The Department of Immigration in an internal report acknowledges complaints of “privileged” treatment of Ukrainians compared to Afghan war refugees. Aid for Ukrainians included free flights and $490.7 million in cash grants: “There is a perception of unfairness.”
A labour board has upheld the firing of a federal employee for selling $1,663 worth of scrap metal without permission. The Montréal plumber with the Department of National Defence said he didn’t consider it stealing: “Although he argues he believed the scrap was sent to the dump, still, it was not his property.”
A fire drill
at my workplace.
Women reach for their purses,
adjust hair,
lipstick.
By Shai Ben-Shalom
Wicked and revolting in its day, the First World War 110 years later is recalled through haunting vignettes: the Trench of Bayonets buried alive at Verdun, the Russian princesses thrown down a mine shaft in Siberia, the soldiers of the Newfoundland Regiment who marched smartly to their doom at the Battle of the Somme.
One haunting vignette is the sinking of the Llandovery Castle, a Canadian hospital ship. “The blood boils at the very thought,” the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote at the time. Author Nate Hendley’s Atrocity On The Atlantic is a full accounting.
Hendley neither delves into psychoanalysis nor uses unnecessary adjectives. He is a crime writer. He gives the Llandovery Castle a crime writer’s treatment. It works. The sinking was simple murder, a gangland slaying at sea.
On a summer evening, Thursday, June 27, 1918 at 9:30 pm the Llandovery Castle was off the Irish coast on its sixth run from Halifax to Liverpool. It “was as brightly lit as a Christmas tree” with the Red Cross flag at full mast, writes Hendley. The journey was so pleasant, medical staff were quietly playing cards when a German torpedo blew the engine room to smithereens.
What happened next provoked “global revulsion,” writes Hendley. “Despite some years of brutal fighting some atrocities still had the power to shock.”
Five lifeboats hit the water. One eyewitness recalled the submarine that sunk the Llandovery Castle surfaced and “came at us at a high rate of speed apparently to run us down.” The German crew began shelling survivors as they thrashed in the water. Of 258 aboard, 234 were killed including 14 nurses. Lifeboats were “blown to bits by a submarine deck gun,” writes Hendley.
The Llandovery Castle became a synonym for atrocity. Germans were “possessed by devils,” said Prime Minister Robert Borden. New Brunswicker Andrew Bonar Law, a future British prime minister, called the murders the work of a “wild beast.” There was no parley with the enemy, said Bonar Law: “It is no use arguing or attempting to reason with it. We must destroy it.”
Atrocity On The Atlantic captures the terror in a tightly researched narrative. The Llandovery Castle fell victim to a “strange, savage weapon,” the U-boat on night patrol, writes Hendley. The story is unsettling and requires no embellishment for the sake of effect.
U-boat commander Helmut Patzig was listed among 850 German war criminals but escaped postwar prosecution by fleeing to South America. “No one was punished for torpedoing the Llandovery Castle and trying to murder those who survived the initial attack,” writes Hendley. Commander Patzig died in West Germany in 1984.
Atrocity On The Atlantic is a compelling account of a crime too long forgotten. Perhaps, writes Hendley, “humans are only capable of processing so much shock and grief.”
By Holly Doan
Atrocity On The Atlantic, by Nate Hendley; Dundurn Press; 240 pages; ISBN 9781-45975-1347; $24.99
MPs yesterday expressed outrage and anger after an ArriveCan supplier testified he couldn’t recall how many millions he’d made from federal contracts. “The damage has already been done,” said Darren Anthony, vice president of GC Strategies Inc. of Woodlawn, Ont.
Cabinet is researching a negative option insurance scheme to charge homeowners an extra $900 a year or more for overland flood coverage, according to records. The point was to reduce federal disaster aid payments, said a Department of Public Safety report: “Mandating that insurance companies include flood insurance in basic coverage with an option to opt out is a powerful mechanism.”
Federal statisticians yesterday named Steinbach, Man., population 18,000, the most generous city in Canada. Tax filers’ annual donations to charity were six times the national average: “Manitoba remained Canada’s most charitable province.”
Banning replacement workers in the federally-regulated private sector will “build a stronger middle class,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau yesterday told Unifor Local 444 in Windsor, Ont. Trudeau gave no deadline for passing a Commons bill introduced last November 9: “It’s not over until it’s over.”
Trust in the Mounties has fallen almost 20 points since the pandemic, says in-house RCMP research. The national police force’s most favourable ratings are among older Canadians who were “taught growing up to show respect for RCMP officers,” said a report.
A lead ArriveCan supplier yesterday acknowledged he and a business partner became millionaires under lucrative federal contracts one MP calculated at $2,600 an hour. Kristian Firth, partner in GC Strategies Inc. of Woodlawn, Ont., justified fees by explaining he occasionally worked weekends and evenings: “The government obviously values what myself and my firm and what firms like us do.”
The Commons government operations committee yesterday by unanimous vote censured an ArriveCan supplier for refusing to name secret contacts. MPs repeatedly asked for names of federal managers who cut sweetheart contracts worth millions: “Refusal to answer questions or failure to reply truthfully may give rise to a charge of contempt in the House.”
MPs yesterday summoned Defence Minister Bill Blair for questioning on how an employee became a millionaire while moonlighting as an Indigenous contractor. Members of the Commons government operations committee gave Blair until month’s end to appear for cross-examination: “It is wrong.”
Reinstating visas for air passengers from Mexico will save Canadian taxpayers $660 million a year, the Department of Immigration said yesterday. Millions would have been spent investigating bogus refugee claimants, it said: “Claiming asylum, not visiting, was the true purpose of travel.”
Federal inspectors yesterday recommended Railway Safety Act regulations ban workplace drinking after blaming an impaired traffic controller for a 2021 train wreck. The Transportation Safety Board earlier went to Federal Court to compel Canadian National Railway Co. to cooperate with its investigation in the case: ‘He was either drinking at the beginning of his shift or before work.’
The Department of Public Works in a briefing note claims ArriveCan charges were “fair and reasonable” despite irregularities and multi-million dollar cost overruns. Anita Anand, the public works minister at the time of ArriveCan spending, earlier told reporters she was not to blame: “Did you know about any of this?”
