Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote the novel, Tarzan, and, in so doing, invented a language for the Great Apes. In that language (Mangani) the words in the blog title mean: “Warning! I come to kill the White man!”
I had some tenuous acquaintances back in the 70’s with some Black Panther-types in Seattle. They hated basic whitey and talked nasty alla time but, for the most part, it was just talk and posturing for each other. They were nice enough to me and Sally and our mutual friend (who was married to one of them). We got along.
One day when we were visiting, Malcom X (or whoever) had just come over with his brand new, purebred Afghan hound. A beautiful dog. He had come over to get help with registering it as a purebred in the American Kennel Club (AKC). Seems each dog requires three names. So the brothers were all throwing out names but agreeing on none of them. I suggested they call the dog, Kreegha Bundolo Tarmangani.
Six or so black, angry, militant faces looked at me like I was mad. “Wha..de hell yo’ talkin’, white boy?” I explained what the words meant and where they came from. They screamed with delight and that became the name of the guy’s new dog.
Now a careful PC reading of the above two paragraphs can find white, male privilege and even, maybe, some racist sentiments running rampant there. Firstly, I was using my paltry education and my penchant for reading to ‘teach’ them what I knew. I suggest that, at the time, few if any of them had read Tarzan and/or all of the works of E.R. Burroughs as I had. I’d opine that a few may not have read much at all. Clearly, I was manifesting white privilege and being patronizing. That was not my intention, however, and they knew it, but an ignorant, modern, PC advocate might chide me for it. I would definitely be rebuked for writing their question to me in psuedo-black-speak.
However, the name, suggesting that the dog will kill the white man, is clearly also a form of hate mongering to any PC Karen. I would have fingers pointing at me and them on that, for sure. After all, I was obviously suggesting the white somewhat-equivalent of the N-word to name the dog. To be fair, Malcom X joining the AKC was intended as a rebuke to the AKC collective major whiteness as well but that might be OK – he was ‘of colour’, after all, and was allowed to openly hate the white oppressor under the Black Panther banner.
But all that tedious analysis of the petty and picayune was not in fashion back then and they loved the name and elected to use it. The AKC was, at the time, 99.999% white (maybe more). Kreegha Bundolo Tarmangani was a subtly veiled threat to the club. But the Panthers were OK with that. So was I. And, as it turned out, so was the AKC. They were either very tolerant or equally as ignorant of Burrough’s work.
One can analyze all of the above in any number of ways but if the analysis did not put a huge emphasis on intent, it would miss the mark completely. My intent was to help them name their dog in a way that they would like. My intent was not to be patronizing but helpful and, I confess, amusing. Despite walking into a verbal minefield amongst potential enemies, the good intention was what was heard and no harm was done to me, the dog, the AKC or to Sally.
My point? Intention is a huge part of communication. My intention yesterday was to address the now-popular misconception that Canada waged REAL genocide on it’s indigenous peoples. Canada did not. Canada did not intend to kill thousands of their children and Canada did not actually kill any of them, not intentionally, anyway. As in the US schools, TB killed virtually all the victims. Canada’s crime was one of neglect, perhaps reckless endangerment, maybe even criminal negligence by some individuals. It was not pre-meditated mass murder.
I did not ignore the harm Canada did. I did not sweep any crimes under the carpet. I simply clarified the word, genocide. To be fair, I might even have hinted that Canada’s intention was basically good (for the era, given the times, and even delegated to churches) but that it was wrong-headed, mismanaged, mishandled, cruel and destructive in the result.
Intent, tho a huge part of the plan to assimilate, is not enough of an excuse if the actions taken were so bad and the intent – from the start – was wrong.
By the way, our intent wasn’t even well thought out. Ryerson basically copied the US model of Mission Schools for Native Americans. The US closed their last such school in 1984.
Canada is guilty of being bloody stupid, slow to fix what must have been obvious after a while and even stupider in doing what they do now – now that they know what happened. Canada has stumbled badly on this, no question. And they continue to do so. But genocide was not then nor was it ever on the agenda. The goal was indoctrination and cultural erasure….ignorant and nasty but not homicide, not genocide.
Money and effort have been spent in great gobs over the years and more is planned in future*. Those compensatory monies and efforts have been judged inefficient and unproductive but the native population has remained relatively stable. Ergo: NOT genocide. (*anyone who attended a Residential school is currently entitled to additional government compensation. The range is from $10,000 to $200,000 depending on the level of abuse).
Indigenous peoples still suffer more than they should (i.e. just in having clean drinking water on reserves). If some readers think the Residential schools were waging genocide, what do they think of the ten-times-the-normal rate of contaminated water, boil-water-advisories FNs suffer every year? If killing them off is the plan, dirty water might have been a better weapon than very poorly managed Residential schools.
Our Off the Grid Home 
I read ALL of Edgar Rice Burroughs books, Tarzan was one of many.
I Laughed at your title.
Great story.
Hanging around with Black Panthers in 1960’s Seattle pretty much guarantees your name ended up in an F.B.I. file somewhere.
I just finished reading.
The Light of Days by Judy Batalion.
Its a story of the women Resistance fighters in the Polish Ghettos from 1939 to 1945.
A sobering read.
Young Jewish girls, some teenagers, most in their early 20’s who had Aryan features and spoke Polish or German with no accents were invaluable to the Jewish underground.
They volunteered as spies without hesitation.
THREE of them actually had their photo taken by a Gestapo officer at a Gestapo Christmas Party in a notorious Gestapo prison because one of them was an invaluable secretary/translator and asked if she could bring her two friend s to the party….. crazy.
Almost all these gals used up their nine lives and were captured, tortured, and killed.
A few survived to tell the amazing tale.
6 million Jews killed in the 1940’s by Hitler and the Nazi insanity.
Pol Pot killed an estimated 1.5 to 2 million of his OWN PEOPLE in the 1970’s-80’s
Rwanda Hutus killed an estimated 800,000 Tutsi’s in 100 DAYS.
Apparently Genocide is alive and well in the 20th century … all…. over…. the…. world.
Canada’s Residential School system wasnt designed as a death camp.
The misguided idiots of the day thought that by teaching native children how to read, write, etc they would become assimilated into British North American culture.
Or as some politician over 100 years ago so crudely put it, ” Beat the Indian out of the Indian.”
Perhaps one could call it Cultural Genocide….but Genocide?
Give me a break.
Brutal ? yes.
Wrong? yes.
Were pedophiles allowed to run rampant? Probably ,
Just as they have in orphanages, catholic boarding schools, juvenile prisons, cub scouts, sports teams, on and on and on.
Will more money make everything better? No.
Will making taxpayers today pay for the sins of unpunished sodomies make it better? No. , .
Will blaming everyone today who’s white and male make it better? No.
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When they come for you, you can run here for asylum. When they come for the both of us, we can hide behind Sal. In the meantime, let us drink our courage in single malt scotch. May as well go down unconscious.
It has not yet come to that…..not yet…but OMG…..what is wrong with people who cannot read what is ACTUALLY written and, instead, read what they want to react to? Is that some new kind of madness.? I mean, really? Don’t we have enough madness variants without misinterpreting simple statements on purpose? As Bartles and James so famously said, “Thank you for your support.”
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I’ll bring scotch…..
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Don’t have to…there’s a bottle here with a note on it. “Do not open until….”
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On another comment.
After my dad passed away many years ago my mom decided to date again in the mid 1970’s.
One day she introduces us kids to her new “boyfriend”.
He was a Black South African Professor who was teaching for a few months on a sabbatical in canada.
Great guy.
Lots of stories of Africa, Russia, England, etc.
One Saturday morning I was watching an old 1950’s black and white Tarzan movie starring Johnny Weissmuller.
Tunde walked by and heard the “African porters” in the movie speaking and singing on the tv and sat down to watch.
We watched a scene where the “porters” were stopping to set up a camp in the jungle…..
After a minute he said, “Do you know what their saying?”
“Nope.”
He laughed and said, “They’re discussing the coffee break when the director says “Cut!”
Ruined the movie !
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JDC,
I do applaud your willingness to lay out on that grenade, sticking your neck out,waaay out,to make a point. I can only assume that your facts are as correct as you could manage. The whole bag of those schools, intent aside, is a terrible mess, and I’m sure your points would never be well received out there in the twitterverse etc. but it … is just a wee bit of a comfort to know. Between ineptitude and murder I may have to choose the former. To me, this part of Our history is one of, if not the worst part, of CANADiAn history. Period. I can not fathom how anyone could feel it best to remove children from their families,except in individual bad situations. On mass, and knowing anything of what happens to the defenseless when placed with demons in dark places, there was no way any good could have come from it. If the goal was to get the WILD out of those children all it seems to have done is to destroy individuals and families and generate an entire generation or five of lost and terrorized CANADiAns. I can not believe, in my heart, that genocide was the goal, tho taking away one’s language, culture, family structure and lives must be considered too near to it, sure enough.
This continued business of poor water on the rezs has bothered me for some time. How, in this day and age,with the simple and basic tech available, to everyone, it is still a problem points to a massive cock up, on both sides of the issue, those who use the water and the managing GOV. Quite pathetic and shameful all around.
I hope you are spared any canceling. You speak much truth, in my understanding, and without a forked tongue. That’s why I’m here.
Take care and all the best to You and Sal.
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My inclination to believe that the intent was ‘good’ is partly driven by the ways of society back then. My father-in-law came from a well-to-do British family. When he was six, he was sent away to school to live in residence. In effect, a residential school. That was the practice back then. Of course, his English ‘Public’ school (in our vernacular, was a private school and the kids stayed there) was a bastion of hazing, bullying, shunning, caning and cruel teachers and headmasters (all done to help the boy grow into a man!). The point is: Residential schools were all the rage back then all over the place. Ours were worse for any number of reasons but
The idea was not some Machiavellian plot to kill kids.
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@dlwnolonger
“This continued business of poor water on the rezs has bothered me for some time. How, in this day and age,with the simple and basic tech available, to everyone, it is still a problem points to a massive cock up, on both sides of the issue, those who use the water and the managing GOV. Quite pathetic and shameful all around.”
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Well, your other comments aside.
Let me comment on this one.
Most of the reservations ( Nations?) with water issues are remote.
To expect govt officials to check remote water pumping stations daily ( even weekly in the Canadian Winter) is ridiculous.
At some point the people LIVING on those Reserves (Nations?) should be taking responsibility for at least the daily water tests.
I worked as Power Engineer in several office buildings in Downtown Vancouver for 20 + years.
Our DAILY water tests took 5 minutes.
We poured a water sample into a beaker.
Dipped a Ph slide in to test acidity.
Poured some water into a sterile test tube bacteria sample media to check bacteria and make notes.
5 minutes. Tops.
If you’re really really REALLY worried about the quality of your DRINKING water….take some damn initiative and TEST IT!
An electrician friend who works for Yukon Electric told me a story a few years back.
Old Crow ( VERY REMOTE Yukon and above the tree line ) had no power and it was minus 40c with a wind chill of minus 60c Pitch dark Winter
They had to fly in to get the village generators running. The village had no power, no heat.
They flew in on a chartered plane and the pilot told them, ” I have to keep the engines running or they will freeze and we’ll all be stuck here. You have two hours! I’m leaving at 2 hours and 1 minute.”
The whole village was dark , a few candles glowed. No one came out to help.
They rushed to the generator hut and got a propane heater fired up. They changed the water and fuel filters, air filters, some fuel lines etc. and got one generator sputtering.
They started working on the second.genny but ran out of time.
They got the first genny running, switched the power on to the village and flew out.
No ONE came out …AT….ANY……TIME to see what was wrong or how to fix it……
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And to your friend’s experience,that is why I said it’s a fault on both sides. I too have heard of a lack of concern or response on the user side. I have friends who work 8n water and wwater, as well as for the Min.of Enviro, albeit in Ontario, and the same situ was rife with the same pathetic responses. If off-gridders can manage wells, rain collection or pumping from a source, ANY One CAN. This (portion) of the issue is self perpetuated. The other side is just as bad, enduring it and throwing $$$ at it for so long. Pay an operator or responsible person or group and get it sorted! ASAP!!! How hard can THAT be? No one wants the jobs?
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“Pay an operator or responsible person or group and get it sorted! ASAP!!! How hard can THAT be? No one wants the jobs?”
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I hiked the West Coast Trail several times over the past 40 years.
One time I finished the trail and was in Bamfield for the night.
I went to the pub for a burger and a beer.
The next table was full of Parks Canada staff enjoying their first night off in a week.
The Supervisor was white and 80 % of the rest of the staff were 1st Nations.
I bought them a few rounds of beer and asked one of the native kids why the First Nations didn’t take all the jobs including the Supervisor.
“We dont want the responsibility…”
ALL the other kids nodded in agreement.
I’ve heard similar stories from Commercial fishermen, Loggers, etc.
Great worker but they dont want to be the Leaders.
A cultural thing?
Only the Chief can lead?
Who knows.
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Yes,I have heard such things as well. I don’t know the full truth or the answer either, but to go without water OR have ‘someone’ be an operator… Even if pushed, Someone MUST need to take the hit for the village!, no??? Perhaps the problem is of a deeper and/or more ridiculous nature…
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I was working in Whitehorse circa 1970’s when it was confided to me that they(?) could pay each and every Old Crow resident $1 million and move them to Hawaii cheaper than to maintain them in Old Crow.
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I also hope You (two) enjoy the beautiful evening. 🙏
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You too!
Gonna be a record breaking scorcher over the next few days.
Mother Earth and Climate change trumps all our insignificant squabbling.
And a thousand years from now……. historians will wonder what Canada was………..
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And I wish You a sunnier and more timely future and disposition!😉🙂😎
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For us, a scorcher is next to impossible. There is (almost, of course!) ALWAYs a breeze here and it must come from the NW, over an immense stretch of sea or come over the still (mostly, of course!!!) snow capped mountains so the breeze is usually cool at the warmest. Occasionally,of course, it’s a tad warm.
Gotta get us a wind genny. Still, I’m in shorts today and it is one of those Glorious days one lives for.
I wish You ALL that glory.
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People (readers) are not used any more to think for themselves. They like their news to be presented to them in such a way they don’t have to think for themselves. So media jumps into it, pumping up every bit of “news”, so that it’s easely digested by the readers. Throw in some pictures and happy they are. The story of the schools even is in our newspapers, claiming now that tehy found a second mass grave. Seems not so spectacular and abnormal that you will find a graveyard next to each and every school if that was the system that was set up (to bury the kids near the school and not send them back to their families). We have a bit of news here ourselves….they ound PFOS in soil samples from a 3M factory making post-its. There is some local pollution that they will have to deal with. Media jumped on that, and now they find PFOS everywhere (of course they do…it IS everywhere). So now the question is if we should even take a swim in the lakes in Belgium, or even swim in the sea, or even should eat vegatables from our own gardens, should we close all the farms ALL over Belgium…just because they found 1 local pollution hotspot…..Crazy times for sure, and people do NOT think for themselves anymore, they just swallow what is presented to them. I’ll take that scotch though if you’ll have me
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You are welcome anytime, Wim. So are all the ‘Johns’ and ‘Daves’ and even the Moiras. I may be a sexist, racist, pig who knows nothing but that doesn’t effect the libations I pour. This much I will claim: I know how to serve Scotch!
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The local news cast here emphasizes every half hour that it was NOT a mass grave, but a ‘cemetery’ complete with headstones, long since disappeared.
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Again, a bit more of an ease, I suppose, but still, I find the thought of tearing children from their families a very simple atrocity.
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Re: Unmarked graves in a graveyard? amazing! You’ll find many unmarked graves in any cemetery that was first started in the late 1800’s or early 1900’s. That’s just the way it was back then. I managed a “white” cemetery (est. 1908) for years that had several ‘unmarked’ graves. Took me several years to actually determine where those graves were in relation to the marked graves.. Maybe those graves were marked 100 yeas ago, but wood deteriorates, stone endures.
Anyway, has anyone actually exhumed any remains? A squiggle on a machine readout does not definitely indicate a body is present; and after seventy or so years there wouldn’t be anything there.
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They irony of the latest 750 “unmarked” ie Forgotten graves in Sask?
They were on Reserve Land!
If the people on the Reserve for got the graves were there ……..were they really that concerned about it?
But no.
Lets all wear orange Tshirts and moan and wail about the injustice of it all and maybe…..juu-u-u-u-u-ust maybe, the federal govt will throw more millions at the problem to make it go away.
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And the latest from our ever searching Woke Crowd determined to root out offensive labels everwhere.
Sexist and Misogynistic ( isn’t that the same thing?) drinks on Vancouver bar menus have been banned.
I think they should move on to plumbing suppliers sexist and derogatory labels.
Ban Ballcock valves and threaded Nipples….
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Like you, I think there is a weird over-reaction to attributing so much ‘meaning’ to historic names/nouns. In a world where it seems everyone uses the F-word like they might use salt on chips, it is insane to ban a drink’s name, a creek in the woods called ‘Chinaman’s’ or manhole covers because it might offend someone. We are being brainwashed into being wimps, whiners and victims. But the real question is why?
And I am not so sure the fault is the ‘Woke crowd’.
Since when has any crowd without leaders and organization and money behind them been able to change government policies and such? I do not think there even is a Woke crowd. Just some ‘woke’ loons.
Instead, I think government (politicians) crave and love these stupid issues because they divert our attention from the important things. I mean, the media ‘fills’ the pages/screens with trivial crap all the live-long day but they do it mostly to just have ‘content’ to sell. And whatever the low-hanging fruit is is an easier-sell. Sex is the easiest to sell. So we get LGBQT stuff, women breast-feeding, politicians having sex and other such nonsense somewhere in every newsfeed. None of it is news, it is simply titillating. Then, as it turns out, comes ‘outrage’ and ‘victimhood’. Those so-called news topics are really just ‘fill’. They gotta sell something so they make up ‘issues’.
Related note: a FN friend is laughing at us over the unmarked graves issue. He said, most graves were marked even back then but they were marked with wooden crosses and other too-easily eroded materials. Wooden markers don’t last long. Also, many tribes left bodies in trees and other remote locations. The gravestone thing was just another White-man’s thing. And it is a white-man’s thing to sell outrage and victimhood – therefore, this big fuss over unmarked graves is just silly business but it is just that – business-as-usual for White men (and now FNs) to make money.
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Yep,
I stopped watching CBC news a few years back.
Their far far far Left agenda and political correctness oozed from every “News” story.
Nauseating.
Their day of reckoning is coming when taxpayers finally realize that we spend $1BILLION per year to a channel that cant garner 250,000 views on a prime time ALL ACROSS CANADA.
No one watches them anymore.
Global is a dismal shadow of its former BCTV days but I could still watch it.
The past few months, with the endless 15 to 30 minutes per night of BLM or Residential school survivors …
Click.
I start surfing the net for actual News about, gee….the rest of the world?
TV has become a pc, milksop echo chamber for the left.
I didnt know Canada had so many black actors until the beginning of the year when it seems 90% of the actors in commercials on tv are now black.
There were actually ads that were pulled and reshot with the exact same script …only the actors were now black.
Whats next?
Bump them for First Nations actors to sell me toothpaste?
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Can anyone suggest a true and accurate display of world and local news???🙄🤔🤔🤔🤪
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Reuters isnt bad.
A newsfeed that sells it’s stories or pics to other news agencies.
The Economist isnt bad as a weekly information magazine.
I surf the National Post and the New York Times for more indepth news.
Sadly local and most National news in Canada is biased, left learning, apologist Pablum.
There’s a big world out there full of News that’s being ignored so that we can self flagellate while ripping our shirts in the endless angst that is now Canada
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On the island I have a limited, tho vast, array of shirts, espec of the T variety, so perhaps I’ll just look out over the sea and listen to the trees psythorism will do me fine then. I wish You well.
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I agree with NonCons suggestions but I’d add AP (to balance Reuters) the Washington Post, The Guardian, South China Morning Post, Mexico News Daily. I also peruse the Times Colonist, the Calgary Herald and sometimes, when I can stand it, the Globe and Mail. Best overall: The Economist, then The Washington Post. Somewhere in the top ten is The NY Times and, surprisingly, Vanity Fair.
Bear in mind, altho I usually agree with NonCon on most things, I am a self-described Lefty, Greenie, Pinko who supports BLM, Occupy and most environmental groups. Methinks NonCon plays a bit fast and loose with the terms Liberal and Left. There are Liberals and then there are liberals.
I am a small-L liberal but that does not mean that I think without some firm conservative principles. And I leeeaaaannnnnn left. I support universal health care and yet I am a huge critic of the slop and expense of it as it is managed today. I accept the alphabet soup of sexual differences but I deplore, in fact, the bizarre spectacle of parading and celebrating one’s personal sexual preferences. I am a straight hetero and pleased with myself over it but I do not feel that I need to prance and shout and wave rainbows at anyone every once in a while in some traffic-stopping parade (or whatever the equivalent of that is for straight people). That just seems bloody silly to me. I also hate the CBC for all the same reasons as NonCon but I would like to see a BBC/CBC/NPR kinda channel that isn’t so uber infested with the empty-headed types currently running our CBC show. I admire and respect First Nations for effectively standing up to government and BIG BUSINESS but that doesn’t mean I approve every initiative of theirs. I’d say I am 80% for and 20% against depending on the issue. I guess what I am saying is that stereotyping and labeling doesn’t work for me but, even in that, I understand the need to take a communication short-cut to get a point across. Using Bubba and Trumpists and GOP is the same kind of short-cut and is not always fair to all who might hold those terms more dearly – that is why there is room for John-from-Alberta and Kev and even Moira (altho I am pretty sure Moira has stomped off in a huff).
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“Methinks NonCon plays a bit fast and loose with the terms Liberal and Left. There are Liberals and then there are liberals.”
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Well that may be true but when I think of Jean Cretien’s budget balancing Liberals and the Billion Dollar Baby “Liberals” of today… I shudder.
How much farther Left can Trudeau go until he either declares himself an “Orange” NDP or Communist?
One more apology from our fearless, apologist, Woke, politically correct, fiscally incompetent Apologist in Chief and we’ll be bankrupt and smoking pot while begging for free munchies with everyone else in that systemically racist, white mans burden called Canada.
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