April 2007

Through the combined efforts of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Atlantic Canada’s First Nation Help Desk, Chief George Ginnish, former chief Roger Augustine, and our school’s administrators and educators, we have tripled our enrolment since the school opened in 1979. If aboriginal schools were to be eliminated, which is what Krotz seems to be proposing, we could lose many of those people whose vision and hard work have set the stage for the success our children are experiencing.

Peter MacDonald
Principal, Eel Ground School
Eel Ground, New Brunswick

Sleep Tight
As a former soldier, long-time war correspondent, and survivor of a hostagetaking in Iraq, I was intrigued to read about the Canadian Forces’ attempts to prepare journalists for an embedded experience (“Good To Go,” February). It would seem from Semi Chellas’s description that the four-day training exercise is mainly intended to frighten would-be correspondents into submission. Case in point: course leader Warrant Officer Mark Cushman tells his students, “If the Taliban get you, there’s no negotiating. You’ll probably just end up on Al Jazeera.”

Such fearmongering runs counter to the fact that the vast majority of Western journalists taken hostage in both Afghanistan and Iraq have been released alive after successful negotiations. And yet, instead of advising the students to study the local culture and language beforehand through research and the development of personal relationships with the Afghan-Canadian community, the military simply presents unembedded journalism as untenable.

I’m reassured that at least one reporter, during a lesson on how to avoid Stockholm Syndrome (the affinity that hostages can begin to feel for their captors), noted the potential for a similar phenomenon to develop between journalists and their military hosts. Thankfully, military-sponsored courses are not yet mandatory for journalists who want to cover war zones.

Scott Taylor
Publisher, Esprit de Corps
Ottawa, Ontario

ids and Egos
“The Other Side of Darkness” (February) is John Bentley Mays’s passionate call for progressive architecture, and who can argue with that? Praising feats of architectural gymnastics, however, comes at the expense of identifying other criteria for truly progressive building design.