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“Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls.
Who steals my purse steals trash. ‘Tis something, nothing;
‘Twas mine, ‘tis his, and has been slave to thousands.
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.” -Shakespeare (Othello)
“Racist”…is not an insult to be thrown around carelessly.” – Trial judge in McLean v. Stewart (below)
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For decades Canadian Aboriginal leaders and activists have been successfully engaging in a quasi-separatist, political and legal campaign for more and more Canadian taxpayer money, and more and more “independent”, “nation to nation” legal power with which to, amongst other country-harming things, deal with that taxpayer money in whatever unaccountable and untransparent ways they see fit.
One effective weapon used by them in this country-fragmenting campaign is the false and insulting labelling of their fellow non-Aboriginal Canadians, past and present, with horrible epithets such as being “racists” and “systemically racist, colonialist settlors”.
By these means of constantly filching the good names of ordinary, non-Aboriginal Canadians, past and present, they exploit the unjustified phenomenon of naïve, white liberal guilt, a phenomenon endemic amongst our unconfident and historically illiterate elites, who have debased themselves and their country by acquiescing in- and even agreeing with- these horrible epithets, directed not only against themselves and their ancestors, but against all their fellow non-Aboriginal Canadians and all their ancestors.
It has been open season to egregiously insult non-Aboriginal Canadians, with no pushbacks from our elites, only acquiescence and/or agreement. Meeting no pushbacks, and it being so short-term successful, the Aboriginal calculated-insult campaign builds, getting wilder and more unchecked and unrestrained all the time.
The Assembly of First Nations says that non-Aboriginal Canadians are everywhere systemically racist. AFN Chief Woodhouse-Nepinak gives an example, insulting Canada’s police forces by calling them all ‘systemically racist.”
Chief Clarence Louis of the Osoyoos band in his book Rez Rules accuses Canada of systemic racism and suggests that non-Aboriginal “bloodlines” are inferior to those of Aboriginals. His book was lauded by former Prime Minister Paul Martin.
Aboriginal academic Pamela Palmater, representing pretty well the prevailing orthodoxy cynically peddled by most Aboriginal academic elites, calls white people the “enemy” and writes of “…the entirety of the colonial structures, powers, laws, authorities and measures used to maintain us in poverty and to dispossess and oppress us.”
Part-Aboriginal Globe and Mail journalist Tanya Talaga accuses Canadians of racism towards Indigenous peoples, of “betraying the treaties” and letting Indigenous children die of “flat neglect”. Her recent book, The Knowing, is filled with virtual hate speech against white people. No pushbacks from anyone for any of this, not even from her employer, which continues to regularly publish her false insults against its readers.
Part-Aboriginal, former journalist Jesse Wente, in his book Unreconciled; a harsh and dark screed against his non-Aboriginal countrymen and women, rails incoherently against “racist systems and structures”. (Good God, this hypocrite, formerly a CBC film critic, is now comfortably ensconced in a cushy, overpaid, “colonialist” federal government job.) No pushbacks from anyone for his railings. In fact, the CBC gushed over Mr. Wente and his country-insulting book.
As part of the general campaign by Canada’s elites to suppress free speech on this general topic, Chiefs in British Columbia publicly called a lawyer’s and a politician’s attempts to correct a B.C. Law Society misstatement about the Kamloops allegedly-murdered-children story “dishonest, repugnant and ugly”. Similarly, Aboriginal leaders in Ontario labelled an opinion of Premier Ford about Aboriginals always coming “hat in hand” to governments as “racist”, causing Ford to apologize.
On the non-Aboriginal side, our parliament has been guilted into unanimously voting that Canadians, past and present, committed genocide against Indigenous peoples through giving some of their children an education in residential schools. No pushbacks from anyone.
Members of our judiciary, notwithstanding the absence of any properly adduced evidence, have repeated the genocide falsity, have said that water problems on reserves are caused by systemic racism, have said that Indigenous people have a “rational distrust of court systems”, have called non-Indigenous Canadians “uninvited guests” in Canada, have accused Canadians past and present of kidnapping Indigenous children and have said that Canadians were “intentionally seeking to destroy Indigenous cultures”. No pushbacks from anyone.
Many of Canada’s non-Aboriginal academics follow suit, basically calling their fellow citizens and our non-Aboriginal forefathers land thieves and murderers. No pushbacks from anyone.
Jody Wilson Raybould, representing both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal elites, writes in essence that the French and British colonization of Canada was/is wrong and shameful, and that we must all atone for this by somehow reversing history and de-colonizing Canada. No pushbacks from anyone against either her false insults or her stupid reasoning.
Clearly, as stated, it’s open season against non-Aboriginal Canadians, who, bewildered and demoralized, see themselves and their ancestors being recklessly attacked with impunity from all sides every day, and never defended.
Most of such insulting attacks are immune from successful legal defamation claims because the insulters carefully avoid naming specific, living Canadians. The insults are usually against general categories of Canadians- allegedly racist, murderous and thieving “whites”, “settlers”, “colonialists” and “imperialists”.
A general group that is collectively insulted, with no specific names mentioned, cannot successfully sue for defamation.
Only a living, named individual who is falsely insulted can successfully maintain such a lawsuit, where the insult would lower that person in the eyes of a reasonable third person, and is heard or read by that third person.
And most of these insults, however false they may be, are protected against liability for defamation by legal defenses such as fair comment, responsible communication and privilege.
But once in a while. one of these insulters, flushed with the sense of reckless impunity that years of lack of pushbacks have created, makes a mistake and insults a living, named individual, and thereby opens up himself or herself to a valid defamation claim.
Such is the situation that happened to Dr. Michelle Stewart, an Associate Professor in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Regina, whose “research and community work focuses on the ongoing role of settler colonialism and systemic racism that creates racialized disparities in Canada – with an aim to decolonize programs and practices”.
She had a kneejerk, emotional, irresponsible and totally unprofessional reaction to a book written by Alberta writer Candis McLean, When Police Become Prey – The Cold Hard Facts of Neil Stonechild’s Freezing Death. Ms. McLean’s book was a strong, passionate and principled defense and attempted exoneration – in the honorable, courageous and vaunted tradition of J’Accuse! – of two Saskatoon police officers who, she argued in fact-based fashion, unjustly lost their jobs over the tragic incident of a 17 year-old Aboriginal, Neil Stonechild, being found frozen to death in a field in the city.
The facts surrounding the Stonechild tragedy, as recounted and argued in Ms. McLean’s book, were briefly as follows.
Around midnight in November 1990, two Saskatoon police officers, Constables Larry Hartwig and Brad Senger, were dispatched to look for 17-year-old Neil Stonechild, who was intoxicated and creating a disturbance in an apartment building. The officers looked for him and, not finding him there, wrote GOA (Gone on Arrival), in their notebooks. They then went on to another dozen dispatches on that busy Saturday night. According to them, that unsuccessful attempt to locate Mr. Stonechild was the last and only time they had any connection whatsoever to or in relation to him.
Five days later, the young Stonechild’s frozen body, with no signs of trauma, was discovered in a field in the industrial area of the city.
A police investigation was launched which was later deemed inadequate by many in the police service and elsewhere, because, among other reasons stated by Ms. McLean in her book, the officer in charge did not interview possible suspects pointed to by friends of the deceased. The provincial coroner chose not to call an inquest, concluding that the death was from exposure and the manner of death accidental.
Ten years later, a man with a long criminal record suddenly came forward and claimed he had last seen his friend, Neil Stonechild, in the back seat of a police car. This contradicted his original handwritten statement, and was suspicious in many ways, including the fact that his story changed constantly to explain away facts as they emerged.
A multi-million-dollar RCMP investigation followed, in which, as recounted and argued by Ms. McLean, not a single piece of evidence was discovered that could have led to charges against the two officers.
The Saskatchewan Minister of Justice then called for a public inquiry. There, the Commissioner of Inquiry, forbidden by law to implicate anyone in a crime, implicated the officers in a crime. He concluded, based on the inconsistent testimony of a criminal and despite the absence of any direct evidence implicating the two police officer and the despite the absence of any supporting documentary evidence, that “Stonechild was probably last seen in the custody of the two officers.”
This was enough to cause the two police officers, as argued by Ms. McLean in When Police Become Prey, to unjustly lose their jobs.
It seems that the mere facts that Neil Stonechild was Aboriginal and the two policemen were white caused Ms. Stewart’s loose and faulty “systemic racism”, ever-vigilant, internal trip-switch to be flipped to the on position. Without even having read the book and citing no supporting facts this University of Regina Associate Professor recklessly wrote and published on Facebook that the book was “racist garbage”.
As judicially determined by the trial judge in the ensuing defamation action that the brave Ms. McLean brought, McLean v. Stewart, the trial judge, unlike Ms. Stewart, actually read the book. He ruled that there was nothing racist about it at all. He ruled that by Dr. Stewart calling the book “racist garbage” she was in law falsely calling the author of it, Ms. McLean, a racist. This is defamation.
In addition to ruling that the book was not racist in any way, and that Dr. Stewart had recklessly defamed Ms. McLean, and given that Dr. Stewart had refused to retract or apologize for her defamation, the trial judge awarded Ms. McLean financial damages for the injury to her reputation and dignity. He also ordered that Dr. Stewart compensate Ms. McLean for part of her legal costs.
Hurrah and kudos to Candis McLean! Someone finally called out the relentless spew of lies about and insults against non-Aboriginal Canadians made by Aboriginal leaders and activists.
All non-Aboriginal Canadians, who have been essentially abandoned by our politicians, judges, academics and mainstream journalists in this regard, should thank Candis McLean for taking the one-small-step that as a private citizen she was capable of taking, not only to defend her own reputation, but by extension, to defend the objective fact-finding process, (totally abandoned by academia in anything relating to Aboriginal peoples), and to defend, at least in part or in effect, the worthy reputation of all her fellow non-Aboriginal Canadians.
We can live vicariously through Ms. McLean’s victory of objective truth over reckless, factually indifferent propaganda, and feel better about ourselves because of it.
We can hope that Aboriginal leaders and activists will take McLean v. Stewart to heart, and check their sense of reckless impunity regarding the cynical lies and half-truths they utter about their fellow non-Aboriginal Canadians, and about our ancestors’ honorable and decent historical dealings with Aboriginals.
We can hope that Aboriginal leaders and activists will heed the trial judge’s warning that “democracy is imperiled when people think it better to suppress or ban books rather than debate their merits”.
We can hope that Ms. McLean’s private suit, necessarily brought in circumstances where the cowardly, country-harming zeitgeist of Canadian public life is against her, will have the same beneficial, “checking” effect, (although sadly only minor), that the successful private lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News and its lying on-air propagandists had on public discourse in America.
The lies and half-truths daily uttered and published by Aboriginal leaders and activists hurt non-Aboriginal Canadians, individually and collectively. They make us feel, as Shakespeare said, “poor indeed.” Harsh and dishonest words close minds. They create profound social division and resentment, the opposite of the supposed “reconciliation” that Aboriginal leaders and activists profess to want.
These lies and half-truths- this “filching” of the good names of ordinary non-Aboriginal Canadians and those of our ancestors- must stop.
Ms. McLean’s successful defamation action is a constructive and hopeful step in the process of restoring civility and a regard for objective truth-seeking and truth-telling in the presently false and insulting ways Aboriginal leaders and activists write and talk about their fellow non-Aboriginal Canadian citizens.
Peter Best
Sudbury
August 6th, 2025
thereisnodifference.ca
