“A Canadian medical researcher who rose to become the nation’s top voice on indigenous health has been ousted from her government job and her university professorship — after suspicious colleagues investigated her increasingly fanciful claims of Native American heritage and learned she was a fraud.”
“Far from being a member of the Métis nation, as she had long claimed, a laborious trace of Bourassa’s family tree revealed that her supposedly indigenous ancestors were in fact immigrant farmers who hailed from Russia, Poland, and Czechoslovakia.
Wheeler, a documented member of Manitoba’s Fisher River Cree Nation, started digging into Bourassa’s genealogical records — and took her findings to the media.
But when pressed to provide evidence of Native American heritage, Bourassa suddenly changed her story — saying that she had been adopted into the Métis community by an unnamed Métis friend of her deceased grandfather, Clifford Laroque.
“Even though Clifford passed, those bonds are even deeper than death because the family has taken me as if I was their blood family,” she insisted in a statement. “In turn, I serve the Métis community to the best of my ability.”
“Wheeler said the fact that the letter advocates sidelining genealogical proof is alarming at a time when Indigenous people are fighting for their rights and their land.
“That’s opening the doors to every Tom, Dick and Harry to claim Indigeneity,” she said. “Then suddenly out of the woodwork, everybody’s Indigenous because they feel like it.”
University of Saskatchewan associate professor of Indigenous studies Winona Wheeler says Bourassa’s story is built on a fundamental falsehood. (Chanss Lagaden/CBC)
According to an email from the University of Saskatchewan, if Indigenous identity or experience is required for a role, the university “accepts self-declaration in matters of employment.”
Wheeler said that’s not enough.
“When I apply for an academic job, I have to give them a copy of my certificate for my PhD,” she said. “But if I’m applying for a position that’s targeted only for Indigenous people, I’m not required to provide anything except self-identification. Now that’s lowering standards.”
Smylie said she decided to speak up, despite the risks to her career, because the consequences of continued silence are grave.
“If I was to stay quiet and let somebody who’s an impostor regularly inform the nation and lead the nation like in Indigenous health, then I guess then I wouldn’t [have] earned the right to call myself Métis anymore,” she said. “And that will be the end of our people.”
The discrimination and hatred that transracial individuals receive in Canada is real, and their very existence is being questioned. When will this rampant transracialphobia and marginalization stop?
Is there a better example of how utterly inconsistent and deranged transgender ideology is? Why in the case as ‘someone who identifies as Indigenous’ is lambasted in the press and yet, somehow a man can identify as a woman and all is well in the world (it really isn’t).
Like, come on CBC, either self identification all the time or none of the time – it can’t just be for men who think they are women. You should be championing Bourassa’s case not denigrating her and questioning her ‘validity’. So what if the established facts of the matter point to the exact opposite of her identity claims? How can we not endorse Bourassa while tirelessly advocating for men to freely claim womanhood because they self-identify as such?
What is the metric you are using to promote one aspect of self-id, but not the other?
Asking for the female population of Canada that is being erased in Canadian society through the wildly inappropriate application of gender identity laws.
I heard this story on the radio while driving into work this morning. I had hoped I had misheard the announcer when they said that health care workers had been verbally assaulted and in some cases physically assaulted while doing their jobs.
“Crowds of people opposed to COVID-19 vaccinations clogged the streets of Vancouver and demonstrated outside hospitals across B.C. on Wednesday afternoon, earning the indignation of some political leaders.
According to police estimates, thousands of demonstrators gathered outside hospitals in Vancouver, Kelowna, Kamloops, Victoria, Prince George, Nanaimo and in other Canadian cities.
The protests were organized by Canadian Frontline Nurses, a group founded by two Ontario nurses who have promoted conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and attended rallies in the U.S. for those who think the pandemic is a “fraud.” In posters for the event, dubbed “worldwide walkout,” the group urged supporters to “stand up for freedom” and “reject the tyranny of mandatory vaccines.”
Unbelievable.
“Protesters carried signs with slogans criticizing vaccine passports as a form of discrimination and chanted “freedom” and “crimes against humanity.”
By the early evening, one health authority was reporting a physical assault against a health-care worker. Island Health’s president and CEO Kathy MacNeil said some of the protests on Vancouver Island had disrupted people’s safe access to health care.”
You can’t go to school without the mandated vaccinations. This is just like that, public health mandates are good for society. These people are protesting for the freedom to spread Covid-19 to others, because of their monumental ignorance and gullibility.
“What happened to our health-care teams today is not acceptable to me nor to the people and communities they serve. Our health-care teams deserve respect and support, no matter what personal beliefs we hold.”
Health Minister Adrian Dix described the protests as “despicable.”
“The nature of the protest to disrupt people when they go to hospital, people who are going there for surgery or for other circumstances, or to visit loved ones or to be with loved ones when they pass away, to have a protest there is really not acceptable behaviour,” he said.”
It is not the people at the hospitals that are ‘ruining your freedom’ and ‘imposing tyranny’ on you. Look at your political class. They are making the call here and if you have issues with them, go protest at the legislature or city hall. But stay the heck away from hospitals and health care workers who are doing their best (and have been doing their best for a very long time) to keep people alive during this pandemic.
“We have a window of opportunity to rapidly accelerate vaccine uptake and close the protection gap in younger age groups.”
The number of cases in Canada each day grew from about 700 in early August, to almost 3,500 now. The vast majority of cases are among unvaccinated individuals, with Tam saying unvaccinated people are 12 times more likely to be infected and 36 times more likely to be hospitalized if they get infected.
So, the ignorant are weeding themselves out of society, but at too great a cost for the rest of us. It’s sad a I have to compile stories like this, I thought Canadians as a whole had a better grip on reality.
Canada is experiencing a fair amount of Covid fatigue. The reception of news of the fourth wave seems like only a small ripple in the news. Unsurprisingly the news isn’t particularly good. The light at the end of the pandemic tunnel has gotten farther and dimmer as the delta variant of Covid 19 makes its rounds through the population.
“The country’s seven-day average for new daily cases is now close to 1,300 — an increase of nearly 60 per cent over the previous week, with cases ticking back up mainly in B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Quebec.
“We’re absolutely in the fourth wave,” said Dr. Peter Juni, who is the scientific director of Ontario’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table. “There’s no doubt about that.”
But unlike previous waves, which overwhelmed various hospital systems and led to catastrophic death in long-term care facilities, there is hope this spike won’t be quite so dire.”
Do we have the pandemic under control? I think much of that answer to that will depend on how willing Canadians are to get fully vaccinated.
“The point is we can’t go back to normal,” said Juni. “Because we continue to have a challenge with the large proportion of people who remain unvaccinated.”
As usual, we have the crowd that arduously shout about how their personal freedom is being impinged upon by pubic health measures. This is the segment of the population that will knowingly or unknowingly cause the pandemic to drag on for much longer than necessary.
“Unprotected individuals around the world have proven vulnerable to the highly contagious delta variant in recent weeks, with surges of cases — including serious infections and deaths — in areas of low vaccine coverage, ranging from entire regions in Africa to certain U.S. states.
“This is going to overwhelmingly be a disease of unvaccinated Canadians and under-vaccinated populations,” said Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious diseases physician and member of Ontario’s COVID-19 vaccine task force.”
The Delta variant is kicking the ass of un-vaccinated populations, not only in Canada, but world wide. It is very much a personal responsibility/consequences issue. It’s just that in this case the vaccine hesitant are, in my opinion, are acting irresponsibly and unfortunately the consequences can be quite dire. No one should have to suffer intubation or the Long Covid when we have the means of preventing the majority of such outcomes.
“With early signs of a delta-driven wave beginning and the fall approaching, efforts to increase the proportion of fully vaccinated Canadians and reinforce individual precautions per local public health advice are crucial to reducing virus spread and lowering the risk of a resurgence that could lead to health-care capacity being exceeded this coming fall and winter,” said Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, in a statement on Tuesday.”
Let’s make this pandemic as short as possible and continue to follow the best evidenced based public health practices.
Forget about ‘just wanting to pee’ wedge issue bullshit – this is what we are in for in Canadian society; this is the upside-down, nothing has any meaning, timeline that trans ideology has in store for us.
Do not believe your eyes, but rather what some individual says about who they are. This is where belief in gender-magic takes us, where male violent crime is somehow called ‘female’ violent crime because the violent male has fucking delusions of gender and we need to respect that.
No. The word must get out of what is happening here and the bald-faced misogyny that is transgender ideology must be stopped.
“She is charged with sexual interference with a person under the age of 16 and sexual assault. Eby is set to appear in a Toronto courtroom on July 21.
In a news release issued on Tuesday, police said investigators believe there may be other victims.
Police are asking anyone with information related to the investigation to contact investigators or Crime Stoppers.”
How in any possible sane world is that person a she? In Canada this male can, and will probably be detained with other female prisoners. Read that again. This sex offender will most likely be housed in a target rich environment lush with captive and accessible female victims. Why (trans rights are male rights)? Because he *feels* like a woman. That is all it takes these days to be seen in the eyes of Canadian law as a woman – a simple declaration and *poof* a woman is nothing more than a set of feelings inside of a man’s head.
No ducking thank you. Women are adult human females and have every right to reject men -especially predatory men- from their spaces and services. You would think that the our prison service and government would be able to understand how bad an idea it is to house male sexual offenders in a female prison.
What? Yeah. This ‘progressive’ trans movement is so evil inclusive that it campaigns and is getting men into female prisons in Canada. What could go wrong?
“The Canadian government has been transferring males who identify as transgender to women’s prisons for a few years now, keeping the public mostly in the dark about this, and the impact on female inmates. The harassment and assaults that have taken place at the hands of these males has also, for the most part, been ignored — both by the government and the media. Only a few brave women have been trying, tirelessly, to force this conversation, and force people to care about these inmates, whose rights are being ignored as a result of Bill C-16, and new gender identity policies. Heather Mason is one of those women. Heather Mason is a 31-year old-mother to two children and a first time federal offender. She was sentenced to three years at Grand Valley Institution in Kitchener and is currently on Statutory Release in Toronto. She is an advocate for women in conflict with the law and a prison abolitionist. Heather recently co-founded a nonprofit organization, whose goal is to break barriers for women in social issues that lead to incarceration.”
Identity politics serves to corrupt the notions of morality, common sense, and what it means to live in a society under the rule of law. This is a brief examination of a twitter thread I stumbled across about the recent cases of Catholic Churches being burnt down as misguided retaliation for the residential school system that was in place in Canada.
” SASKATOON — A former Polish Roman Catholic church in rural Saskatchewan was destroyed by fire Thursday.
The church was located near Redberry Lake, which is about 80 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon.
Lynn Swystun, who lives about a mile and a half west of the church, says she noticed smoke from her yard around 12:15 p.m. then drove to the area and discovered the church engulfed in flames.”
Wait, what? Where exactly is the conflation happening? Damage to places of worship, in my books, is damage to places of worship. But apparently, in Nora’s world, your identity is also somehow a factor that should be used to categorize the level of violence, determining whether the violence is ‘valid’ or not.
If you’ve been with us here DWR you know that I’m not exactly the biggest supporter of organized religion and all the tomfoolery it is responsible for. But, even being the anti-religious soul that I am, I wouldn’t attempt to order and rank attacks on places of worship into ‘worthy’ and ‘less worthy’ categories.
What kind of internal moral compass is Nora going by here?
The hell? It isn’t a hate crime to burn down a place of worship because of a political/ideological motivation? And, yes the actions of the Catholic Church are indeed pretty horrible, but burning down a church is not how we express our displeasure in a nominally civilized society that values the rule of law.
Just in case if you missed it. This is the moral wasteland that much of identity politics leads to. The level of oppression Catholics face in our society is irrelevant the crime that has been committed. Burning down a church is arson. Arson is against the law, for good reason, in our society. There is no “good” or “valid” arson permissible if one wants to live in a reasonable law abiding society.
Do you see it there? The bullshit notion that there are differing levels of ‘arsonability’ based on your identity in society (of course it comes from a pronouns bio *smh*). Err no. There is no fucking way this paradigm can work if we want society as we know it to work. Past oppression does not mean a free pass when you break the law.
Is protest a part of a democratic society, absolutely. It is our civic duty to keep our political class in check and in tune with needs of the people. Arson, however, is not one of those methods that should not be considered acceptable in society as a path to change.
In recent weeks, Halifax Pride was made aware of a petition asking the Halifax Public Library to remove a newly acquired book that jeopardizes the safety of trans youth, through unsupported medical claims and the transphobic assertion that trans identities are a choice.
We want to thank the individuals who took the time to create and bring this petition to our attention. We recognize their work and emotional labour in holding their own discussions with the library.
We reached out to the library to understand their acquisition process and urge them to take corrective action to remove the book and review their Collection Development Policy. We hoped that they would understand that the book’s misleading health advice put local trans youth in immediate harm. We expected feedback from trans individuals and a queer community partner to result in further reflection and a new course of action.
Yesterday, representatives of the library communicated to members of our community, and to us, that they have decided to keep the book in their collection without further review of their policies.
Halifax Pride has decided to end our partnership with the Halifax Public Library, including events planned for the 2021 festival, and will refrain from booking library spaces until this issue is addressed with some combination of internal review, policy change, and training.
Halifax Public Library’s collection process is at odds with Halifax Pride’s commitment to protecting vulnerable members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community. We hope the Halifax Public Library will reconsider its stance and amend their policies to prioritize the health and safety of the public.
What is this evil tome that is ‘jepordizing the safety of trans youth’ (!?!?!?!??) you may ask?
‘Shrier states that she began to investigate adolescent-onset gender dysphoria after being contacted by the mother of a young adult with no apparent history of childhood gender dysphoria, who identified as transgender in college. She describes what she sees as difficulties facing teenagers who were assigned female at birth, whom she refers to throughout the book as “girls”isolation, online social dynamics, restrictive gender and sexuality labels, unwelcome physical changes and sexual attention. She profiles several teenagers who questioned their gender identities or came out as transgender while experiencing mental health or personal issues. She discusses Lisa Littman’s 2018 journal article on rapid onset gender dysphoria and the ensuing controversy and endorses its findings. She states that online trans influencers encourage questioning youth to identify as trans, experiment with breast binding and testosterone, and disown or lie to unsupportive family members.
Shrier criticizes transgender-related curricula and policies in schools. She describes parents distressed by their children’s transgender identification or transition. She critiques the gender-affirming model of care and profiles its critics: Kenneth Zucker, Ray Blanchard, J. Michael Bailey, Lisa Marchiano, and Paul McHugh. Shrier discusses trans activism and related controversies, including sex-specific privacy concerns; passing versus trans visibility; the role of celebrities in increasing trans acceptance; conflict between transgender people, and lesbians or radical feminists; transfeminine/male-to-female athletes competing in girls’ and women’s sports; the use of trans-inclusive language; intersectionality; and identity politics. She argues that medical interventions such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries include risks, and describes a transgender person who became disabled after a failed surgery. She also profiles detransitioned young women.’
Yes, so the faux-progressive authoritarian Left in Halifax is having a major fit about a book that shed’s some light on the gender magic they hold near and dear. Now that you have a sketch of Shrier’s book, let’s break down Halifax Pride’s Official statement.
“In recent weeks, Halifax Pride was made aware of a petition asking the Halifax Public Library to remove a newly acquired book that jeopardizes the safety of trans youth, through unsupported medical claims and the transphobic assertion that trans identities are a choice.”
Which unsupported medical claims are you referring to? The only unsupported claims I can see being made are the ones contained in your sentence. Demonstrate where Shrier’s book is in fact a real and present danger to children. If the case for being trans or attempting to trans children is rock solid it should a easy slam dunk to refute. But it isn’t, so we are left to swirl in the mists of vague statements like ‘unsupported medical claims’ and the near ubiquitous injunction of ‘transphobia’. Women speaking about their experiences, biological fact, and material reality have all been branded as ‘transphobic’ by the high priests of gender ideology. It is the new heresy on the left and can, in most cases, be dismissed as vacuous bullshit.
“We want to thank the individuals who took the time to create and bring this petition to our attention. We recognize their work and emotional labour in holding their own discussions with the library.”
A small group of nearly permanently offended individuals are now extra offended at the mere presence of a book in a public library that concretely refutes the gender orthodoxy they believe in. This blasphemous work must not be seen by others as people must not be exposed to ideas and notions that are critical of the transgender religion. Questioning the ideology is verboten, and dissent must be quashed before it can grow. As you can clearly see, all the hallmarks of a condition/ideology that has a firm basis in reality…
“We reached out to the library to understand their acquisition process and urge them to take corrective action to remove the book and review their Collection Development Policy. We hoped that they would understand that the book’s misleading health advice put local trans youth in immediate harm. We expected feedback from trans individuals and a queer community partner to result in further reflection and a new course of action.”
Burn this book immediately! And here are more unsupported claims to coerce and shame you (Halifax Public Library) to bow to our campaign and stop other members of the Public from reading these heretical books and ideas that contradict our version of reality.
Protecting adults from dangerous ideas and criticism of transgender ideology. Nothing says ‘progressive’ like a good book burning.
“Halifax Pride has decided to end our partnership with the Halifax Public Library, including events planned for the 2021 festival, and will refrain from booking library spaces until this issue is addressed with some combination of internal review, policy change, and training.
Halifax Public Library’s collection process is at odds with Halifax Pride’s commitment to protecting vulnerable members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community. We hope the Halifax Public Library will reconsider its stance and amend their policies to prioritize the health and safety of the public.”
We are taking our toys and going home in hopes that our tantrum will shame you into throwing the notions of free speech and the free exchange of ideas under the bus. There is no protection going on here, just the creeping rise of censorious gender totalitarianism that seeks to throttle all dissent and criticism of an ideology that is harmful for females and children. The Halifax library has rightly told the Halifax pride to fuck the hell off with their demands for censorship of criticism of their precious (and pernicious) ideology.
Well enough of that. The hurt feelings brigade has registered another loss in trying to coerce a public institution to bend its knee to their bullshit ideology. Score one for the good guys. Thank you Halifax Public Library for defending free speech and the exchange of ideas in the public sphere.
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