VARMA: Forgotten history, Conrad Black's account of Canada's robust legacy of freedom

Western Standard ^ | 02 Dec 2023, 9:30 am | Robin Varma

[Squawk 8888]

Conrad Black’s latest book, Forgotten History: Civil Rights in Canada, is an insightful work that dispels many cheap slanders and misconceptions about Canada’s past. Black combines a deep knowledge of Western history and an eye for relevant historical details to help shine a new light on Canada’s civil rights record.

Interest in this book may be heightened by the recent calls to upend historically-won civil rights in Canada in the name of social justice. Or it might also come from the rise in new identity-based subgroups — whose demands for collective rights often infringe upon the rights of the individual. Or finally, it may even come from Quebec’s recent string of rights violations being imposed on the English-speaking population within that province.

Given these emerging trends, Black’s look into the origins and development of Canada’s civil rights provides an important historical perspective that can help to ground these discourses. Black’s work tracks the origins and development of civil rights in Canada over hundreds of years which, he argues, culminated in the confirmation of these rights in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Among the topics Black explores are the origins and manifestation of Canada’s English and French approaches to political rights, the history and abolition of slavery in Canada, indigenous rights and history, the movement for democratic rights and citizenship and the Canadian Charter.

[Squawk 8888]

Haven't downloaded the book to read it yet because I just became aware of it via this Article. From the American perspective, Conrad Black taught American History while serving time at a minimum-security Federal prison in Florida, and by all accounts earned the respect of his fellow inmates and the prison staff.