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First, Do No Harm: How Dr. Newman’s Valedictorian Speech to U of M Graduates Got History So Wrong

Dougald Lamont

Ed. note: This post was originally published in May, but given recent events in which the president of PARIM (the Professional Association of Residents and Interns of Manitoba) was forced to resign his position by the board of PARIM for criticizing remarks made by Dr. Gem Newman during his valedictory address to graduating medical students at the U of M, we thought it appropriate to repost this article to our home page.

By DOUGALD LAMONT I am compelled to respond to Dr. Gem Newman in his delivery of a valedictorian address to the medical graduates of the University of Manitoba medical school, which was shockingly ignorant of history.

Dr. Newman’s understanding is challenged by the facts of history, on every topic he touched on: Canada, Settler-Colonialism, the relationship with Indigenous people, and Israel’s founding.
It was a disservice to his peers, and to informed decision-making around the current crisis.

If we want a more just and peaceful world, we need to press for political solutions. I personally favour an immediate cessation of hostilities and release of Israeli hostages, and humanitarian aid to Gaza with oversight from the International Community. That is why we need a political process to peacefully negotiate a new political arrangement. If it is a two-state solution, I believe it must emerge from this process. It should be self-evident, just from the point of view of practical politics, that a single state that consists of two populations who are in the midst of a horrific war, will likely face insurmountable obstacles in trying to work and govern together.

Reasonable people should be able to agree that Israel should continue to exist, that the Palestinian people should be free, that the fighting should end, and those who have violated the rules of war should be held to account. To be blunt, neither side has a monopoly on virtue.

International Human Rights Law “prohibits attacks directed against civilians, as well as indiscriminate attacks, namely those that strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction.”

I also believe it’s reasonable to assert that the current leadership of Israel and Gaza should have no place at that table, given that they are responsible for the current crisis. The intelligence failures alone around October 7 should disqualify the current senior Israeli leadership, just as the attack of October 7 should disqualify Hamas.

Declaring recognition of a Palestinian state, with no defined or agreed-upon leadership or borders, short-circuits any such political process.

That is because while some support a two-state solution, others quite clearly favour a “one-state” solution that would essentially spell the end of the State of Israel. I have never seen the term “Zionist” tossed around as such a slur, as a kind of shorthand for holding an unacceptable view.

A Zionist is basically someone who thinks the State of Israel should exist – and the state of Israel does exist. Before Israel’s founding, debating whether or not it should exist was hypothetical. Now that it does exist, debating whether it should or not can be credibly interpreted as an existential threat.

For Israelis, and for many Jews, that clearly amounts to the destruction of their nation, including by violence. This, too, is exactly what many states and state-supported terror groups have committed to.

That is why the lack of clarity around some slogans seems to be calling for more conflict, not for a peaceful resolution.

When asked about the slogan “From the River to the Sea,” some have shrugged and said that it was Israelis who first came up with the slogan. This is true, but that is because the State of Israel does stretch from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea. Palestinian territories do not. It would require Israeli territory for Palestine to reach from the river to the sea, which again, can suggest that Israel will just become Palestine.

Dr Newman should know that for Israelis, and for many Jews, that clearly amounts to the destruction of their nation, including by violence. That is exactly what many states and state-supported terror groups have committed to, and have been promising for decades.
 
If we want a more peaceful and just world, we should strive to achieve those ends in ways that are peaceful and just, and that requires a political path.

It is not that the history is better than you might expect – it is worse.

The Nazi Holocaust was Modelled on the U.S. Killing of Indigenous People and Seizure of their Lands
 
There is an important link between the treatment of Indigenous North Americans and the Nazi Holocaust. Hitler believed that he could turn Germany into the a world dominating empire by emulating the way the United States had killed indigenous people and taken their property, except Hitler’s goal was to exterminate every Jew in the world.

“In the Nazi state, Lebensraum became not just a romantic yearning for a return to the East but a vital strategic component of its imperial and racist visions. For the Germans, eastern Europe represented their “Manifest Destiny.” Hitler and other Nazi thinkers drew direct comparisons to American expansion in the West. During one of his famous “table talks,” Hitler decreed that “there’s only one duty: to Germanize this country [Russia] by the immigration of Germans and to look upon the natives as Redskins.”
 
As Nazi troops moved across Europe and the Soviet Union, Jews were rounded up, their homes, properties and businesses stolen. Some were murdered on the spot, lined up and shot.
Some were stuffed into the backs of trucks with the exhaust piped in, and driven back and forth until everyone inside was dead. Others still were gathered up, put on trains and sent to death camps where they were killed in factories purpose-built for killing human beings. Their stolen belongings were used to finance their own deaths, and the gold was retrieved from their teeth.
 
Jews were targeted by the Germans for complete extermination wherever the lived in the world, based both on pseudoscientific race theory about the supposed supremacy of the imagined “Aryan” race, and antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish global influence.
 
Jews were being rounded up and slaughtered in the millions, and as refugees, had no place to go. They were refused entry to country after country, including Canada.

That is one of the very major reasons the creation of the State of Israel cannot be compared to settler colonialism by European or Asian empires colonizing Africa, Oceania, the Americas. The creation of the State of Israel in 1948 occurred with the support of the United Nations, as well as the global left. The historical reason for that is relevant.

Clearly, after the Second World War, it created pressure for Jews to have their homeland, so that they would not always face being a minority in a country when, because of their stateless existence, they had faced pogroms, slaughter and discrimination for millennia.

The Palestinian Cause was Undermined Because its Leader was a Nazi Collaborator

There is no question that the at the time of the creation of Israel, the credibility of the Palestinian cause was undermined because Mufti Amin al-Husseini, the leader of Palestine, was a Nazi Collaborator. Al-Husseini received personal financial aid from the Nazi government, participated in Nazi propaganda broadcasts, and worked to find recruits for the Nazi SS.
 
In 1941, Al-Husseini travelled to Berlin and on November 28, met with Hitler.
 
“Al-Husseini began the conversation by declaring that the Germans and the Arabs had the same enemies: “the English, the Jews, and the Communists.” He proposed an Arab revolt all across the Middle East to fight the Jews; the English, who still ruled Palestine and controlled Iraq and Egypt; and even the French, who controlled Syria and Lebanon. 

(The British had secured a mandate for Palestine at the Paris peace conference in 1919, and made halting attempts to create a “Jewish national home” there without prejudicing the rights of the Arab population.) He also wanted to form an Arab legion, using Arab prisoners from the French Empire who were then POWs inside Germany. 

He also asked Hitler to declare publicly, as the German government had privately, that it favored “the elimination of the Jewish national home” in Palestine.
 
The Fuhrer then made the following statement to the Mufti, enjoining him to “lock it in the uttermost depths of his heart”:


  1. He (the Fuhrer) would carry on the battle to the total destruction of the Judeo-Communist empire in Europe.
    1. At some moment which was impossible to set exactly today but which in any event was not distant, the German armies would in the course of this struggle reach the southern exit from Caucasia.
      1. As soon as this had happened, the Fuhrer would on his own give the Arab world the assurance that its hour of liberation had arrived. Germany’s objective would then be solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere under the protection of British power. 
In that hour the Mufti would be the most authoritative spokesman for the Arab world. It would then be his task to set off the Arab operations, which he had secretly prepared. When that time had come, Germany could also be indifferent to French reaction to such a declaration.”
         
        Al Husseini’s work was actively financed by the Nazi government.
         
        “From spring 1943 to spring 1944, Husseini personally received 50,000 marks monthly and Gailani 65,000 for operational expenses.” [Rashid Ali al-Gaylani was the Prime Minister of Iraq]. 

”In addition, they each received living expenses averaging 80,000 marks per month, an absolute fortune. A German field marshal received a base salary of 26,500 marks per year.”
         
        Along with other Arab broadcasters, al-Husayni disseminated pro-Axis, anti-British, and anti-Jewish propaganda from Berlin to the Middle East. In radio broadcasts, he called for an Arab revolt against Great Britain and the destruction of the Jewish settlements in Palestine.

        Al-Husayni spoke often of a “worldwide Jewish conspiracy” that controlled the British and US governments and sponsored Soviet Communism. He argued that “world Jewry” aimed to infiltrate and subjugate Palestine, a sacred religious and cultural center of the Arab and Muslim world, as a staging ground for the seizure of all Arab lands. In his vision of the world, the Jews intended to enslave and exploit Arabs, to seize their land, to expropriate their wealth, undermine their Muslim faith and corrupt the moral fabric of their society. He labeled the Jews as the enemy of Islam, and used crude racist terminology to depict Jews and Jewish behavior, particularly as he forged a closer relationship with the SS in 1943 and 1944. He described Jews as having immutable characteristics and behaviors. On occasion, he would compare Jewishness to infectious disease and Jews to microbes or bacilli. In at least one speech attributed to him, he advocated killing Jews wherever Arabs found them. He consistently advocated “removing” the Jewish homeland from Palestine and, on occasion, driving every Jew out of Palestine and other Arab lands.
         
        Al Husseini was directly involved in recruiting for the SS.
         
        “When the SS decided in February 1943 to recruit among Bosnian Muslims for a new division of the Waffen-SS, SS Main Office Chief Berger enlisted al-Husayni in a recruiting drive in Bosnia from March 30 and April 11. On April 29, Berger reported that 24,000–27,000 recruits had signed up and noted that the “visit of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem had had an extraordinarily successful impact.” Both al-Husayni and the SS repeatedly referred to the success of the 13th Waffen-SS Mountain Division (also known as “Handschar”).”
         
        After the Second World War, the 13th Waffen-SS Mountain Division was charged with war crimes and the killing of over 5,000 Jewish and Serbian civilians. In the 1948-49 Arab-Israeli war, hundreds of its members fought against Israel.
         
        All of this is critical historical context for Zionism of the time, and for the creation of the State of Israel. There can be no question that Al Husseini’s collaboration with the Nazis meant that his cause was treated with considerably less sympathy.  
         
        None of this negates the present-day mistreatment and injustice towards present-day Palestinians, but it does mean that their experience does not mirror that of Indigenous people, nor is the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 comparable to other “settler colonial” states, like South Africa, or Canada.

Tommy Douglas, Eugenics and Provinces’ Role in the Canadian Colonial State
 
This brings me to my second point about Dr. Newman’s valedictorian speech, which was his citing Tommy Douglas as a moral beacon in a speech where he also mentioned Indigenous health outcomes.

While Douglas enjoys a reputation as a paragon of political virtue, he and his party are responsible for one of the most horrifically damaging colonial systems for Indigenous people in Canada in the last 70 years: provincial child welfare systems. This is in addition to his promotion of eugenics-based sterilization, another aspect of his political career that is minimized and ignored

For all of the claims that the left in Canada is “woke,” the role of progressive politicians and parties in our country’s profoundest tragedies is not just forgotten and unknown, it is buried.
 
The New Democratic Party was created as a successor to the CCF party. While the NDP is today seen as a party of labour, and the “working man,” the CCF, as social gospelers, were evangelical Christians, often British, who promoted eugenics and forced sterilization as a low-cost solution to poverty, mental illness, and disability, and they did so for years.

In 1933, Tommy Douglas published his Master’s thesis from McMaster University, “The Problems of the Subnormal Family,” based on his time working at the Weyburn Mental Hospital. Weyburn Mental Hospital was not a small-town facility – at the time of its construction, it was the largest building ever built in the British Empire.

In the Making of a Socialist, Douglas passed off his thesis in a later interview as being on the subject of “Christian sociology,” when it endorsed the segregation and forced sterilization of people he deemed to be inferior.

Douglas’s thesis topic, in his own words was that:
 
“The subnormal family is an ever-increasing menace physically, mentally and morally, to say nothing of a constantly rising expense. Surely the continued policy of allowing the subnormal family to bring in to the world large numbers of individuals to fill our jails and mental institutions and to live upon charity is one of consummate folly.”
 
Douglas starts his thesis this way:
 
“The problem of the subnormal family is chiefly one for the State. Since the state has the problem of legislating in the best interests of Society, and since we have seen that the subnormal family is an ever-increasing menace physically, mentally and morally, to say nothing of a constantly rising expense, it is, surely the duty of the State to meet this problem.
 
The suggested remedies which the state might effect are three in number:
 
1)    The Improvement of Existing Marriage Laws;
2)    Segregation;
3)    Sterilization of Unfit, and Increased Knowledge of Birth Control.
 
He elaborates:
 
“Sterilization of the mentally and physically defective has long been advocated, but only recently has it seeped into the public consciousness. From the day when Plato wrote his Republic to the present, eugenicists have advanced various solutions to the problem of the defective, but sterilization seems to meet the requirements of the situation most aptly.
 
For while it gives protection to society, yet it deprives the defective of nothing except the privilege of bringing into the world children who would only be a care to themselves and a charge to society.
 
4.) Another effect of the abnormal family is the cost of maintenance: It may be a mercenary view to take of the problem, yet in view of mounting taxation, it is of importance to the average citizen to know the effect of the subnormal family on his tax bill.”
 
Douglas did not drop the subject. In 1934, Douglas proposed it with the youth wing of the CCF, and the next year, 1935, Douglas was elected MP for the first time.

The power of Douglas’ carefully cultivated political reputation is so great that for many, it creates a cognitive dissonance so profound that it is dismissed. They puzzle as to how a person they so greatly admire could have advocated for forced sterilization.

The question as to how Douglas and other eugenicists could express such concern and apparent love while also calling for sterilization is because they see people who are poor, mentally ill or who break the law as defective, and subhuman, because of their particular brand of radical Christian ideology. Treating people as subhuman means treating them as animals, where the usual rules of human morality no longer apply. It is a kind of cruel pity – and instead of alleviating suffering, they opt for ending it. 

Douglas was not a young man – He was an adult, in his 30s, calling for forced sterilization and segregation, just as his political mentor and family pastor, J. S. Woodsworth had done.

J. S. Woodsworth, Sterilization and the Bureau of Social Research
 
In 1909, Woodsworth published “Strangers Within Our Gates,” which was blatantly racist, ranking various groups according to their capacity to integrate into Canadian society.

Woodsworth’s treatment of Blacks is subhuman. He favorably cited U.S. progressive John R Common, who Woodsworth quotes saying, “The very qualities of intelligence and manliness which are essential for citizenship in a democracy were systematically expunged from the negro race through two hundred years of slavery.”
 
Woodsworth also endorsed Residential Schools as the solution for dealing with First Nations, favourably citing the Methodist Principal of the Brandon Residential School, where dozens of children had died, who said that “Both Church and State should have, as a final goal, the destruction and end of treaty and reservation life.”
 
Throughout the 1910s, Woodsworth ran the “Bureau of Social Research,” which publicly promoted eugenics and forced sterilization across Canada’s Western Provinces. Woodsworth’s editorials calling for eugenic sterilization were printed on the front page of the Winnipeg Free Press, and were considered as official recommendations to provincial governments.

According to a 2004 article in the Journal of Historical Sociology, Sterilizing the ‘Feeble-Minded’: Eugenics in Alberta, Canada 1929-1972, Woodsworth’s work directly informed the adoption of sterilization policies in Alberta.

“The eugenics platform was championed in western Canada by a number of influential social reformers including J. S. Woodsworth, a Winnipeg-based proponent of the “social gospel.” Woodsworth was concerned with the declining quality of immigrants arriving in the west. He translated his personal fear into a public crisis, spreading the idea that no segment of Canadian society would be left untouched by the influx of thousands of immigrants of inferior stock from central and eastern Europe. In time, his policy recommendations turned to eugenics and sterilization programs” (Chapman 1977: 13).
 
In 1928, Alberta and BC both passed forced sterilization laws. Researchers have directly attributed Alberta’s decision to adopt forced sterilization to Woodsworth’s advocacy. One of the Alberta MNA’s at the time who supported the bill, William Irvine, was a close friend and colleague of Woodsworth’s. When Irvine was later elected as an MP, it was in his office that the CCF was founded. 
 
From 1929 to 1972, when the Alberta eugenics board was finally disbanded, the Board saw 4,800 cases of proposed sterilization and approved virtually all (4,739) of these; 2,834 sterilization procedures were eventually performed, the majority on females.

That was not the only questionable judgment that Douglas made in his political career. In 1935, when Douglas won a seat as a Member of Parliament in the House of Commons for the first time, he did so with an endorsement from the radical right Social Credit Premier of Alberta, which was considered by some to be fascist. The creator of the “Social Credit” economic philosophy, Major Douglas, was explicitly anti-semitic.  
 
The endorsement was arranged for Douglas’ by a key member of his campaign team, Daniel C. Grant, who had been the chief organizer for all of Western Canada for the Canadian Ku Klux Klan.
 
Grant had been a driver for J J Maloney, the head of the Ku Klux Klan, and had worked in Manitoba as a recruiter and organizer. In 1928 in Winnipeg, Grant had delivered a speech saying that
 
“The Klan strove for ‘racial purity. We fight against intermarrying of Negroes and whites, Japs and White, Chinese and Whites. This intermarriage is a menace to the world. If I am walking down the street and a Negro doesn’t give me half the sidewalk, I know what to do.” He then lashed out at the Jews and said that “The Jews are too powerful … they are the slave masters who are throttling the throats of white persons to enrich themselves.”
 
A 1974 biography by Doris Shackleton, a former CBC reporter and NDP staffer, entitled “Tommy Douglas” openly acknowledged Grant’s work organizing for the KKK.
 
In 1929, Grant and the KKK had helped elect the Conservative-Progressive coalition government in Saskatchewan, which had earned him a patronage post in charge of the labour office in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, where Douglas met him. Grant was fired when a new government was elected, because they didn’t want KKK organizers working in the labour office.
 
There have been various attempts to minimize Douglas’ promotion of eugenics, saying that his views were changed by a trip to Germany in 1936. In fact, Douglas went to Germany because he wanted to see one of Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies.
 
In a 1956 interview, published in the book “The Making of a Socialist,” Douglas explained – when asked about his 1936 trip to Germany the year after he was elected a Member of Parliament:
 
“[Interviewer] You were in Europe for how long?
 
[Douglas] About three months. We went from Switzerland to Nuremberg, because I wanted to see the great annual festivity Hitler put on each year there. It was frightful. I came back and warned my friends about the great German bombers roaring over the parade of self-propelled guns and tanks, Hitler standing there giving his salute, with Göring and the rest of the Nazi bigwigs by his side.
 
There was no doubt then that Hitler was simply using Spain as a dress rehearsal for an attack on other nations.
 
[Interviewer] It was with very great difficulty that people were able to appreciate the anti-Semitism that was going on in Germany. Did you yourself see any examples of it?
 
[Douglas] I didn’t see any. Most of it was over by the time I got there.”
 
To suggest that in 1936, most of the anti-semitism in Germany was over defies reason and evidence.
 
“The New Residential Schools” Tommy Douglas and the creation of provincial child welfare

These are just some of the reasons that holding up Tommy Douglas as exemplar of political purity, is “problematic”. It is far from the only example of Douglas’ historic association with damaging policies that has been whitewashed.
 
The reality of Canada as a colonial state is that provincial governments have played a direct role in the mistreatment of Indigenous people, in areas of jurisdiction that the provinces themselves asked for, and Tommy Douglas is one of the people responsible.
 
Again, in Shackleton’s biography, Douglas describes how, in 1951, the Federal Government began to shut down residential schools, “after a series of negative reports,” that at the urging of the CCF and Premier Tommy Douglas, the federal government transferred responsibility for First Nations child welfare to provinces.
 
The result has been 70 years of provincial governments seizing Indigenous children from their families and never returning them, in numbers greater than the total yearly attendance of Residential Schools.

The “60s scoop” meant thousands of children across Canada were taken from their homes and adopted out across North America and around the world.
 
“The department of Indigenous Affairs indicates that the number of Indigenous children adopted between 1960 and 1990 was 11,132,” though some research suggests it was over 20,000.”
 
CFS has been described by Cindy Blackstock as “the New Residential Schools” and the scale of it across Canada is colossal.
 
In the last decade, the number of Indigenous children apprehended and in custody of CFS in Manitoba alone exceeded the total population of every single residential school across Canada. By 2013, the province of Manitoba had 11,000 children in the custody of CFS.

According to the Lancet, it was the highest apprehension rate in the world. That is more, in a single province, than the entire “60s scoop” across Canada over 30 years. If that weren’t bad enough, governments in Manitoba and British Columbia also seized federal child allowances intended for those children.
 
This horrific policy is the direct cause of Indigenous misery, and shorter life expectancy. Over half of the homeless population in Winnipeg were at one point wards of CFS. Canadian provinces took Indigenous children from their families, took their money, and left them on the street at the age of 18 with no supports. Our jails, our runaways, our gangs, and tragedy after tragedy have the common thread of CFS involvement. Because CFS is not just about looking after the safety children, it has always also been about controlling and threatening parents.
 
That’s why the top five of 94 recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are all concerned with children in provincial child welfare systems.
 
This absolute catastrophe of a social policy was conceived of, created and sustained, by provincial governments for decades, and directly contributed to the relentless trauma that provincial governments have inflicted on Indigenous people, and about which there is a deafening silence.
 
Why are children being seized? Largely because of First Nations and Indigenous poverty and neglect. Why is there Indigenous poverty? Because, for decades, provincial governments across Western Canada have approved megaprojects – dams, mines, oil and gas – much of it on First Nations land.
 
In Manitoba, there are dams that have destroyed Indigenous communities’ self-sufficiency by destroying the environment. Entire communities flooded out of existence, dammed rivers destroying lakes that were the source of successful commercial fisheries, wiped out by Hydro and the Government of Manitoba, without compensation.
 
What’s more, provincial governments are funded on a per capita basis – for every person who lives within their borders, including on reserve, yet provincial governments like Manitoba exclude First Nations from receiving that funding.
 
Indigenous people in Canada consistently face the most discrimination in provincial systems, and when a catastrophe or a tragedy inevitably happens, the response has always been to defend the system. Indigenous deaths in ERs, in jail, in CFS or as victims of crime are blamed on the victims. 
 
Together, provincial governments’ combined budgets are larger than the federal government, and Indigenous Canadians face terrible discrimination from provincial governments in economic supports, education, health, justice, child and family services and natural development.
 
Because the federal policies are the same everywhere: it’s the provincial policies that are different, which is why child and family poverty, and Indigenous incarceration in Manitoba are so much worse than any other province.
 
So, when Dr. Gem Newman lectures his fellow classmates on the injustices of Canada’s treatment of First Nations, he should know that one of the direct causes of homelessness, mental health, and forced poverty in Manitoba and across Canada is the direct result of decades of seizures of Indigenous children, which are a direct consequence of a policy brought in by Tommy Douglas to replace Residential Schools.

Tommy Douglas and provincial governments created some of the most damaging modern policies Indigenous people in Canada have experienced – and are still experiencing, every day.
 
As a valedictorian and as a doctor, Dr Newman is an authority, and he says a doctor’s advocacy is in a doctor’s job description. Advocates and authorities have a responsibility to work from evidence. That is why it is paramount for an authority, whether they are practicing medicine or politics, to ensure they know what they are talking about. Slogans are not solutions, and Dr. Newman’s facile understanding of history is a disservice to his audience.
 
It has to be said Dr. Newman’s ignorance about this should not be a surprise, because there is an effective conspiracy of silence which makes it a forbidden topic in Canada, because it is politically inconvenient.
 
Notably, it highlights the hypocrisy and moral double standards at work among high-profile Canadian progressives, Naomi Klein being the most prominent.

On Freedom of Speech, Civil Disobedience on Campus on Beyond
 
I write all of this as a strong supporter of freedom of expression, on and off campus including protest, investigative journalism, whistleblowing, satire, parody, speaking truth to power, and calling out corruption. I have personally done all of them. Rights have never been about doing and saying whatever you want, wherever and whenever.

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms sets out the circumstances where you are guaranteed rights to free expression. The Charter generally only applies to Government, not universities, except in Alberta, where courts ruled otherwise.

The reason for this is university autonomy. Universities are workplace and a place of research and education, where the goal is to work to an ever greater understanding of the world, and that has always required discernment. It is not a public square or an unmoderated internet forum, and if you don’t abide by the rules, you do not have a right to stay.

A simple example of speech that can get you removed from campus is plagiarism. The university sets out rules around free inquiry and academic freedom, but you can’t plagiarize.

This is important in the context of campus protests and civil disobedience. Protestors are not being silenced because of the content of their speech, nor are they choosing to break unjust laws to show how unjust they are. 

The distinction here is one that was drawn by Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King. He was in favour of direct action and civil disobedience by having people be willing to be arrested and jailed, and face the consequences and punishment, because the unjust law they broke was asking for service at a segregated coffee shop, or sitting at the front of the bus. They actively discouraged and called out anyone who broke other laws as undermining the cause.

The laws that are being broken in this instance are ones that apply to everyone. It is not about the cause or the message, at all. It is about trespassing, or blocking a highway, or ignoring a court order.

There is a basic mistake that many commentators and protestors are making. When protestors say they mean “peaceful,” they think that if it is non-violent, that it must ,by legal definition be peaceful, and legal. You do not have to be violent to be “disturbing the peace.” Blocking highways and spamming 911 lines are not violent, but both are against the law, for obvious reasons, because someone could die. Canadian Supreme Court Precedent makes it clear, there are limits to protest, because other people have the right to be free from disruption.

If protestors are arguing that the injustice is so great, that they must break the law for justice to be done, then this is exactly the motivation behind what is known as “noble cause corruption” in policing. It’s just as unacceptable.

Freedom of expression is protected because it is powerful, and it is powerful for good and for harm. That’s why accuracy – especially at a university – matters. It means weeding out the lies, manipulation, dishonesty and deception. It means recognizing that human beings are contradictory, and flawed. It means working hard not to deceive others, or yourself, while we live in a world where armies of people are paid to deceive us, and recognizing that there may be more than two sides to every story. Two bitter opponents on either side of an issue can both be wrong.

“Resistance” that takes the form of attacks on civilians is just as unacceptable as reckless military actions that result in civilian deaths. Neither are morally or strategically defensible: to the contrary, they only further radicalize and inflame the situation.

 Dougald Lamont (B.A., M.A) is a graduate of the University of Manitoba and a former member of the Board of Governors. He is the past MLA for St. Boniface and the former Leader of the provincial Manitoba Liberal Party from 2017-2023.

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Local News

This man – Michael Kalo – has been defaming prominent Winnipeggers online for years, but now he’s getting a taste of his own medicine

By BERNIE BELLAN (Posted May 3, updated May 8)) There’s a particularly ugly side that often comes with being in the public eye – and that’s being on the receiving end of some of the most vile and awful comments, often threats – sometimes on social media, sometimes in emails, and sometimes on websites.

For years now many prominent Winnipeggers (almost all of them Jewish) have had to endure just that kind of vicious attack from someone by the name of Michael Kalo. But how do you fight back against someone who writes some of the most awful things – and then sends them out to various members of the media (including me), all the while hiding behind a series of aliases? There’s no point in suing him for defamation; he’s penniless. (The police have seized his computer in the past and are well aware of him, but the individuals whom he has defamed have always been reluctant to have the Crown press charges, thinking that it will only draw more attention to him – which is what he seems to want.)

But I’m different – and I’ve finally had enough of his crap.

I just received another email from Michael Kalo. This time I told him I was going to post his email and my response – but I was going to reveal his true name. (He sent the email under the name “Harvey Weinstein”.)

Emily Kalo
Stephanie Kalo

It must be particularly embarrassing for Michael’s two very accomplished daughters, Stephanie Kalo and Emily Kalo, to have people realize who their father is.

I’m also posting a video that was sent to me that shows Kalo engaging in an argument with someone (and the identity of that person was not revealed to me by the person who sent me the video.) In it you can hear Michael explain why he’s consistently called Ben Carr a “kike”, “a spoiled Jew boy,” along with some other choice epithets. (Kalo has sent out numerous emails defaming Ben Carr using the name “Mohammed Greenberg” as the sender.)

First, here’s the email in which Kalo goes after Jacob Brodovsky, who recently left his post as co-executive director of BB Camp following a storm of controversy (about which you can read elsewhere on this site):

Dear Bernie:

Jacob Brodovsky is a vile and entitled (self-hating) JEW BOY Bastard, who should keep his long nose away of the private affairs of a foreign sovereign and free country he knows nothing about.

We hear that him and his JAP wife Lexi are expecting a baby.

We respectfully believe that if a boy, they should name him Adolf, and that in a case of a girl, her name should be Eva.

In terms of these scums’ future employment, we suggest that they now look into finding, for a change, a real job.

Perhaps by moving to Gaza and starting a summer (training) camp for (young) terrorists.

Indeed, the BB Camp Board reached the right decision as to these two haters of Israel, the brave and only Jewish state.

Having said this, we wonder why the two were hired (and overpaid) at the first place, and more importantly why it took that long to finally terminate their positions.

We thank you for your ongoing attention to this matter, in our view second only to the scandal of (former Mayor) Sam Katz stealing millions of dollars from the City’s hard working taxpayers and its Police force without, to this day, facing any consequences (other than having to move from Tuxedo to Headingly…lol). 

Go (IDF’s) Jets Go!

Harvey W.

And here’s how I responded to Kalo:

You know what I’m going to do Michael. I’m going to print your letter on my website – but I’m going to say that it was sent by someone named Michael Kalo, who has been defaming various Winnipeg Jews for years. That way it will have the opposite effect of what you’re intending. I’m also going to post the video in which you call Ben Carr (and the person filming the video) a kike.) And if you want to come after me the way you’ve been going after anyone and everyone who provokes your ire, go right ahead. (You seem to have a real hate on for successful Winnipeg Jews. Is it because you’re such a failure in life yourself?) And I’m going to bcc this email to some of the people you’ve been defaming so that they can see how much of a fool you”ve been making of yourself for years.

-Bernie
And here’s the video of Michael (who is apparently walking away with a Ben Carr sign tucked under his arm):

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Local News

Rabbi Matthew Leibl’s Friday afternoon service at Simkin Centre has grown in popularity

By BERNIE BELLAN In November 2023 I published a story in The Jewish Post & News about the first-ever Friday afternoon “Erev Shabbat” service at the Simkin Centre, which was held October 27, 2023.
It was an opportunity for me to see how much of an impact the newly spiritual care aide at the Simkin Centre, Rabbi Matthew Leibl, was having on residents. But that was in 2023 – only 2 years after the Simkin Centre had emerged from the most harrowing period in its history.
As you may recall, when Covid 19 began to spread in early 2020, it was personal care homes across Canada that were hit hardest – and the Simkin Centre was not spared the ravages of Covid. A total of 11 residents passed away at the Centre in 2020 and 2021.
Another result of the Covid epidemic was that the number of non-Jewish residents at the Simkin Centre jumped by quite a large number during the epidemic. Here are some figures showing how many more non-Jewish residents moved into the home by 2021 than had been there previously:
2017 – 67 non-Jewish or 33.5%
2018 – 63 non-Jewish or 31.5%
2019 – 71 non-Jewish or 35.5%
2020 – 61 non-Jewish or 30.5%
2021 – 86 non-Jewish or 43.0%

According to Laurie Cerqueti, CEO at the Simkin Centre, as of May 2, 2025, 44% of the residents are non-Jewish while 56% are Jewish.

Rabbi Matthew Leibl at the keyboard while leading the service on April 26

Rabbi Leibl had been hired in the spring of 2023. His hiring was enabled by a grant from the Jewish Foundation of Manitoba. Here is how the Foundation explained what its purpose was in making a grant to the Simkin Centre for the hiring of a full-time spiritual care aide:

“I know how important spiritual care is in our type of setting,” said Laurie Cerqueti, Simkin Centre CEO. “For our residents, our families, and our community.”
Since she took over the CEO role, Laurie’s thoughts had been directed to ‘How can we serve our people even more than we are now? How can we make this bigger and better?’
This sparked the idea that someone should be brought in to look at what they were doing regarding spiritual care to see where gaps and opportunities lay to develop the program.
The Simkin Centre hired Rabbi Matthew Leibl as the person to fill the role, someone Cerqueti thought would be a perfect fit f for what they’were hoping to do.
“As I spoke with Matthew about this opportunity, we see it as an opportunity to make a significant difference for the residents and their families,” said Cerqueti.
This interaction with the Simkin Centre is not Rabbi Leibl’s first. He has been involved with the Simkin Centre for over 15 years, first working there at age 21. That year, he did concerts three times per week for the residents.
“I found that the music and performing was an incredible way to connect with the people there,” said Rabbi Leibl.
He recalled a story from that time frame where he was performing Oseh Shalom, and one resident who had been, to that point, without her memory and less present, began to mouth the words along with him. The song helped her break through what she had been dealing with.
“That moment was truly a game changer for me. I’m so excited to be able to give back to a place that helped people in my own family and was a great place for me while I was figuring out my way many years ago,” said Rabbi Leibl.
“Simkin is such a special place, and what they’re doing there is awesome.”

In the year and a half since I was present at Rabbi Leibl’s first ever Friday afternoon service at the Simkin Centre much has changed. Most of the new residents who have moved into the centre have, once again, been Jewish. But, in recognition of how many residents are not Jewish the centre has begun offering services for different denominations as well. The May calendar of events lists a Catholic Mass, an Anglican service, a Christian Bible Study, and a Hymnsing.
But it was Rabbi Leibl’s Erev Shabbat service I was interested in seeing again – some 18 months after the first service he had conducted, to see whether it had changed – and how many residents came to watch.
The atrium of the centre was filled with residents on Friday, April 26 – quite a few more than that October 2023 service. The increased number of attendees was also a reflection of how many more of the centre’s residents, once again, are Jewish. (In case you weren’t aware, if there’s a vacant unit at the Simkin Centre and someone who is Jewish is on the wait list to gain admission into the centre, that individual will be given first crack at moving into the centre. I had been told by Laurie Cerqueti that the 14 most recent new residents in the centre were all Jewish.)


There was one other aspect to Rabbi Leibl’s service which was brought to my attention. One of the residents at the Simkin Centre, Carol Manishen, also has a son living in a Shalom Residence: Josh Manishen. When Carol’s husband, Wayne, saw me at that Friday service he told me that he often comes early with Josh – before the start of the regular service at 4:00 pm, and Josh sings various Hebrew prayers, accompanied by Rabbi Leibl on the keyboard. To watch a video of Josh singing, click here:

Two more things to add though: First, Rabbi Leibl is now a regular participant on a podcast that is put on by CJN (what used to be known as the Canadian Jewish News) called “Not In Heaven.” You can find it simply by Googling CJN and scrolling down under the Podcasts link.

Also, since Rabbi Leibl and I go a long way back – and we both have a fond taste for sarcasm, he singled me out from among the audience and said to everyone there: “We’ve even got a reporter from the Jewish Post here.”
I couldn’t help but respond – in my usual facetious manner, that I was there to do an exposé.
To which, Rabbi Leibl retorted: “You can call it “Sex, Drugs, and Candlesticks.” Hmm, I wonder how much more there is about the Simkin Centre that I haven’t learned yet?

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Local News

Well, that didn’t take long…BB Camp Board announces hiring of two new co-directors

Sarah Goulld (left); Aliza Millo (Facebook photos)

(Posted April 27) In a span of a little more than two weeks, BB Camp has gone from parting ways with one of its co-executive directors, Jacob Brodovsky, to the hiring of two new co-directors. (We have been attempting to ascertain the status of Lexi Yurman, who was also camp co-executive director with Jacob – who also happened to be her husband, and who is now on maternity leave. Would she be entitled to return as co-executive director once her maternity leave is up, we wonder?)

The BB Camp board released a press release announcing the new hires at 12:42 pm today. Interestingly, there is no mention whether the positions that are to be filled by the two individuals, Sarah Gould and Aliza Millo, are to be permanent or temporary. Also, the two women are referred to as co-camp directors, not co-executive directors. Is there any significance to that, we wonder? Since no one from the BB Camp board has responded to any questions we have posed to them since this whole mess began, we won’t hold our breath waiting for answers to any of the questions we’ve just asked here either.

Here is the complete text of the BB Camp board announcement:

Dear BB Camp Community,

On behalf of the Board, we wanted to let you know that we acknowledge that the last week has caused much stress and uncertainty.  We have felt it too and have been working very hard to ensure that the summer season unfolds as we all expect.

We are extremely excited to share with you that our 2025 summer senior Camp leadership team is now in place!

Please give a BB Camp W-E-L-C-O-M-E to Sarah Gould and Aliza Millo!

Sarah Gould: co-Camp Director (Wilderness and Operations)
Sarah is returning to BB Camp as co-Camp Director (Wilderness and Operations).  Sarah’s history with BB Camp stretches back decades. She spent many formative summers on Town Island—as a camper, counselor, canoe instructor, and AC out-tripper.  After BB, she took her skills to Camp Hatikvah in BC, where she helped develop and expand their wilderness and out-tripping program. Sarah has an intimate knowledge of wilderness programming, the importance of integrating Jewish values into outdoor education, and as camp alumni and a current camp parent, has a clear understanding of our community’s interests and hopes for BB Camp’s future.

Sarah has been fortunate to spend every summer of her life at Lake of the Woods. Her family cottage is on Channel Island, directly across from Town Island.  She has strong ties to our Lake of the Woods neighbours and an ability to navigate the lake and Kenora. Sarah also was a key volunteer on the Friends of Town Island campaign, through which Camp was able to successfully partner with the Nature Conservancy of Canada to have Town Island designated as a protected area—ensuring its legacy for generations to come.

Professionally, Sarah has years of experience in education, research, and community organizing. She taught anthropology and international development at Trent and the University of Toronto and now works as a researcher and consultant in health studies. In her community life, she leads a neighborhood organization in Toronto, where she has spearheaded grassroots initiatives—from building a skating rink to coordinating with city officials and local stakeholders on community improvement projects. Sarah is also active in the Jewish community, including advocacy for Israel and supporting students facing antisemitism on campus.

Sarah is excited to be returning to Town Island and the BB Camp family for an amazing summer of 2025.

Aliza Millo: co-Camp Director (Programs)
Aliza’s history with BB Camp dates back decades as well. She spent many years at Camp as a camper, counselor, section head, and LTP Coordinator. After Camp, Aliza pursued a career she felt was most adjacent to working at Camp and transitioned into the classroom. She moved to Toronto to pursue her education degree, where she also completed a Jewish Education Certificate at York University.

For the next seven years, Aliza taught at the Toronto Heschel School, a school dedicated to tikkun olam and social justice, with a particular focus on environmental stewardship and sustainability. While there, Aliza taught grades three through seven, with a greater focus on the upper elementary years, teaching Judaics, Hebrew, and General Studies in a pluralistic, integrated setting.

After 10 years in Toronto, Aliza was happy to move back home to Winnipeg.  Aliza met her future husband David Azuelos at BB Camp many years ago; to get a sense of how important BB Camp is to Aliza, she had her wedding on Town Island. Since her return to Winnipeg, Aliza has worked at St. John’s-Ravenscourt School, teaching Grade 4, cultivating an environmental leadership team at the Junior School level, and even bringing groups of Grade 4 and 5 students to Town Island for Outdoor Ed. Aliza has also helped organize and fundraise for Kendra’s Walk, a student-led initiative at SJR supporting teens living with cancer.

Aliza’s true passion lies in building community, whether in the classroom or at Camp. Since her time as a camper, she has enjoyed returning to the island for Work Weekend, volunteering in the kitchen, and serving on the Alumni Committee ahead of the 70th Alumni Weekend. She is most passionate when working with children and believes in strong communication with parents to build meaningful and supportive relationships. Having worked in a kindergarten to Grade 12 school setting, she has enjoyed maintaining lifelong relationships with students and families in the community.

Aliza is excited to be bringing her two boys, Judah and Dubie, to Camp. She is thrilled to be returning in this position — working with and mentoring the already incredible staff, and helping to foster deep and meaningful connections to Jewish values, traditions, and culture. Aliza looks forward to helping build a strong, nurturing community where every camper feels a sense of comfort, belonging, and pride in who they are — and in being a BB Camp camper.

***
The Camp Board of Directors is grateful that Sarah and Aliza, two lifelong BB Campers who together have an exceptional skill set, will be leading our community’s beloved Camp this summer. We are looking forward to another great Camp summer, full of amazing Camp memories.  We will be reaching out directly to Camp families with more information.  Please bear with us as our new leadership team gets up to speed and starts working with our current staff.  Reach us at info@bbcamp.ca

Ed.note: Here’s a comment we received through our “contact us” link: (Readers of this website should be aware that it is run independently of The Jewish Post newspaper. I will forward any comments sent to me that are meant to be letters to the editor of the paper, but the proper email address for the paper is contact@thejewishpost.ca)

Letter to the Editor re BB Camp

I am a former member of the Board of BB Camp and served as Board Chair for a number of years. I am disgusted in the manner in which the current Board responded to to the public assassination of its Executive Director by dishonest Israeli extremists in our community. I am equally disgusted that what should have been a private internal human resource issue at the Camp was made public by the Board through its e-mails to the community which essentially made it impossible for the Executive Director to continue in his position and which likely tarnished his reputation. All I can say that is that I hope Jacob received a large monetary settlement from BB Camp.

-Irwin Corobow

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