Gun violence is male violence

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As I went to bed last night I wondered about the colour of the shooter’s skin, and what that would mean for how we labeled his actions and what we did about them. If he was brown, we’d call him a terrorist and use him?as an excuse to punish other brown people. If he was white, we’d do nothing. Since the former creates additional harm and?neither is?of any use, I?idly?hoped he was white. I never wondered if he was a man, though. I?already knew?he was a man.

The gender of a mass shooter isn’t one of those facts we wait for in the aftermath, it’s a fact that we mostly choose to ignore. In the post analysis, gun control is not the elephant in the room, because a metaphorical?elephant is a?big, obvious thing you don’t acknowledge. Even people who don’t want to make it about guns are saying “don’t talk about guns.”

Humans are great at seeing patterns, whether they?exist or not.?Loud, vocal groups of people see patterns of muslim crime, of gun crime, of looking-the-other-way when the perpetrator of gun crime is white. The most?obvious pattern of all, that almost all mass murderers are male, doesn’t get nearly as much airtime.

Which is not to say there aren’t people drawing attention to it. Women are drawing attention to it. Women are very aware of male violence, and the reality of how deadly it can be. But those aren’t the voices that get amplified. Those who control the narrative — primarily?media outlets and politicians — don’t talk about the gender of these murderers?nearly as much as we talk about?guns, or even as much as we talk about not wanting to talk about guns.

Because, what are you going to do??You can (and, to be clear, should, obviously)?regulate a gun. Make the gun harder to get. Control who has access to the gun. How do you control and regulate?male violence? How do you begin to address such a massive cultural problem? How do you even acknowledge it without challenging the entire male-dominated, male-centered, male-run?world of government, religion, sports, entertainment, and business??Gun control, an apparent political impossibility in the United States, seems easy by comparison.

Mass shootings are?male violence at scale. Gun violence is a?wholly owned subsidiary of male violence. It can only exist and inflict its horror because of male violence. And it is nourished and protected by good, non-violent men, who don’t?talk about it. Who don’t?even consider talking about it. Who don’t even?question why they instinctively knew the shooter was a fellow man.

Remembering Rob Ford

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There were moments during Rob Ford’s time as mayor of Toronto when I hated him. I mean real, deep, I’m-not-proud-of-it actual hatred. And whenever I sank into one of those moments, I would remember the time I met him, and how it continued to challenge and complicate my impression of the person.

In early 2010 I was a candidate for city council in downtown Toronto, and like many other politicians and wannabes I attended an annual party hosted by the Canadian Jewish Political Action Committee. My wife and I were mingling and had just finished a conversation, and there was one of those moments that happens at parties, when suddenly you’re not talking to anyone, and you make eye contact with someone else who also isn’t talking to anyone, and you realize that the two of you now have to talk to each other.

The person I made eye contact with was Ford, standing alone and looking bored a few feet away. He walked over to me. And he said, “you’re Chris Tindal.”

I wasn’t wearing a nametag, and he did not have any handler whispering in his ear. The conversation that followed is still so unbelievable to me — so inconsistent with how I otherwise perceived him — that if my wife had not been there and repeatedly confirmed my memory of events I would be sure I’d made it all up.

“You’re Chris Tindal,” he said.

“Uh, yes, and you’re Rob Ford,” I said.

“You’re running for city council in Ward 27, Kyle Rae’s Ward.”

“That’s right.”

“And you ran for the Green party before.”

“Uh, I did, yes…”

“If I recall,” he said, smiling, friendly, warmly, “when you ran for the Green party, you increased their vote by a significant percentage.”

“Rob Ford,” I said, “you are blowing my mind.”

“Well,” he said, as if this was a biographical fact I might not be privy to, ”I’m pretty involved in local politics.”

We chatted for a few more minutes. He kept turning slightly away and smiling sheepishly as he talked, like a self-conscious 12-year-old boy.

He was charming. And flattering, obviously. And he was showcasing his often underestimated competence for politics. Afterwards I realized the reason he knew my name and a few baseball card stats was because he had researched city council candidates. He’d put in the work. And he’d recalled that information so fluidly on demand that he made me feel like he understood me a little, that he cared about me, that I mattered.

That’s what thousands of voters saw in him, and continued to see in him, even after his competence at campaigning was overtaken by his incompetence at governing. Even after the drama and the lies and the scandals and that thing with the cellphone video and the pipe. Over the rest of the year I heard the same story recounted again and again while knocking on doors in downtown Toronto, far from Ford’s jurisdiction as an Etobicoke city councillor, far from his region of strongest support: “Rob Ford called me back when no one else would. He made me feel like my concerns were real. He listened when no one else cared.”

I still hate what he did to Toronto, what he continues to do through a legacy of disastrous long-lasting mistakes and a damaging redefinition of what constitutes sane political discourse and good governance. I won’t forget that his political actions as well as his routine racism, homophobia, misogyny, and violence had real victims. And if I hadn’t had the experience I did have, it would be very easy for me to fall into the trap of hating the man himself, too.

But he was more than the villain I was tempted to reduce him to, and plagued by far more than his own fair share of demons. I’m sorry for his children. I’m sad because mortality and death are sad. I’m glad his suffering is over. I’m glad I met him.

Some quick thoughts on Toronto Centre by-election results

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Overall, Wells’s first rule — that “for any given situation, Canadian politics will tend toward the least exciting possible outcome” — held up. This is the result you might have predicted, and that most of us did predict. Folks in Toronto Centre are used to voting Liberal, and changing habits is hard.

Notwithstanding, each of the other three main parties had notable results, good and bad. At 36%, the NDP with Linda McQuaig achieved its highest percentage of the vote ever in this riding.?The Greens, on the other hand, had their worst result since 1997 (2.95%) and the Conservatives, who used to hold the riding, hit an all-time low of 8.7%.

It’s impossible to say and risky to speculate specifically why the votes went that way, but I will speculate anyway, based almost entirely on my only-slightly-informed gut.

First, I think the Toronto Centre NDP has taken a positive national trend and backed it up with organizing on the ground. For the past five years, as the party has been increasingly seen as a viable, mainstream choice, the local organization has built momentum and capacity. For the last two elections the NDP haven’t just finished second in Toronto Centre, they have finished first in the south half of the riding. That wouldn’t matter, except that in 2015 the south half of the riding will be cleaved from the north to form a new “Toronto Centre” that will be the NDP’s to lose.

Expect a highly competitive NDP nomination race in the new Toronto Centre for 2015. Also expect McQuaig, if she runs again, to no longer run a campaign focused primarily on residency since, somewhat awkwardly, she lives in the wealthier, north half of the riding (to become part of “University-Rosedale”).

By all accounts Conservative Geoff Pollock was a good candidate who earned the support of prominent conservatives and the respect of his opponents. But this campaign was perfectly timed to coincide with the government’s most damaging scandal yet, and even Pollock has admitted that hurt him. The Pollock campaign has to take some of the blame for their disappointing results — perhaps their ground game wasn’t strong — but it isn’t hard to imagine the Conservative collapse here was mostly a message being sent to the national party. Either way, this does not look like a party poised to take University-Rosedale anytime soon.

The poor Green result, on the other hand, is likely more attributable to the local campaign than the national party. In by-elections just one year ago Chris Turner earned 25.65% in Calgary Centre and?Donald Galloway got?34.30% in Victoria, and I don’t see any reason to believe they couldn’t do so again today. This time around in Toronto Centre, John Deverell was a disappointing candidate. During the campaign’s first televised debate he was widely mocked by pundits for answering every question on every topic with a non-sequitur?about proportional representation (an issue important to me too, but not to this obsessive extreme). At the next televised debate, he claimed we don’t live in a democracy (like, at all) and referred to Stephen Harper multiple times as a literal “dictator.” In yet another debate at Jarvis Collegiate he lost votes when he said, Rob Ford-like, that people who can’t afford to live downtown should just move somewhere else, and that Toronto has too many people anyway.

Recent general and by-election results suggest that Green votes may therefore be disproportionately influenced by local candidates, compared to other parties where the rule of thumb is that the local candidate can only influence the party’s vote by 5% or so in either direction. That’s a challenge for Greens, since it’s hard to convince strong candidates to run in elections they’re likely to lose.

Finally, I’m a bit sad that this was the last Toronto Centre?election with these boundaries. Many people believe that it doesn’t make sense for a region with such extreme disparity of wealth and housing type to be represented by one MP, and voters in all parts of the riding sometimes resented those in other parts for their perceived influence on election outcomes. But I really wanted it to work. I wanted Toronto Centre to be a microcosm for all of urban Canada, where we could prove that we have more in common than we realized, and where politicians fought to unite us rather than divide us. Now it will likely settle into being two comfortable seats for the NDP and the Liberals, with no electoral incentive for politicians to appeal to the city — or even just the downtown — as a whole.

After 2015, New Democrats in the new Toronto Centre will be relieved to finally have a voice in Ottawa, and Liberals in University-Rosedale won’t have to worry about encroaching socialism from the south (though maybe from the west, since they’ll be combined with some of the current Trinity-Spadina riding). Anyway, I don’t begrudge anyone having the representation they want, but I hope that when they celebrate what they’ve gained, they don’t also celebrate what they’ve lost.

George Tindal, in his 95th year

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George Tindal dedicates a garden — near the 6th green of the Brockville Country Club golf course — to the memory of his wife Ruth in July 2012.

George?W.?Tindal, in his 95th?year, after a short illness and with family at his side.

Born at Morrisburg on July 10, 1918, he was the eldest of nine children of Howard and Fannie (Gamble)?Tindal.?He started work during the depression, including a stint in Montreal with the Fur Trade department of the Hudson’s Bay Company.

During World War II he served with the Canadian Army in England, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Germany.

George?was married to the former Ruth Arleen Mattice of Morrisburg, who passed away October 29, 2009, a few months after their 67th anniversary.

In a career devoted to public administration he served as Clerk-Treasurer of Morrisburg during planning for the St. Lawrence Seaway and Power Project, then became Secretary-Treasurer of the Ontario St. Lawrence Parks Commission as it developed a series of parks from Quebec to Adolphustown.

George?and Ruth came to Brockville in 1969 when he took up duties as Superintendent of Business for the newly-created Leeds & Grenville County Board of Education. They were both avid golfers and enjoyed entertaining a wide network of family and friends.

In his final years?George?continued to embrace life and seek new experiences. He deepened a lifelong interest in music and became a frequent patron of the Brockville arts scene. He enjoyed dining out and remained very active until suffering a stroke in early February. Thanks to the staff at the Wedgewood for their years of caring support.

Without?George’s keen interest in social and political affairs, newspaper Letters to the Editor columns will be diminished, and many worthy endeavours will have to struggle along without his generous (if not always solicited) advice.

He leaves two sons, Richard (Susan) of Kingston and Douglas (Mardi) of Toronto, six grandchildren, Sue, Scott (Michelle), Cindy (Ronda), Kate (Tim), Chris (Claire), and Alex; and four great-grandchildren; Michael, Julie, Emma, and Abby. He is also survived by one brother, Tom, and two sisters, Frances and Ruth, and fondly remembered by Chris Sleeth.