec Act of confederation that can prove the wisdom of the statesmen of England. It is not their work; it was prepared in hiding, without the authorization of their constituents, by some colonists anxious to stud themselves to the power that had escaped them. The sinistre project is the works of badly famed and personally interested men, it is the achievement of evil at the British Parliament, surprised, misled, and inattentive to what it was doing.

At first sight, the act of confederation cannot have the approval of those who believe in the wisdom and the justice of the Parliament and the excellency of the English constitution, since it violates its fundamental principles, by taking control over the sums of money belonging to the colonists alone and not to the metropolis nor to any authority in the metropolis. It is guiltier than any of the preceding acts. It has the same defects, and it has new ones, which are unique to it, and which are more exorbitant against the colonists than were those of the parliamentary charters granted or imposed before. The others were given in times and conditions that were difficult and exceptional. The transfer of a new country, with a majority whose religious beliefs and political education differed deeply from those of the minority, could have let us fear that the latter be exposed to denials of justice. Full religious tolerance, the most important of the rights which belong to men in society, had not been understood nor allowed at the time. England was persecuting at home, insane and unjust; she was insane and unjust here, here more than elsewhere, because the public law was supposed to protect us from evil. She ignored it. If she had restricted herself to protective measures for the minorities, she would have been praised; but she exceeded the goal, she oppressed the majority, she did wrong. But it was then a common error which misled her and which excuses her. The odious laws of intolerance are repudiated by all of the civilized world today, except for Rome and St. Petersbourg. There too however, sooner or later it will be necessary to render justice at the sight of the benefits which it pours on the States which respect it.


When the right to freethinking, whether religious, political or scientific, is as generally proclaimed as it is it by the laws, the values and the practice of our days, it cannot be lost. Judicious people will not need to demand it later.

Other parliamentary acts against Canada were acts of rigour, following disorders which would have been prevented by a tiny portion of the concessions that were granted much too late. The merit of these concessions is small and has little value, because they were made only after executions which were murders.

The present act was inflicted to provinces which were peaceful, where there no longer existed animosities of race or religion to calm down. Where nobody was guilty, all were punished, since they received a law for which they were not consulted.

Here is the common objection.

But the exceptional objection, and the more outrageous among all the other miseries and degradations of the colonial state, in the past and the present, is the fate given, by the Canadian leaders initially, and the imperial Parliament later, to Nova Scotia.

The people of New Scotland, represented by the most skilful, and, in his province, the most irreproachable of public men, in possession of the full confidence and the justly acquired respect of his fellow-citizens, and the respect of the ministers and that of the most eminent men of the English Parliament in all parties, is before them. He requests that to listen to the wishes and the prayers of people they should love, for its peaceful practices inside, for its uninterrupted attachment to the metropolis, for the constant defense of its councils, and he ensures them that the expression of repulsion against the measures prepared by some intrigues in Canada, was but the true expression of the feeling of the majority of the voters of Nova Scotia. He could have said: of their unanimous feeling, considering how negligible is the portion who, yielding to personal interests, ended up sending to the Dominion Parliament, for the whole province, but one man, made a paid minister.

When the confederated Parliament was joined together, the fact had become obvious that our brothers of Acadia were unanimous to reject the confederation. We righfully left to illiberal officials the role to scorn their wishes and their rights. It is a repetition of their role in all times. They were saying to them as to us: "you believe yourselves to be oppressed, be it. You are mistaken, we decide for you and against you, like England decided. Good day or bad day, you are chained to us, we love you and we do not want to divorce. We are strong, you are weak, be submissive!"

In fact, their rights were even more outrageously violated than ours. All free men who deserve their freedom, owe themselves a mutual support. Therefore, we cannot remain indifferent to the oppression of our brothers of the maritime colonies, and all the truly liberal and independent men of Canada owe them support and sympathy.

This new governmental plan reveals, more than the others, the violent animosity of that the aristocracy feels towards elective institutions. It was only after long years of ceaseless efforts that the Legislative Councils were made elective. Did those who had been morally glorified by tearing off this important concession to the colonial and metropolitan authorities glorify themselves much today by ravishing it to their compatriots? On the contrary, they felt and they knew that they would not escape the contempt that these tergiversations deserved. They fought among themselves with eagerness to obtain nobility titles from overseas. They defrauded on the one hand their country and other the other they were even defrauding among themselves for the superiority of the rank; and they found ways to associate many accomplices to their shame, as if it was less dark because it was shared! They promised the elected counsellers to have them counsellers for life. They created themselves a fake aristocracy, that became such by their participation in an obvious violation of the law. All these intrigues were immoral enough to please the English cabinet and to push it to adopt an act even worse than almost all its past wrongs. These reactionaries were asking the institutions of the Middle Ages back at the very moment the noble English people was demolishing them.

By recapitulating some phases of our country's history to indicate you the policy that was systematically followed by the aristocratic government of England, in its old and its new colonies, I wanted to show you that this system was always imposed according to the natural prejudices of the caste who governs us in her own interest, interest which is in perpetual and irremediable conflict with those of the masses; that it was harmful to new establishments in America; that the interest of those is to ask for their emancipation as soon as possible, and to acquire all the advantages and all the privileges of new nationalities, completely independent from Europe.

It is to my fellow-citizens of all the origins that I call on today as I always did; that I say that we must not only be anxious to preserve the rights which are acquired, but that, by the free discussion, we must unceasingly endeavour to acquire new ones. The best means of obtaining this happy result is to call the young people and vigorous minds of the elite, of all the various nationalities, to see and themselves frequently, to meet in this enclosure, this library, and in other enclosures, other libraries of comparable nature. They will seem themselves as friends, equal, compatriots. They will share a known admiration for Shakespeare and Corneille, of Newton and Buffon, Coke and Domat, Fox and Lamartine, - for this legion of eminently great and useful men obligated to all of humanity, that both the English and French nationalities have produced in such a great a number. In the current state of our society, with the ease of learning the two languages as of childhood, it would be to condemn ourselves to a marked inferiority to neglect to learn them both correctly, to not to be able to taste the exquisite fruits that their literature produced, more abundant and tastier than those of the other peoples.

No, it is not true that the political discussions, which were as sharp in both Canadas, were a fight between races. They were as rough in Upper Canada, where there was only one nationality, than here, where there were two. The majorities of both of them were uninterested friends of rights freedoms, and privileges due to all the English subjects. They were voluntarily exposing themselves to liefull slanderings, to dangerous angers, to sanguinary revenges sometimes, from egoistic minorities, by themselves weak, but supported by the strenght of the bayonnettes paid with the gold of the people, but everywhere directed against the people.

The most enlightened men of England and America called noble and right the efforts that my English friends and my Canadien friends, me and my colleagues in the assembly, and our colleagues by identity of principles and the community of devotion in the Parliament of Upper Canada, had made to deliver our countries from outrage and oppression. It was in the prejudices and interests of the aristocracy to applaud the excesses of the colonial bureaucracy, small footed nobility, singeresse des grands airs, copyist of practices, follower of the Machiavellism of those who had installed it. The Parliament approved them, reason made them fade away. The Parliament approved them! But isn't it notorious that more of the nine-tenth of the imperial representation remains foreign to any interest, any knowledge of what is being done and of what should be done in the colonies? At that time especially, it was the colonial minister who had to know what was appropriate to them. He was paid to know it. With him, the honor of success, the shame of errors, the responsibility of the decisions, and the troop of sheeps following his steps behind him. But the men who all their lives were friends of public rights and freedoms without ever deserting those, princes of the science of the Just and the Right: - virtuous Sir James MacIntosh, in our first battles; Lord Brougham, the most universal and most surprisingly erudite man of our days; and O'Connell, the most eloquent of the defenders of the rights of Ireland, before him defended by giants in oratory power, Curran, Gratton, Plunket, and so many others; and Hume, who devotes his great fortune to the protection of the colonies; who, surrounded by four secretaries, worked day and night, and deprived himself of any recreation, because the crimes committed in the English possessions of the five continents and their archipelagoes, by delegates of the aristocracy, were brought to his attention, with prayers to protest against evil; and a crowd of other worthy and good Englishmen understood us, and praised us. What means the number of ignoramuses and interested ones who condemned us because they were bribed for it, were interested in it, interested in the destruction of all feelings of hostility towards the arbitrary and opposition?

By the number, we were ten against one in the two provinces. By morality, by le désintéressement, by our justly acquired influence, we were ten times more powerful than by the number. The English and Irish people, by those who were their true and worthy representatives approved us; the American governors and citizens approved us; the enlightened men of the European continent approved us; but especially our compatriots, for whom we suffered and who suffered with us, approved us; better than that even, our conscience approved us.

Those who today exile themselves in such great a number, because of the the disgust for the present men and measures push them to go breathe a purer air, tell abroad what the marks that the colonist bares on his forehead are; what the obstacles which stop him in his walk towards progress are; these shackles which connect his arms if not very productive on the native soil, governed by and for the aristocracy, become so sought for and so greatly productive on the free land! You can be ensured that they are preparing anguishe and vexation for the Minister of the war. They pulverized its bronze batteries by those of the free press, by those of free discussion. They will more and more give consolation and hope to the oppressed; they advanced the hour of the pay back, the hour of noble revenge, when good will be done even to those who practised evil.

The privileged people always think that the prayers and the complaints against the abuses which benefit them are an invitation to repress them by violence. Proud, just and enlightened men, whose convictions are intense because they are the result of strong studies and long meditations, have faith in the empire of reason, and it is for reason alone that they ask the correction of the abuses. Their efforts are addressed to all, to the powerful ones initially, to inspire them sympathy for the people that are suffering and that were impoverished by the abuses. They present them with glory and happiness to conquer, if they know how to render the society of their time more prosperous and more moral that it was it in the times which preceded. They address them initially and preferably, because their mind being more cultivated, they would be better prepared to be able to consider questions of general interest under all their various aspects, and to solve them quickly and correctly when selfishness does not blind them. They address the masses after, to say them that the sabre is not in their hands, but that reason is the richest and most invaluable of divine gifts and that it was separated almost equally amongst all, that the culture of the mind can centuplicate its fruitfulness and strength; that to clear the land one needs physical strenght enlightened by experience, but that in order to make good constitutions and good laws, and to apply them wisely, it is necessary to have before all a strong reason, enlightened not only by serious studies, but above all by a real devotion to the country, and the absence of any personal covetousness of ambition or interest. Here is what could seen before, here is what has since become so rare, now that fortunes acquired at the expense of the public and personal honor, have become so numerous! How badly do these reproaches of propensity to violence come from those who constantly have recourse to violence to prevent the free discussion of political or social questions, physical violence by means of the law, moral violence by the anathema!

All I can do next is to compliment you on the high intelligence and the enlightenend liberality with which you proclaimed and applied the principle of solidarity, and of the gathering in your enclosure -- as in all the political and social organization of our fatherland -- of all races, all religious beliefs, of all freely expressed and freely discussed opinions.

Very blind are those who speak of the creation of a new nationality, strong and harmonious, on the northern bank of St Laurent and the Great Lakes, and who are unaware of or denounce the major and providential fact that this nationality is already very well formed, great, and growing unceasingly; that it cannot be confined to its current limits; that it has an irresistible force of expansion; that in the future it will be more and more made up of immigrants coming from all the countries of the world, no longer only from Europe, but soon of Asia, of which the overpopulation is five times more numerous and no longer has any other outfall than America (1); composed, says I, of all races of men, who, with their thousand religious beliefs, large mix of errors and truth, are pushed all by the Providence towards this common rendez-vous that will melt in unity and fraternity all of the human family.


(1) - Ten thousand Chinese are currently at the the summit of Snow Mountains, 8, 000 feet above ground, constructing the great railroad that will connect the two oceans and make our America the commercial centre of the whole word.

Original Publication: Printed in the newspaper Le Pays, 9, Ste-Thérèse Street, 1868, 20 pages





La belle Madonna?
Today, the house in which Masse lived — located in the Richelieu River valley southeast of Montreal — is a historical site and museum known as La Maison nationale des Patriotes. .Masse was active in the patriot movement, which rebelled against British rule in Lower Canada, and played a leading role in the celebrated battle of Saint-Denis-sur-Richelieu on Nov. 23, 1837.That engagement resulted in roughly 200 patriot militiamen — though the movement is most often associated with French-Canadians, there were also Irish and aboriginal fighters — successfully beating back a contingent of 300 British troops.

A player in nation's birth

In 1841, Upper and Lower Canada were united into the province of Canada, each having 43 seats in the new legislature. Macdonald had a successful law practice and decided to run for office. He was elected as a moderate conservative, but grew uncomfortable with conservative politics and in 1843 crossed the floor, taking the same seat under the Reform banner.

It's Montreal, it's summer, it's time to dig

An archeological dig under way as summer begins in Old Montreal has opened a fresh and fascinating portal into this city's - and this nation's - history.

It's a remarkably preserved underground tunnel.

Unheralded and virtually unknown, what's called the William collector has quietly run since the early 1830s beneath much of the city's old quarter from McGill St., under Youville Square and on to the harbour. It was one of the more ambitious public-works projects of that era: Montreal's first collector sewer.


She plans to use the tunnel for access to a special underground exhibition area to feature the long-covered foundations and cellars of what from 1844 to 1849 served as the Parliament of the United Province of Canada.

In the five years since the city had become the capital of the United Canadas [in 1844], political tensions between its French- and English-speaking residents had grown sharper.

Hostilities between Canadien rebels and British loyalists, or Reformers and Tories ... had been smouldering for more than a decade.

Britain exacerbated the problem in 1846 when it repealed the so-called Corn Laws, bringing an end to a preferential trade system that favoured Canadian agricultural and timber markets. The removal of the trade restrictions plunged Montreal into an economic depression.

Then, on Jan. 18, 1849, the government leader, Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine, introduced a bill to compensate the 2,276 victims who had sustained damages when the British militia looted, burned and expropriated their property during the 1837 uprising.

What stuck in the craw of the English-speaking Tories was the fact that one of the leaders of the rebellion, Louis-Joseph Papineau, who had been granted amnesty and now sat as a member in the legislative assembly, was eligible for compensation.

The Gazette, the mouthpiece for Montreal's English-speaking merchant class, was especially incensed.

"We have said yes, and we will not hereafter cease to say it: One race or the other must assert its supremacy. Which shall it be?" the paper thundered in one of its editorials.

"The Anglo-Saxon which, like the roll of a mighty ocean, is sweeping over the continent? Is it that energetic, powerful and sleepless race that is to pale before the rushlight of an insignificant French nationality in a corner of Canada?"

The contentious bill passed, and on April 25, 1849, the governor-general, Lord Elgin, gave it royal assent.

The Gazette continued to inflame public opinion and goaded those who opposed concessions for the French to take the law into their own hands.

"Anglo-Saxons, live for the future. Your blood and your race will be supreme," began another incendiary editorial suggesting the time was ripe for anarchy. "Anglo-Saxons to the struggle. Now is your time."

Filled with anger and seething with frustration at British indifference to their colonial grievances, thousands of English-speaking protesters heeded the call. ... The house was sitting when demonstrators reached the building and swarmed up the main staircase inside to the House of Assembly.

A hotel bookkeeper by the name of William Courtney seized the speaker's chair and, "in the name of the people of Montreal," declared the session dissolved.

The building was set on fire and the square was soon engulfed in a hell of flames.

The firefighters, led by one Alfred Perry, refused to extinguish the blaze and in fact joined in the pillage.

Parliament House burned to the ground and with it the government archives containing all of the records of British North America.

The next day, The Gazette described the blaze as "an awfully and magnificently beautiful sight."

PM predicts tough times ahead for separatists
One Bloc Quebecois member, who was waving a green, white and red flag from the anti-British Patriote rebellion of 1837-38, said Harper was trying to prove Quebec remains a conquered territory.


Also See:

A History of Canadian Wealth, 1914.


Origins of the Captialist State In Canada


The Neo Liberal Canadian State


State Capitalism By Any Other Name


Historical Memory on the Eve of the Election

Rebel Yell


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