Voices March 15, 2023
Hate report event long on ritual, silent on anti-Catholic attacks
By Terry O'Neill
British Columbians can be confident that a new report on the rise of “hate in the COVID-19 pandemic” is truly right, proper … and appropriately woke.
That’s because in unveiling the report on March 7, officials of B.C.’s powerful Office of the Human Rights Commissioner carried out a multitude of incantations, proclamations, and rituals – to such a degree that the event at times seemed more of a religious ceremony than the media conference it was supposed to be.
The fact that the commission mandated that all attendees wear pandemic-era masks only added to the impression that those of us in attendance had entered some kind of alternate reality.
As reporters, camera operators, and invited guests (including me, because I had presented information to the commission about hate crimes aimed at Catholics) assembled in a downtown Vancouver hall, they were met by the ethereal music of a Chinese zheng – a sort of plucked zither.
The music, performed in person by Dai-Lin Hsieh, a Taiwanese musician described as “one of the most talented zheng performers of her generation,” was meant to be “a call to consciousness,” an event official explained. It certainly was impossible to ignore.
As we settled into our seats, the official told us that event planners had set aside “a quiet room” to which attendees could escape in the event they found the contents of the report too disturbing.
Before we could get to those actual contents, the agenda noted that we were to sit through some 45 minutes of ceremony and testimony.
No one sang O Canada, but we did receive a “territorial welcome” from Sun Dance Chief Rueben George of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation. Chief George talked about how Western and Indigenous cultures share the same religious concept of a “Creator,” and he then performed the Coast Salish Prayer Song composed by his great grandfather, the late Chief Dan George.
I joined my fellow attendees by responding to his performance with appreciation and respect, but the exercise also left me wondering how it came to be that a government body representing the ardently secular interests of a proudly progressive government felt it appropriate to bring First Nations spirituality into the public square.
I also had to wonder why, if saying the Lord’s Prayer in public schools had been mandated out of existence, it was now perfectly fine for an organ of the provincial government to allow the singing and drum-beating of the Coast Salish Prayer Song.
When the performance ended, a master of ceremonies told attendees about the presence of “knowledge holders” in the audience. She lit a candle to symbolize the light they shone on the information-gathering phase of the hate inquiry.
Soon enough three knowledge holders walked to the front of the room where an official dabbed their palms with paint. The three then pressed their painted palms against a copy of the report, giving its findings special significance, an official said.
Commissioner Kasari Govender began her remarks by acknowledging that organizers had indeed intended the preceding events to be “ceremonial.” She offered no further explanation.
Govender prefaced her summary of the findings by explaining that the rise of hatred during the pandemic meant “we lost our collective innocence in a sense.” She offered no compelling reason for why this might have been the case, nor did she explain how the province had managed to remain innocent for so long, especially considering its rather rocky history of racial strife, mass murders, natural catastrophes, and Stanley-Cup riots.
As for the reason I attended in the first place, I can report that no one during the 90-minute affair offered a single word about the firestorm of anti-Catholic hatred that burned throughout the summer of 2021 after the discovery of disturbed ground near the old Kamloops Indian Residential School.
However, in answer to a written question I submitted, Govender did acknowledge that she was aware of anti-religious hatred, including directed at Catholics, and that the subject had been covered in her report.
Interested persons can read about it on Page 61 of the commission’s 482-page report, where it is summed up in a single paragraph, in addition to mentions in several infographics. The full report can be found at bchumanrights.ca/Inquiry-Into-Hate or by clicking here.