The Canadian Standard

Built for all and built in peace...

In a country that built itself upon the contributions of immigrants and the promise of religious tolerance, freedom and ability to practice what you believe, Canada has taken several steps backwards of late in the matter. The courts are trying to determine if such practice is consistent with Canadian values and this has resulted in many people being denied their rights as per the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Additionally, there’s been a lot of news about religious accommodation by society and the responses that have been given by many Canadians has been quite surprising. In a recent story run by the Toronto Star, a Muslim woman who practiced the Muslim belief of wearing a burqa to cover everything but her eyes was vilified by several readers. Comments ranged from those denouncing Islam as a “terrorist” religion to others that said that immigrants and others had no business practising religion that wasn’t acceptable by “Canadian standards”. Some went as far as saying that religion had no place in society and that any religious accommodation was unacceptable.

Regardless of what one’s opinions are on matters such as the burqa or veil that some women choose to adopt, these comments run contrary to what Canada has preached for many years going back to the time of Sir Wilfred Laurier. Desperate to attract people of other nations to Canada to help it grow and develop, Laurier, the Prime Minister of Canada at the time, promised freedom and the ability to practise religion in peace to those who hopped the ocean (he also promised large pieces of land as well to those who settled in the farming communities primarily in Western Canada but that’s besides the point). This policy helped attract many people to Canada and was again in full effect when Pierre Trudeau was Prime Minister. Opening the doors of immigration, Trudeau allowed many people from impoverished and war-torn countries to become Canadian citizens and lead a better life and be able to practice their religion in peace.

This veiled woman has a right as per the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to practice her religion as she sees fit. Furthermore, as Canadians, we should take pride in that we allow people of all faiths to practice their beliefs. To say that people should only practice what follows “Canadian standards” is both short-sighted and irresponsible since it promotes a “melting-pot” mentality which is inconsistent with Canadian beliefs. At last check, Canada didn’t adopt the “melting-pot” mentality that the United States did and we as Canadians took pride in not being like Americans and being tolerant of people of all faiths. Expecting people to adopt their beliefs to what the majority practices would be no different than how things are in the United States and to follow that path is a treacherous one as per Trudeau. Famously said in 1971 to the Ukrainian-Canadian Congress in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Trudeau stated that “a society which emphasizes uniformity is one which creates intolerance and hate.” Perhaps we Canadians should be reminded of that fact the next time we expect people to conform to the “Canadian standard”.

“I dry my head in the sun, all I have and all I’ve done, we’ve become so lonely…”
- Neverending White Lights (Where We Are)

The Valentine’s Day Massacre

All aboard! On to our destination!

On the morning of Thursday, February 14, 1929 St. Valentine’s Day, six members of the “Bugs” Moran gang and Dr. Reinhardt H. Schwimmer were lined up against the rear inside wall of the garage of the SMC Cartage Company in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago’s North Side. They were then shot and killed by the men, possibly members of Al Capone’s gang, possibly “outside talent”, most likely a combination of both. Two of the men were dressed as Chicago police officers, and the others were dressed in long trenchcoats, according to witnesses who saw the “police” leading the other men at gunpoint out of the garage (part of the plan). When one of the dying men, Frank Gusenberg, was asked who shot him, he replied, “I’m not gonna talk – nobody shot me.” Capone himself had arranged to be on vacation in Florida.

The St. Valentine’s Massacre resulted from a plan devised by a member or members of the Capone gang to eliminate the Polish Bugs Moran, the boss of the North Side Gang, formerly headed up by Dion O’Banion, who was murdered nearly five years earlier. Jack McGurn is the person most frequently cited by researchers as a suspected planner. The massacre was planned by the Capone mob for a number of reasons; in retaliation for an unsuccessful attempt by Frank and his brother Peter Gusenberg to murder Jack McGurn earlier in the year; the North Side Gang’s complicity in the murder of Pasqualino “Patsy” Lolordo as well as Antonio “The Scourge” Lombardo, and Bugs Moran’s muscling in on a Capone-run dog track in the Chicago suburbs. Also, the rivalry between Moran and Capone for control of the lucrative Chicago bootlegging business led Capone to plan the hits and the O’Banion’s gang demise.

The plan was to lure Moran and his men to the SMC Cartage warehouse on North Clark Street. It is assumed usually that the North Side Gang was lured to the garage with the promise of a cut-rate shipment of bootleg whiskey, supplied by Detroit’s Purple Gang. However, some recent studies dispute this. All seven victims (with the exception of John May) were dressed in their best clothes, hardly suitable for unloading a large shipment of whiskey crates and driving it away. The real reason for the North Siders gathering in the garage may never be known for certain.

A four-man team would then enter the building, two disguised as police officers, and kill Moran and his men. Before Moran and his men arrived, Capone stationed lookouts in the apartments across the street from the warehouse. Wishing to keep the lookouts inconspicuous, Capone had hired two unrecognizable thugs to stand watch in rented rooms across the street from the garage.

At around 10:30 a.m. on St. Valentine’s day, four men arrived at the warehouse in two cars: a Cadillac sedan and a Peerless, both outfitted to look like detective sedans. Two men were dressed in police uniforms and two in street clothes. The O’Banion Gang had already arrived at the warehouse. However, Moran himself was not inside. One account states that Moran was supposedly approaching the warehouse, spotted the police car, and fled the scene. Another account was that Moran was simply late getting there.

The lookouts allegedly confused one of Moran’s men (most likely Albert Weinshank, who was the same height, build and even physically resembled Moran) for Moran himself: he then signaled for the gunmen to enter the warehouse. The two phony police, carrying shotguns, exited the Peerless and entered the warehouse through the two rear doors. Inside they found members of Moran’s gang, a sixth man named Reinhart Schwimmer who was not actually a gangster, but more of a gang “hanger-on” and a seventh man, John May, who was a mechanic fixing one of the cars, and technically not a member of the gang, but an occasionally hired mechanic. The killers told the seven men to line up facing the back wall. There was apparently not any resistance, as the Moran men thought their captors were real police, and it was likely a “show” bust merely to garner good press for the police department.

Then the two “police officers” let in two men through the front door facing Clark Street. This pair, riding in the Cadillac, were dressed in civilian clothes. Two of the killers started shooting with Thompson sub-machine guns, one containing a 20-round clip and the other a 50-round drum. All seven men were killed in a volley of seventy machine-gun bullets and two shotgun blasts according to the coroner’s report. To show bystanders that everything was under control, the men in street clothes came out with their hands up, prodded by the two uniformed cops. The only survivor in the warehouse was John May’s German Shepherd, Highball. When the real police arrived, they first heard the dog howling. On entering the warehouse, they found the dog trapped under a beer truck and the floor covered with blood, shell casings, and corpses.

“You dropped somethin’, it’s your heart and it’s still pumpin’, pumpin’ you from this existence…”
- Swollen Members (Valentine’s Day Massacre)

The Greater Struggle

Overcoming the struggles of life...

Back in November 2008, my mother was diagnosed with colon cancer and she had surgery a couple of weeks later to remove the diseased portion of her colon. We were told at that time that after surgery, my mother would require chemotherapy and radiotherapy and that the process would have to be reevaluated after that to determine just how to proceed from there.

Last week, the oncologist determined that my mother wouldn’t need chemotherapy or radiotherapy. We were quite pleased to hear that since chemotherapy is considered to be the worst and most difficult part of cancer recovery. We had a second oncologist go over my mother’s test results and the second oncologist agreed that chemotherapy and radiotherapy wasn’t required. Validation has been confirmed.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to pray for my mother and my family. She’s here today, free of cancer, and essentially able to live her life again as she did before. She needs a hernia surgery which is the result of some complications that arose from her cancer recovery but suffice to say, she’s past the greater struggle. Thank you and please continue to remember her in your prayers and thoughts.

“Patiently waiting for a track to explode on…”
- 50 Cent (Patiently Waiting)