So, Campbell River city council has done an about face and endorsed the Liǧʷiłdaxʷ ̌ First Nations' proposal to rename three local geographical features with Indigenous names.
I wrote about this in this space last week but because of the vagaries of statutory holidays and early press deadlines, my column, which was very critical of council's initial reluctance to support the renaming proposal, was published days after council changed their position. The press deadline came before the council's decided to support the Liǧʷiłdaxʷ ̌ First Nations request when it first appeared reluctant to.
So, that's the way things go in the newsprint business these days. Printing presses have schedules set up in order to fit all the many papers that are printed by a specific press. The days of having a printing press in your building to which you can run down to and yell, "Stop the presses!" are long gone. These days, your paper goes on the press at a certain time and don't be late. And if your paper goes to press before the weekend and a statutory holiday weekend at that, then you end up with an even earlier deadline than usual.
That doesn't diminish the point of the column, though. Councillors were initially reluctant to endorse the Liǧʷiłdaxʷ ̌ Chiefs' request for support to change the name of Discovery Passage to “Liǧʷiłdaxʷ ̌ Passage”, Quinsam River to “Kʷənsəm”, and Tyee Spit to “ʔuxstalis.” When presented with an opportunity to make a small gesture of reconciliation, they balked and worried more about "public opinion" and the difficulty with pronunciation as well and other concerns around consulting and informing the public. Council needs to be more diplomatic with their opinion of things. Criticising the process of public consultation while fielding a request from First Nations for support shows a lack of finesse.
Stop and have a conversation with people (the Chiefs) before you dump on an idea especially when, after you eventually have that conversation, you reverse your position.
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Oh, well, moving on. I'm just shaking my head at the craziness going on in the good old U.S. of A.
I don't care what you're personal politics are, you can't deny that it's going to be a helter skelter four years of American politics.
How do I know? Well, just look at Trump's first term of office. And that was when he didn't know what he was doing. Now he does. Or ... does he?
The disrespect for traditions and protocols of office that were prevalent in Trump's 2016-2020 term are going to be even more prevalent. Having Elon Musk sit in on Trump's phone call to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was chilling.
I think I've touched on this before but it's really ironic to see the U.S. disassemble it's democracy after all those decades of America forcing democracy on countries around the world. That was always their battle cry, standing ground for democracy while holding back the forces of authoritarianism in the trappings of fascist and communist dictatorships. Of course, I know, a lot of that was just posturing and justification for imposing American interests on the world, but some of it was true. The U.S. has some justification for being considered a democratic beacon in the world. They elect their sheriffs and judges for goodness sake.
But now, what a gong show.
Alistair Taylor has been a writer and editor with Black Press since 1989, most of those years spent as editor of the Campbell River Mirror.
