Last Friday was the longest day of the year. The sun came up at 4:49 a.m., and didn’t set again until 9:10 p.m.

            I was out in my garden pulling weeds, on my hands and knees, head down, nose near the earth, when I realized that half a year’s worth of daylight had passed me by.

           When I look back, I can remember the cherries in our neighbouring orchard coming out in blossom. Then the peaches, then the apples. I didn’t pay attention. 

            A little later in the year, dark red rhododendrons marched down our north fence. Near-fluorescent azaleas adorned our driveway -- orange, white, yellow, even purple. Our flowering dogwood stood as tall and white as a wedding dress. The catalpa exploded in creamy white petals like popcorn. Peonies were burdened with bloom.

            I saw them all. But I didn’t really pay attention to the beauty around me. Because I was too obsessed with weeds.

Diana Butler-Bass’s book Groundedcontinues to set my creative juices surging. Here’s another poem, this time based on a lyrical description on pages 28-29 of the paperback edition. 

Sky

sea

sand

hills ripple along the horizon

sunrise softly suffuses pearl

the glow of awe

paint palettes merge and blend

watercolour on wet paper

For years, I have railed against the policies of white supremacists – principally in the U.S., because of the daily deluge of news that spills north across the border, but also in New Zealand/Aotearoa, France, Germany, wherever….

            But I am now forced to recognize that Canada has been, and to some extent still is, a white supremacist nation. More specifically, a male white supremacist nation.

            The catalyst is the 1200-page report on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls – sanitized by abbreviating it to MMIWG – released Monday May 27.

            I have long known that my province imposed discriminatory taxes and restrictions on Chinese immigrants in past years. And that Canada turned away a ship full of Jewish refugees, and forcibly relocated Japanese residents during World War II.

            But the most consistent victims of Canada’s white supremacist policies have been our Indigenous peoples.

Robert Mueller produced a 448-page report. U.S, Attorney General William Barr cut it down to four pages, of which only two actually dealt with the content of Mueller’s report.

            When Congress insisted on seeing more than Barr’s  brief summary, Barr produced a “redacted” report, with large portions of Mueller’s  text blacked out. Some pages had not one readable word remaining.

            A friend asked me, “What does ‘redact’ mean?”

            I gave her a dictionary definition -- to edit, to prepare a manuscript for publication.

            That definition illustrates how definitions themselves can and must change. Because what Barr did to Mueller’s report is an utter contradiction of editing. Any definition is -- by definition, if I dare use that term -- the way a word has been used up to that time. It is a snapshot, an understanding frozen and preserved. It cannot define how a word will be used in future.

Here’s the problem. You have these friends, see, who keep sending you emails filled with racist slurs against Muslims, abortionists, “Indians” (they still use that term), Hindus, Asians, and immigrants in general. Oh, yes, and about climate-change hoaxes perpetrated by thousands of dishonest scientists who are being paid off by a small cabal of Jews trying to impose a tyrannical World Government on us…

            Should you cut them off? Block their emails? Terminate the friendship?

            Or do you try to reason with them? Prove their so-called facts incorrect? Point out the flaws in their logic?

            That might work if they reached their views as a reasoned conviction. But that’s unlikely. More likely, they’re regurgitating cultural memes they’ve accepted without any conscious analysis. 

            This is not just about offensive emails, of course. It’s also about SNC-Lavalin mess in Ottawa. And about the mass murders in Christchurch and Pittsburgh. And about the Yellow Jackets in France, and Donald Trump and his countless Trumplets all over the U.S., and various right-and/or-left-wing advocacy groups who shout down speakers they don’t approve of…

            As you might guess, I’m at one end of this spectrum. And the senders of what I consider offensive messages might well ask the same questions about me.