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6 teosta 196 jäsentä 8 arvostelua

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Christie Blatchford has been a high-profile Canadian journalist for over 25 years, with columns covering sports, lifestyle, current affairs, and crime. She started working for The Globe and Mail in 1972 while still studying at Ryerson, and has since worked for the Toronto Star, the Toronto Sun, and näytä lisää the National Post. She returned to The Globe and Mail in 2002. She is a winner of the National Newspaper Award for column writing and her first book. Fifteen Days: Stories of Bravery, Friendship, Life and Death from Inside the New Canadian Army, won the Governor general's Literary Award for Non-fiction in 2008. näytä vähemmän
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While these events happened eleven years ago, the causes are still unsettled and have now been accentuated by the discovery of hundreds of graves of Indigenous children who died in Government mandated residential schools.

In this volume, the native protesters and the Ontario Provincial Police do not come out looking very good. The protesters used violence, vandalism and intimidation to reach their goals. Meanwhile, the OPP seemed to have stopped policing the native criminal activities while harassing the towns folk who were inconvenience and in a few cases were actually physically attacked by natives in full view of the police who did nothing to the attackers. OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino appeared to be biased in his view of who the real trouble makers were blaming some of the home owners in Caledonia for the problems when violent physical attacks on non natives by natives were witnessed and filmed by police and others.

Blatchford names perpetrators on both sides of the issue and sometimes there are so many names, one has difficulty keeping them straight. Sometimes she includes quotes that are lost because of unclear editing which meant that I had go back over the text to be sure who made the quote and what they meant.
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lamour | 1 muu arvostelu | Nov 30, 2021 |
Want to know what it was like for Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan? Want to know what many of them thought of the mission. Read Blatchford's book.

She was embedded with the Canadians on three tours in Afghanistan in 2006. She traveled into battle with them and spent many hours becoming close to them and getting their thoughts on what they were doing there. She divided the book into chapters each of which covered one day on which a Canadian soldier or soldiers were killed. She explained the background of the battle and what happened when the enemy made contact.

This is not a read for the squeamish but she clearly explains the terror and confusion of battle and the often bloody aftermath. If you want to know how the modern Canadian Army performed in that hell hole of Afghanistan, this is the book for you.

She describes how the Canadian fallen are brought back to Canada and the teams of military supporters who accompany the bodies and assist the families. This a very moving part of the book.

Are families angry because their son or daughter died in this war? In some cases there is anger initially but in most there is pride in the service given to their country. In one case, after her husband was killed, the wife joined the forces and thus joined her sons and future daughter-in law in the army.
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lamour | 5 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Apr 5, 2016 |
Blatchford is a respected Canadian journalist writing for The Globe & Mail. Her trip to Afghanistan as an embedded reporter in 2006 revealed her passion. This contains fifteen reports, of fifteen days with Canadian forces that create a detailed picture of what they faced. Blatchford shows insight, empathy and admiration. Her frank, often painful, first-hand accounts communicated exactly what modern warfare entails.
 
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VivienneR | 5 muuta kirja-arvostelua | Feb 9, 2016 |
Aboriginal land claims are a fact of life in Canada today. There are well defined processes for the consideration of land claims, depending on whether the claimant has a treaty with Canada or not. In the former case, statutory three-year time frames exist to deal with claims. In the latter, claims can take much longer to resolve for any number of reasons, including historic research to substantiate and assess the claim (paid for by Canada), and the need for all three parties (First Nation, Canada and the province/territory) to agree on the terms of engagement.

In Caledonia, the First Nation chose, perhaps for valid reasons, to erect a blockade to bring attention to their claim. This book is about the impact the blockade and, more importantly, the way the police chose to deal with the protestors, had on the citizens of a small town in Ontario called Caledonia.

The author details the activities undertaken by both protestors (mostly Aboriginal) and the town residents (mostly non-Aboriginal) over many months while barricades were up. Her main point is the non-action on the part of the Ontario Provincial Police and the Ontario Government to enforce the law, especially as it relates to activities by the Aboriginal community, amounted to a serious dereliction of duty and was simply unfair.

It's an easy read, with lots of portraits of individual townsfolk. Maybe too many because I sometimes was confused about who was who.

What, to me, is most interesting about this story is the questions it raises. The author has been accused of racism for not putting the behaviour of protestors in the larger context of wide-spread abuse at residential schools, historic land grabs and other valid issues that affect Aboriginal Canadians. The question then becomes how much the past should be taken into consideration in dealing with illegal actions, including threats and intimidation, today. And, how far can/should one go in assessing a current crisis through the lens of history?

The author talks about a police force reeling from the very poor and tragic dealing of another Aboriginal protest (Ipperwash) by overcompensating for their lack of cultural sensitivity in that case. From this book, it is clear the the police did not protect the citizens of Caledonia. The author is saying that is not acceptable, regardless of cultural differences and historic grievances. We must use established processes to deal with such issues and fight to change those processes if they are inadequate. This book raises the spectre of racism -- which is easy to observe against Aboriginal Canadians -- and what is known as "reverse racism" against the majority.

The issues raised by this book are worth considering in a spirit of working towards a true reconciliation between governments and their aboriginal citizens.
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LynnB | 1 muu arvostelu | Oct 4, 2011 |

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