Forgiveness
June Callwood
pp. 36-37
Acclaimed Canadian journalist and social activist June Callwood had a long and remarkable career not only in print but also in television. The CBC has archived multiple video clips of Callwood discussing everything from battling depression to donning false eyelashes. In her final interview, Callwood spoke frankly with The Hour’s George Stroumboulopoulos about her life and preparing for her death.
In The Sunflower (Expanded edition. New York: Shocken, 1998), Simon Wiesenthal explores the “possibilities and limits of forgiveness” in two sections. The first part recounts his imprisonment in a Nazi concentration camp and the dilemma he faced when a young SS trooper begged his forgiveness. In the second part, he asks fifty-three prominent intellectuals how they would have responded. Herbert Marcuse is one of the few to flatly refuse forgiveness; read his response online.
A Campaign for Forgiveness Research has funded forty-six research projects on the effects of forgiveness, including the Stanford Forgiveness Study, an exploration of the impact of multiple types of forgiveness training on almost 200 grudge holders. The campaign’s website also features forgiveness videos by co-chairs Bishop Desmond Tutu and Jimmy Carter.
In his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom (Boston: Back Bay Books, 1995), Nelson Mandela recounts how he came to forgive his adversaries. Chapter Ten, “Talking With The Enemy,” is particularly relevant.
“The Society of Difference”
Adrienne Clarkson
pp. 38-40
As one of the world’s most multicultural and pluralistic countries, Canada epitomizes the notion of civic nationalism: a country defined by its many unique and distinct nations, ethnic groups, and individuals. It is therefore unsurprising that Canada’s contribution to the global human rights debate has been significant. John Peters Humphrey, a Canadian legal scholar, was largely responsible for drafting the United Nation’s 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Since then, Canadians have famously formed the vanguard of the debate, focusing on issues such as multiculturalism and civic nationalism as well as passing legislation that aims to protect the rights of ethnic minorities, gays, women, children, minority languages, aboriginals.
Despite great progress made since the end of World War II, however, many key human rights issues remain highly contentious. In Canada, scholars and policy-makers alike have grappled with immigrant integration, competing nationalisms, and group rights versus individual rights. One of Canada’s foremost political thinkers, Charles Taylor, tackles these issues in his Massey Lecture, The Malaise of Modernity (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 1991). Taking a broad, philosophical approach, Taylor argues that group identity is an essential element of contemporary social fabric.
A second Massey Lecture, Michael Ignatieff’s The Rights Revolution (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2000), provides an overview of the development of human rights in modern legal and political practices. Following Taylor’s lead, Ignatieff pays specific attention to the group-versus-individual-rights quandary, particularly as it relates to Canadian multinationalism and Quebec separatism. In Multicultural Citizenship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), political philosopher Will Kymlicka provides a policy-oriented spin on the debate, arguing that Canadian domestic policy should reflect the growing interconnectedness between ethnic, cultural, and sociological groups within Canada.
Verse and Versatility
Stephen Henighan
pp. 42-45
To find out more about the annual Granada Poetry Festival, provided you can read Spanish, check out its website. You won’t really understand the festival’s flavour, however, until you also read up on Granada’s ancient, American foe, William Walker, who ordered the city burned to the ground before his own career as a roving warlord went up in flames. Try this account, excerpted from a history of California filibusterers.
In Nicaragua, the Sandinistas are back in power for the first time since 1990, when they lost national elections. Also making a comeback are their old antagonists from the Reagan era. Find out just how involved the White House was in selling weapons to Iran and diverting the money to the Nicaraguan Contras (who were waging a war against the ruling Sandinistas) in the 1980s, at the National Security Archive’s spotlight on this topic. The review of declassified documents includes the revelation that newly minted US Secretary of State Robert Gates may have played a significant role in the scandal.
Read up on Sandinista poets in their own words. Cosmic Canticle (Willimantic, CT: Curbstone Press, 1993; Jonathan Lyons, trans.), Ernesto Cardenal’s answer to fellow red-bard Pablo Neruda’s Canto General is one long reflection, in verse, on politics and the universe. And Gioconda Belli has written an acclaimed prose memoir titled The Country Under My Skin: A Memoir of Love and War (New York: Knopf, 2002).
Up in Guatemala, everyone is still coming to grips with a thirty-six-year civil war in which over 200,000 people were murdered in what has frequently been called an act of genocide. Memory of Silence contains the conclusions and recommendations from the Commission for Historical Clarification on the civil war. You can also access the full report in Spanish. For lighter fare on Guatemala’s indigenous culture, read Nobel winner Rigoberta Menchú’s children’s book, The Girl from Chimel (Toronto: Groundwood Books, 2005).
Comments (1 comments)
whitling: Oasis of Hope
I was mesmerised by this story. It was heartfelt, provocotive, and blisteringly frank. Was it fact, was it fiction, I could not tell and that was the allure. When one moves beyond the read to find out more, that is the signature of first class writing.
Please keep up the great work, both author and magazine.
Stuart Whitling
Vernon, BC June 16, 2007 20:31 EST