Canadians consider electric cars too costly, says in-house research by the Department of Natural Resources. Few drivers, only five percent, own or lease an electric despite billions in federal spending on promotions and rebates: “I have no interest.”
Pandemic lockdowns and travel bans cut Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions, says a Department of Environment report. Staff acknowledged climate targets benefited from factors like the collapse of air travel: “We can see that Canada is moving in the right direction.”
A Montréal-area lawyer removed from a voluntary municipal post over political score-settling has won $7,000 in damages. Community volunteers are vital to democracy, ruled the Québec Human Rights Tribunal: “The strength of a community depends on the active participation of its members.”
Not all journalism is profound or even good, a fact unchanged in 400 years. Yet written dissent is so overpowering they protected it in the Constitution. Dr. Harry Loewen was not a journalist – he was founding Chair of Mennonite Studies at the University of Winnipeg – but would have made a first-rate city editor. Ink Against The Devil is required reading for every newsroom, every journalism school, everyone who treasurers the written word.
Luther 505 years ago posted his Ninety-Five Theses to the wall of Castle Church in Wittenburg. He had a “red-hot pen,” Loewen writes. Theses opposed the burning of heretics. It denounced corruption in the Catholic Church and named names: “Why does the Pope, whose wealth today is greater than the wealth of the richest money princes, not build the basilica of Saint Peter with his own money instead of with the money of poor believers?”
Luther’s Theses was written in Latin and “not intended for the general public but for theological colleagues for debate and discussion.” And how! It triggered the Protestant Reformation, fueled the German Peasants’ War of 1525 and saw Luther’s writings republished in more than three million pamphlets and booklets.
“Pamphleteers saw gold,” Loewen writes. “They recognized early that Luther’s Theses touched a raw nerve”; “Eager publishers translated and turned out copies of the Theses at an extraordinary rate, bringing Luther early fame and influence.”
Professor Loewen was a gifted writer. Ink Against The Devil is a beautifully-crafted biography that captures 16th century Germany, a dark world of tallow candles and infant mortality where travelers risked death from highwaymen and wild boars and a very large city like Münster had only 15,000 inhabitants.
Loewen’s profile is crisp and a pleasure to read. The Professor enjoys his subject. He is also honest, and in the best tradition of the free press does not shrink from a disquieting fact.
Luther was a notorious anti-Semite whose rantings are so violent they were revived centuries later by the Nazi organ Der Stürmer. “Nothing could be said or done to excuse or mitigate the reformer’s hateful writings,” Loewen says; “One cannot sweep under the proverbial carpet what is both negative and painful.”
In his 1543 tract On The Jews And Their Lies Luther wrote synagogues should be burned and Jews driven from the cities under penalty of death. “I would deal severely with their lying mouth,” he wrote; “They let us work in the sweat of our brow to earn money and property while they sit behind the stove, idle away their time, fart, and roast pears. They stuff themselves, guzzle, and live in luxury and ease from our hard-earned goods. With their accursed usury they hold us and our property captive.”
Dr. Loewen recounts his 1997 visit to Luther’s church in the Saxony city of Lutherstadt-Wittenburg, where the Winnipeg professor was thrilled to stand at Luther’s pulpit till he glanced upwards at the carvings: “Just below the roofline there appeared a badly weathered sculpture known as the Judensau with several Jews vulgarly represented,” depicted with a sow and piglets: “I was not only shocked to see this hideous relief on Luther’s church, but also wondered why Luther had not removed it during his tenure as pastor,” he writes.
Professor Loewen died in 2015 in Kelowna, at 84. He was born in Stalinist Russia, survived the war and fled to Canada in 1948. Ink Against The Devil is his legacy. It is profound.
By Holly Doan
Ink Against The Devil: Luther and His Opponents, by Harry Loewen; Wilfrid Laurier University Press; 335 pages; ISBN 9781-7711-21361; $27.74
Blacklock’s today pauses for Good Friday observances. We are back tomorrow with regular weekend features — The Editor.
The Canada Revenue Agency must answer whistleblower claims that managers arranged a seven-figure tax waiver for a corporate lobbyist, the vice chair of the Commons finance committee said yesterday. “There are some alarming allegations here,” said Conservative MP Dan Albas (Central Okanagan-Similkameen, B.C.): “When you have allegations that staff members were to ‘rubber stamp’ the deal, questions need to be asked.”
Fifteen civil liberties groups yesterday petitioned cabinet for an open and independent inquiry into the Prime Minister’s use of emergency police powers against the Freedom Convoy. “It should not be marred by partisan fights,” petitioners wrote: “We are concerned about the use of state and police powers to suppress constitutional rights.”
Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem yesterday acknowledged he again missed his inflation target, the latest in a series of incorrect forecasts dating back two years. “We are acutely aware already high inflation has risen further above our target,” Macklem told reporters: “We now expect inflation to average almost six percent.”
A press watchdog yesterday said it will not investigate allegations an environmental journalist hastened her own arrest at a pipeline protest. John Fraser, chair of the National News Media Council, said it was not the Council’s job to “offer general comment on issues.”
More than a third of English-speaking Canadians say it would be more useful to have their children learn a second language other than French. Research by the Languages Commissioner also found almost half of all people say mandated bilingualism makes no sense in some parts of Canada: “Over half of anglophones agree with this statement.”
Public Sector Integrity Commissioner Joe Friday has named names in a massive breach of confidentiality under his own Act. The Commissioner mistakenly released 2,324 pages of records detailing whistleblower investigations at the Canada Revenue Agency: “Fear of reprisal exists. This fear is very real.”
The Treasury Board in a “March madness” spending spree burned through a third of a million to mark the end of the fiscal year, according to Access To Information records. The annual ritual sees managers spend unused budgets for fear of losing their parliamentary appropriation: “You spend money you have rather than let it lapse even if you don’t absolutely need the money.”
Covid vaccines offer little to no protection after five months, a federal scientific panel said yesterday. The Public Health Agency said all Canadians should get a booster but stopped short of mandating it: “Would you like to see the definition of ‘fully vaccinated’ changed so it requires everyone to have at least three shots?”
There is not a single Liberal voter in the hamlet of Big Beaver, Sask., one of a dozen municipalities nationwide where cabinet went scoreless in the last campaign, according to Elections Canada data. The outcome in the riding of Souris-Moose Mountain was the most lopsided in the country: “To those who say politicians do not have a heart — “
Saskatchewan legislators yesterday celebrated formal repeal of an 1881 vintage tax holiday for the Canadian Pacific Railway. Both the Commons and Senate repealed a legal clause declaring the CPR “shall be forever free from taxation” on its main line across the Prairies: “We will always be on Saskatchewan’s side.”
