David Solway is a Canadian essayist, songwriter and poet. Winner of several Canada Council and Writers’ Federation Awards, the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry, Le Grand Prix du Livre de Montréal, and a lifetime achievement award from Le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, he has published over 30 volumes of poetry, travel, translation, education theory and politics, including Canadian non-fiction bestseller The Big Lie: On Terror, Antisemitism, and Identity. His most recent book is Crossing the Jordan: on Judaism, Islam, and the West. He has also released two CDs of original songs. Solway lives in Vancouver with his wife, author and video content creator Janice Fiamengo.
My wife and I have been considering buying a property on the Hawaiian island of Kauai to escape the chill, rainy Vancouver winters. One can imagine our distress when we learned that someone I regard as among the most contemptible people on the planet, Mark Zuckerberg, is building a 1,500-acre compound on this most beautiful island in the Hawaiian archipelago.
One of the critical questions emerging among the Western commentariat regarding the Israel-Gaza war is what to do with the Hamas terrorists captured by the IDF. Should these be detained as POWs and treated tolerantly, as specified by the Geneva Conventions of 1949? A second question on which the answer to the first depends entails the professional nature and capacity of the captives, that is, are they indeed “soldiers “as understood by the term — members of a nation’s armed services that conduct military operations? Are they members of a resistance “army” who continue to abide by the rules of war, treating captives humanely, caring for the wounded, and sparing vulnerable civilians? Or are they something else, requiring the question to be reformulated or dismissed as immaterial or peripheral?
In an article titled "Woke Christmas," human rights lawyer Leighton Grey, nominated as one of the 25 Most Influential Lawyers in Canada, speaks moderately but trenchantly of the sensibility of the Left.
“The left especially hates Christmas,” he writes, “because they are joyless. Whatever and whomever the left influences has less joy in life. No one has ever met a happy leftist. They are guided by the forces of darkness and governed by black hearts, unable to see any light or beauty in life or God’s Kingdom.”
There is more than one way to demolish a book, to vaporize the carrier and symbol of enlightenment, though historically fire was the preferred method, otherwise known as the Auto-da-Fé. Originally referring to the burning of heretics at the stake, the practice was extended to obliterating the humanistic inventory of knowledge, culture, and community resources.
In an editorial for the Epoch Times, Patricia Adams and Lawrence Solomon describe Canada as the world’s largest prison and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “the world’s foremost jailer.” In a country of 38 million, they write, reprising a Justice Centre bulletin, 6 million unvaccinated citizens are forbidden to travel by train, ship or plane and are effectively prevented from leaving the country, which is to say that a cohort of over 15 percent are prisoners in their own land.
In a Nov. 19, 2021 address to Hillsdale College, its president Larry Arnn identified the three factors recognized by the Constitution as the natural rights of human beings: the right to earn a living, the right to raise our children, and the right to participate in government.
“These facts about nature,” he pointed out, “were well known during the American Revolution … It was the interference with the colonists’ natural rights by that former ruling class that led to the American Revolution.” Such interference, he argues, is occurring today on both a national and global scale.
Supporters of the Canadian truckers’ Freedom Convoy’s agenda to end mask and vaccine mandates and to replevin the Charter of Rights and Freedoms are waxing lyrical over a press conference by Liberal MP Joel Lightbound, in which he argues the time has come to lift, or rationalize, the Covid restrictions that have paralyzed the country for the last two years. The tide is finally turning, the optimists exult, the dominoes are beginning to fall. The spectacle of a Liberal parliamentarian cutting a populist figure is just too appealing to resist.
