Bruce Dowbiggin
That Old-Time Segregation. Good Enough Grandma. Good Enough For Me.
British universities are adding trigger warnings to Greek and Shakespearean tragedies to protect students from being triggered by tragedy.— The Telegraph
Those who remember the not-so-distant past will recall the epic struggle waged by the Left to end apartheid in South Africa. Focussed on the jailed leader Nelson Mandela, the movement gripped progressives in a righteous fervour to end the brutal segregationist regime of the white government.
Happily, the pressure exerted by governments around the world— including Canada’s— finally freed Mandela in 1990 and ended apartheid. The world celebrated. The Left took a victory lap with a Matt Damon movie about the integrated SA Rugby team winning the World Cup. Never more would the spectre of segregation blot the history of the Western democracies.
Not so fast. In this age of intellectual convenience the Left works fast. As we pointed out last week they have now convinced the former Allied nations that they actually lost WW II and the Cold War due to white supremacy and transphobia.
Here in Canada, under the guise of Critical Race Theory, they have resurrected apartheid nostalgia as a tool to achieve something-something-something. The federally funded National Arts Centre in Ottawa, a stone’s throw from the site of the Tuckers Convoy a year ago this month, was planning for two so-called Black-Out Nights where only blacks would be permitted into the plush pews for a little cultural uplift called “Is God Is”. Hints that “black-identifying” might get you in the door were quashed by staff who said it was “blacks only”.
The ban on whites, Asians and Indigenous theatre goers sprang from consultant research, no doubt at great cost, saying that the biggest barrier to theatre going is “it’s not for someone like me”. (Price of NAC tickets might also be a tiny impediment.) And so NAC management came up with Black Out Nights. “Honored that @CanadasNAC is standing by their commitment to a BLACK OUT performance of one of my favorite plays, ‘IS GOD IS,’” tweeted playwright Jeremy O’Harris who holds a masters degree from the slave ship known as Yale.
News of the NAC’s little secret spread outside the cognoscenti—despite the best efforts of the Media Party. Soon, the so-earnest-it’s-painful arts administrator who runs the NAC these days was skating backwards faster than Bobby Orr. Deciding it was not a BLM mountain to die on, Christopher Deacon declared that the NAC might have to “course-correct and refine” its virtue orgy. Too bad for a progressive organization that hired a Director of Equity and Inclusion, whose stunning advice was that the NAC should do more Equity and Inclusion.
Now, the entire event has been shelved, to the chagrin of the same publicly funded zealots who wanted Jordan Peterson banned from speaking in Ottawa. “Sometimes the most needed change encounters resistance,” quoth commissar Deacon. In finest apparatchik speak Deacon says they’ll persevere. “But we press on… it’s a journey to a better place”. In case you’re wondering Deacon is a white male liberal, but his black heart is in the right place. Which is good enough for the PMO.
(Sidebar: I worked as a PR flack at the NAC around the time of the first Quebec Referendum in 1980. Inclusion of francophones, not promotion of blacks, was the flavour of that Trudeau regime. So we had a dedicated well-paid employee whose job was to translate English into perfect Larousse French. Translating from French to English was my job, and anyone who’s heard my French will know how frightening a prospect that was for national unity. But no one cared.)
Lest one think this CRT outreach is limited to the NAC, look no further than Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille which— in my theatre days of the 70s-80s— was a plucky outfit long on class warfare and unwatchable plays. That continues into today where the star of a one-woman show on colonialism and such refused to let white theatre critics review her oeuvre ‘bug”.
Not to be outdone, Passe Muraille has its own Black Out Nights when even those willing to absorb the turgid agitprop onstage may not enter if they are un-black. Should someone wish to “self identify” as black they must undergo a gauntlet of staffers who will instruct them in the proper right-think. BTW: White staff, technicians and administrators will be allowed to participate and still cash Canada Council cheques.
Make no mistake. This virtue wallow is occurring across the performing arts in Canada, and the Canada Council is the love pump that supports the entire regime of inclusivity and inconsequentiality. Which is to say if you want money from this source— or win awards dedicated to the Arts in Canada— you must parse the accepted grievance du jour for material suitable to the panels who opine on such.
Sample: “Tragedy is a genre obsessed with violence and suffering, often of a sexual or graphic kind, and so some of the content might be triggering for some students.”— The University of Aberdeen. Then you can write The Acceptable Death of a Exploitation Salesman or Cat On A Solar-Powered Roof.
Naturally, the Black Out movement has its equivalent in academia. My alma mater, the University of Toronto, now brags about a black convocation to celebrate the ultimate safe space. The organizers say, “On top of the regular demands that come with earning a university degree, Black students often deal with the added stress of microaggressions and a lack of representation in the classroom.”
Nothing says Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King more than retreating from the world. The organizers of U of T’s Black Convocation announced, without irony, that the theme of (the 2021) event preferred by safe-space fans is “resilience.”
The percentage of Canadians who fervently believe the safe-space mantra— sticks and stones will hurt my bones but words will destroy civilization— can safely be contained on one of those leaky scows that ply the St. Lawrence filled with Venezuelan oil. But the impact of this furious, concentrated rabble of class warriors is profound compared to their numbers (blacks are 3.5 percent of Canada’s population.)
Why? Because fear. Fear is the secret to the current dystopia— not resilience, as U of T would have it. Those in positions of authority, like General George McLennan in the Civil War, always overestimate the opposition, quaking in their boots that they’ll be exposed by a tsunami that exists mostly in grievance sites and academic swamps. Then they go on CBC Metro Morning to publicly bend a knee to this pressure.
In fact the numbers are massively exaggerated by feckless media slappies who think one loud voice translates as a movement as real as the Trucker Convoy. And who flatter themselves as change makers. Until someone calls the bluff on this hustle you can expect much more of this New/ Old Time Segregation.
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Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx
Oh, the weather outside was frightful. But the football was so delightful. Week 15 of the NFL season was a cryogenic success of snow and sub-zero temperatures. Here were the temperatures at game time this weekend.
Chicago: -11 degrees C.
Cincinnati: -12 degrees F.
Kansas City: -8 degrees C.
New England: -2 C (with an 87 percent chance of snow).
Philadelphia: -2 degrees C.
New York -1 degree C.
Pittsburgh: -7 degrees C.
For fans of NFL football none of this seemed out of character with late-season football. There are legendary games played in arctic conditions. The windchill for the 1967 Dallas/ Green Bay NFC championship was -25 C.
Chargers at Bengals: Jan. 10, 1982 (-24 C, feels like -39 C).
Seahawks at Vikings in NFC wild-card matchup Jan 10, 2016. -21 C with wind chill -25C
Dolphins at Chiefs: Jan. 13, 2024 (-4 degrees, feels like -27 degrees)
As recently as last week’s Bills win over the Bengals games are often played with drifts of snow on the field and the mercury bottoming out. While Canada’s Grey Cup game is played at the end of November it’s still had some brutal weather history of its own.
The point of this meteorology meandering is that, according to our good King Charles III and many other doomsday cultists the concept of snow and cold was supposed to be a figment of the past by now. For almost half a century Michael Mann and the climate prophets of IPCC have been predicting the end of snow and the onset of warmist floods and burning forests. They gambled trillions of the public’s dollars on the certainty that the public would buy computer modelling and data-distortion predicting doom.
For decades it has worked. The careers of people like critic Mark Steyn have been ruined, heretics declared and fortunes dissipated by the trust-fund fanatics who bankroll wackadoodles like Stephen Guilbeault, the convicted felon who Trudeau made Minister of the Environment. No matter how absurd or devious the source, it was a gospel that the fiery inferno was coming next Tuesday. But the weather has remained stubbornly resistant to Elizabeth May’s catechism of climate.
Yet, some dedicated climate advocates and their followers are finally changing their tune in the face of their own observation of lying liars like Al Gore and Greta Thunberg. The share of Americans who say climate scientists understand very well whether climate change is occurring decreased from 37 percent in 2021 to 32 percent this year. A similar October study from the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute found that “belief in human-driven climate change declined overall” since 2017.
Reports the uber-liberal L.A. Times: “The unraveling of climate catastrophism got another jolt recently with the formal retraction of a high-profile 2024 study published in the journal Nature. That study — which had predicted a calamitous 62% decline in global economic output by 2100 if carbon emissions were not sufficiently reduced — was widely cited by transnational bodies and progressive political activists alike as justification for the pursuit of aggressive decarbonization.
But the authors withdrew the paper after peer reviewers discovered that flawed data had skewed the result. Without that data, the projected decline in output collapses to around 23%. Oops.”
Even stalwart media apologists for climate hysteria like the Times are starting to have doubts. Under the headline “The left’s climate panic is finally calming down” they describes “Erstwhile ardent climate-change evangelist Bill Gates published a remarkable blog post addressing climate leaders at the then-upcoming COP30 summit. Gates unloaded a blistering critique of what he called ‘the doomsday view of climate change,’ which he said is simply “wrong.”
Trump-besotted American Democrats seeking to soften their Woke image before the 2026 midterms are likewise carving out more moderate positions on climate “that could well deprive Republicans of a winning political issue with which to batter out-of-touch, climate-change-besotted Democrats. But for the sake of good governance, sound public policy and the prosperity of the median American citizen, it would be the best thing to happen in a decade.”
Sadly Canada under Mark Carney remains a staunch climate warrior. The removal of Guilbeault as federal Environmental Minister may have seemed a step toward sanity, but there is no hint that the billions of dollars from hidden money spigots will be closed down any time soon. The B.C. government’s acquiescence to the climate propaganda of Indigenous bands shows no sign of abating. Indeed, it is just ramping up in the land claims that threaten to make home ownership a thing of the past.
PM Mark Carney is a dedicated temperature fabulist going back to his days as governor of the Bank of England. His first fights in Canada were over taxing carbon and hobbling her energy industry. As we wrote in this November 2024 column, the certainty in which the Canadian Left revels is actually dividing, not uniting citizens.
So perhaps if enough citizens spend an afternoon shivering in the stands of a wintertime football game we might achieve a small piece of sanity and learn that that , while climate is always changing, it’s not worth the price we’ve paid this century.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his 2025 book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books.
Inquiring minds want to know: Why did FIFA (Federation of International Fraud Artists) award American president Donald Trump a new “Peace Prize” at the Washington D.C. draw for the June/ July tournament? The usual suspects are paralyzed with rage. Everyone else is laughing at the kabuki theatre stunt.
The short answer is that if you were FIFA and you were receiving a reported billion or more dollars from the U.S. and the Canadian/ Mexican cities hosting the 48-team tournament you’d give the host more than a bottle of wine and flowers as a thank-you. Thus the ugly statue and the Boy Scout medal. The obsequious awarding of the prize and match medal were proportionate to the greed of FIFA in extorting the cash.
(America’s fainting goat media immediately complained about unearned awards for little virtue, forgetting as usual that the Nobel folks gave Barack Obama a Peace Prize after nine months in the White House for simply being a black man.)
Trump getting a peace award from FIFA, the most corrupt sports body in the sports world, is mint, however. You can’t write this stuff. (They should give it to him on a speed boat heading across the Caribbean.) The Donald then playfully suggested that Americans leave the name football to the soccer folks because, you know… feet and a ball. More outrage from NFL fans.
So what was the gift for the two Canadian cities hosting games who have also coughed up plenty? Toronto says its estimated budget is $380 million for six games/ B.C. tax payers are obliged to cough up an estimated $580 million for Vancouver’s five games). For cities with, how shall we say, bigger fish to fry.
Sadly all they got was a little farce in which a delighted PM Mark Carney was allowed to Canada as the first ball to start the picking, evidently unaware that all the balls he had to select from also said Canada. Carney’s joy was tempered when he saw Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum draw a ball that said “Mexico” while Trump— in on the fix— got one entitled “United States”.
In a final attempt to curry favour with the fleeced nations FIFA boss Gianni Infantino gathered the world leaders for a painful onstage selfie, marking the first time Trump and Sheinbaum had ever met in the (orangey) flesh. Call it National Lampoon’s Soccer Vacation.
Having exhausted itself with the peace prize falderol FIFA evidently forgot to put any more thought into the rest of the 55-minute run-up to the draw. While soccer/ footie fans around the world ground their teeth in impatience the organizers presented a combination Eurovision/ People’s choice Awards ordeal of failed cues, untranslated interviews (the Spanish translator showed up about 30 minutes late) and pregnant pauses.
Host Heidi Klum’s stunning gold dress nearly made up for her wooden repartee with comedian Kevin Hart (“not sure why I’m here”) and co-host Rio Ferdinand, former star English defender who, alas, never won the WC. But that was all an appetizer for the real low point, the introduction of global brand stars to pick the draw. NFL legend Tom Brady, NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal and NHL… er, player Wayne Gretzky.
Their task, hectored by the hosts, was to draw a ball, unscrew the thing, withdraw a nation’s name and so on. While there may have been some tension in the audience there was no appreciation of that on the screen as more clunking dialogue and curious pronunciations (Ferdinand kept referring to Group “Haitch”) landed dead on the floor.
The nadir of the ceremony—indeed of his career— was Gretzky’s contribution. Brady and O’Neal had managed to survive their task of unscrewing the ball and pronouncing a name, but Gretzky was brought low by the stage business of the balls and the nations he was forced to announce.
The clearly flustered Gretz (he insisted he’d practiced all morning) wrestled manfully with the balls. Finally the producers went with a long shot of him fumbling in the dark. Then he topped that. Gretzy apparently thinks there are countries called “North Mack-a-donia” and “Cur-ack-ow.” Other stabs at geography were almost as tortured.
Bitter Canadians could put up with him sucking up to Trump (he was mentioned as being in the crowd at the DC Xmas tree lighting) but failing geography is unforgivable. The week that started with Gretzky in a photo golfing at POTUS’s Jupiter, Florida, golf course was ending with him pummelled for his abuse of nations with different-sounding names. The Wayne Gretzky Center For Kids Who Want To Talk Good.
The moral: Never send a centre to do a netminder’s job. Makes you understand why Bobby Orr has laid low since his Trump endorsement came out.
With that bracing date with immortality disposed of the draw proceeded. We had been pounded for an hour about how great the tournament was, and finally footy fans got what they wanted. As a host Canada got a bye into the field. Their reward is playing the tenacious Swiss and, gulp, probably Italy, which is forced to qualify after playing with their food for too long. (Insert your Stanley Tucci joke.)
If not Italy then one of Wales, Bosnia and Herzegovina or Northern Ireland. Oh, right Qatar is in there too as fodder. Been nice knowing you, Canada. The Americans somehow drew a creme puff quartet of Australia, Paraguay and Slovakia, Kosovo, Turkey or Romania. Money can’t buy you love, but it can get you a warm hug from FIFA.
In the end it’ll be one of Brazil, Argentina, Germany or France for the final in the NJ Meadowlands on July 19. Maybe they’ll have a spelling bee at halftime. Or maybe they’ll bring back Trump for the final game to give him another peace prize. Just don’t ask Gretzky to announce Lothar Matthaus, Bruno Guimaräes or Gabriel Magalhäes.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
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