Blacklock's Reporter

It was a monument to scandal. For 19th century visitors and VIPs, the last stop in Ottawa was Canadian Pacific Railway’s Broad Street station. It had no more frequent visitor than Prime Minister John Abbott, millionaire lawyer and CPR fixer.  The station is gone now, the scandal forgotten. And Abbott is recalled only as the great-grandfather of actor Christopher Plummer. READ MORE

First-hand accounts of horrific childhoods are rare in literature, and compelling: Charlie Chaplin’s My Autobiography, or A Memoir of Robert Blincoe, the recollections of an English workhouse boy that was so stark one U.K. reviewer said it made Oliver Twist look like a holiday camp. From Athabasca University Press is My Decade at Old Sun, My Lifetime of Hell, the memoirs of an Indian Residential schoolboy. Arthur Bear Chief’s story is so raw it would have gone unpublished 30 years ago. Bear Chief notes with irony the Anglican Church didn’t give him much of an education at the Old Sun Residential School in Gleichen, Alta. His English skills were so poor that later, as a public servant, he had an ex-wife ghostwrite his government reports. The result in My Decade at Old Sun is a plain and riveting narrative stripped of adjectives and ornamental prose. It is vivid and powerful. READ MORE

Newly-declassified 2004 cabinet minutes show then-Prime Minister Paul Martin agonized over legalization of same-sex marriage. Martin privately complained provincial courts had forced the government’s hand, according to Access To Information records disclosed yesterday: "Many Canadians are struggling with the idea." READ MORE

The Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations has censored as "confidential" its files on what a Kamloops, B.C. First Nation did with $12.1 million paid to recover alleged graves of Indian Residential School children. The Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation acknowledged February 18 it never exhumed any remains: "The heartbreaking truth about Residential Schools’ unmarked burials continues to be unveiled." READ MORE

Layoffs due to artificial intelligence are already underway, says one of the country’s largest unions. The Canadian Union of Public Employees in a report to senators itemized jobs that have vanished: "CUPE is already seeing job loss." READ MORE

The Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has awarded an Alberta truck driver $30,000 in damages for discrimination. The Tribunal was told the driver was harassed at work after suffering an injury on the job: "Damage awards should not be so trivial or insignificant so as to be meaningless." READ MORE

A national radio ombudsman yesterday faulted a Toronto station for celebrating World Series ticket giveaways. Radio CFTR should have specified it had the same ownership as the Blue Jays, Rogers Inc., ruled the Canada Broadcast Standards Council: "The media landscape has changed with corporate groups becoming increasingly involved in many ventures." READ MORE