From an air-conditioned office

Writing the Canadian Culture Wars

An air-conditioned office.

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By

James Pew

(I’m going to slow down the pace of publishing articles and essays on this newsletter until the end of summer. The following explains why).

Summer is here and it’s damn hot in Ontario. People have slowed down, many are now vacationing or otherwise congregating around pools and sipping on iced beverages. I haven’t published anything in these pages since last week when I reviewed the excellent new book Running Away From Stalin by Canadian writer and geographer Mark Hecht.

It is very unusual for seven plus days to go by without a new Woke Watch Canada article. It is not entirely unheard of, but definitely out of the norm. When it does occur, it is most likely due to the summer-induced de-acceleration of pace which comes about as a natural consequence of the abrupt shift from tolerably cold to punishing heat. However, I have retreated into the cool confines of an air-conditioned office, and unbeknownst to the casual reader, I have intensified my workload.

How could this be the case? If what I say were true, shouldn’t conditions at the newsletter be the opposite? Shouldn’t readers be receiving three or four articles per week?

Allow me to expand. But before I do, a word of advice (the special kind that comes from painful experience): if you have an idea, and you think it's a good one, but it involves creating or building something, it is best to keep it to yourself, at least until you cross the creative Rubicon – the boundary line which delineates when you are more than halfway to the point of completing your masterpiece.

I made a mistake in 2021, when I initially started writing from the trenches of the culture wars. It was the launch of my personal substack, The Turn, where I had boldly announced my plans to transform my online cultural commentary into a book. I should have waited until I had written more, and until I had a clearer idea of the shape of my book before I blabbed about it. At the time, I used the following as the working title: The Woke West: The Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, Radical Activism And Forbidden Knowledge Dividing The West...And What You Can Do About It!

Anyway, I have picked up work on the book again – I think I’ll be going with a different title though – and I have crossed the creative Rubicon…I think. I better have, because I’m blabbing about it again. Either way, this is what I have been plugging away at in my secret air-conditioned laboratory. The book will not simply be a compendium of previously published essays. Not at all. I will be recycling some bits of the work I’ve published over the last five years, but in most cases it is being re-worked, updated or re-written altogether. Plus, a whole bunch of new work will be included. In fact, most of it will be new stuff. And much of it is on events I have yet to publish about.

As mentioned, my literary culture wars engagement began in 2021. One of the first pieces I published, called Before I Realized How Messed Up Everything Is, dealt with my back story and explained my long-held fondness for writing. I also went into details about my intention to eventually compile my Substack writings into a book. However, as I mentioned earlier, that was a mistake, I should have just gone with the flow and chronicled and commented on the things I did and kept it at that. Oh well. Either way, I will be finishing the book which I so long ago made clear was my intention to write. It is so much bigger in scope than I had ever imagined. I have evolved considerably since 2021, and my perspective on the social justice left is now backed up by a ton of research and writing laboured over between then and now.

It didn’t take long for me to discover that the woke madness in Canada did not begin with the death of George Floyd or the false story of unmarked graves of indigenous children in Kamloops B.C., or even the earlier #MeToo movement for that matter. And since I didn’t start publishing on Canadian cultural issues until 2021, there was a whole mess of years full of extreme proto-woke ridiculousness that I did not write about. So, I have extended the timeline of the book back to 2012 when Warren Farell was met with a crowd of hostile radical feminist activists at a University of Toronto speaking event which featured him.

Then a couple of years after the Warren Farell affair at U of T, the infamous Jian Ghomeshi sexual assault scandal took place. There has never been a more spectacular fall from grace in the annals of Canadian history. Ghomeshi never stood a chance. He was, as he later recounted, “the guy everyone hated first.” Indeed, this was the first in a series of cancellations of high-profile Canadian men. I re-examine the details of the case, including the outcome of the trial, which had no bearing whatsoever on the court of public opinion.

In 2018 it was the turn of Steve Paikin, Albert Schultz, and Patrick Brown. Then in 2019, Don Cherry got the axe from CBC for saying “you people” when referring to immigrants who didn’t wear a poppy on Remembrance Day. And the madness continued, it accelerated during the period known as “Peak Woke” (approx. 2020-2022), much of which I covered in the pages of The Turn and Woke Watch Canada. However, there were many victims of cancel culture in Canada during this peak period whom I neglected. Among them was Peter Shurman, a much-loved radio broadcaster, who said on air during an interview with a radical feminist that sometimes “women get themselves into trouble” in bars when they do things like going to the washroom and leaving their drink unattended. For that, AM 640 cancelled Shurman.

There was such an abundance of insanity during this time I could not cover it all. For example the firing of Lisa LaFlamme from the lead anchor chair of CTV National News. CTV said it was a business decision. LaFlamme was furious about being replaced. She brought up the fact that the Vice President of news operations Michael Melling had shown concern that LaFlamme had allowed her hair to turn grey during COVID. Melling had made no demands or insisted that LaFlamme dye her hair. He did little more than ask a question about it. LaFlamme used this to base a claim that she had been the victim of ageism and sexism. I did not write about this case when it happened, however, I have re-examined the facts and my analysis of the LaFlamme affair will be included in the book.

And on and on. All of the usual suspects that I have tried my best to cover over the years since 2021, will all make their appearance. Figures like Frances Widdowson, Jim McMurtry, Linda Stone, Richard Bilkszto , Senator Lynn Beyak, Carolyn Burjoski, Chanel Pfahl, Jim Heller, and and others I have not published much about, like Wendy Mesley, Lindsay Shepherd, Jordan Peterson, Stockwell Day, Rima Azar, Patanjali Kambhampati, Jessica Mulroney, Tim Haggstrom, and many more. I will also include profiles of many of the bat-shit crazy social justice activists I have covered, and others I haven’t yet had the stomach to tackle.

It’s going to be a grand volume when completed. This I can assure. For now, and for the remainder of the summer, spending these hours working away in the crisp air-conditioned coolness of a modern Canadian interior, I feel an intense exhilaration which registers at the scale of a rambling, risible, even preposterous fervour. However, the work is demanding and time-consuming so a slight slow-down of the newsletter – only slight and just for the remainder of the summer – is to be expected, so that I can pour the hours needed into completing the book. No promises, but wouldn’t that be awesome if it was available by Christmas?

Anyway, I’m working on it, and I’m not playing around! If any kind-hearted readers would like to support my effort to write and publish and print and promote this book, the best way to do that is by upgrading to a paid Woke Watch Canada subscription or by donating to the donor box (details below). In the meantime, thank you to all supporters for your boundless amazingness, and please be patient while things slow down a tad on the newsletter side, but prepare yourselves in all sincerity for the ultimate book on Canadian woke shenanigans…Coming Soon!

Stay tuned!

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Thanks for reading. For more from this author, read When the West breaks your heart

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