Replies

Yesterday, while out running errands, I was listening to CBC Radio on SiriusXM (Ch. 169 if you haven't tried it). Following a celebration of their women's soccer Gold Medal, there was a documentary about MK-Ultra research in the '50s in Canada. For Canadians the scandal isn't just that the CIA was funding horrific research in a hospital in Montreal, but that the Canadian government also contributed to the funding -- and to the subsequent cover-up. Decades later they gave CDN$100K each to 70 of the victims, but left a couple of hundred others out in the cold.

Oddly for CBC, I can't find a link to yesterday's broadcast, but I did come across this short video documentary from some years ago.

Speaking of women's soccer, I came across this headline, from a newspaper to remain unnamed:

"U.S. Drifts Back to the Pack in Olympic Medal Count: The Americans dominated the podium in 2016 but took a step back after a long, hard year."

After 3 more years of Trump, Love of Country should be back in style again, and the U.S. can return to winning medals in 2024.

While looking into MK-Ultra/Canada and trying to figure out why Canadian icon John Diefenbaker would support it, I came across this interesting entrée into alternative Canadian history: https://canadianpatriot.org/2021/07/01/a-canada-day-surprise-how-a-synthetic-nationalism-was-created-to-break-the-us-russia-alliance/.

Diefenbaker, because he was in favor of Canada for Canadians, was forced out in 1963 by Canada’s owners in the UK in favor of figurehead Lester Pearson who was a front for Walter Gordon, an agent of the British Foreign Office.

From other readings I surmise that Diefenbaker was an early Canadian version of Donald Trump. When he came to power in 1957 through a surprising parliamentary victory while losing the popular vote, the Liberal Party of Canada thought they were the entitled rulers of Canada, backed by their British overlords. It took the Liberals six years to regain power and a few more years to bring in Castro’s brother-in-arms, Pierre Trudeau.

In the early ‘70s I graduated from the University of Saskatchewan Regina Campus (now the University of Regina). At that time the provost of the University was none other than John Diefenbaker. At my graduation ceremony I had the great pleasure of introducing my maternal grandmother — and perhaps Dief’s greatest fan — to the man himself.