Search Results for: "mourning in canada"

by Chris Bodenner

Some final thoughts on Jack Layton before closing the thread:

As an American who has lived in Toronto the last five years, I've greatly enjoyed the coverage from your readers on Jack Layton. It would be difficult to to underestimate the loss of Jack, especially for young Canadians. I thought it would be nice to share with you one of the more light-hearted memorials of Jack, a collection of his appearances on "This Hour Has 22 Minutes", a Canadian political satire show.

Another writes:

Lest you get too carried away with Jack Layton hagiography, here is a link to a Christie Blatchford column for which she has taken a LOT of heat.  Christie is an award-winning author and fabulous columnist IMHO. And here's a supporting post by Jonathon Kay. The line in the now-famous deathbed letter about "restoring Canada’s standing in the world" is the part that irked me the most.  It is a standard NDP leftist trope that we have become something of a rogue state under the Conservatives, an assertion that has no basis in fact. 

by Chris Bodenner

Some remaining thoughts on Jack Layton:

In the early '80s, when the AIDS crisis was in full bloom, when Toronto was shocked and saddened by the rape and murder of a 12-year-old boy committed by three men, and when the vice squad was raiding gay bathhouses, Jack Layton – then a young city counsel member – spoke up in defense of the baths and the Toronto gay community, just because that was the right thing to do. For years he was one of the few straight political figures at any level who'd march in the pride parade and campaign in the baths and bars. He was a remarkable man.

Another writes:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d99o-iumk8o%5D

by Chris Bodenner

The death of Jack Layton has really struck a chord with readers. One writes:

First of all, a caveat: I'm a French-speaking Quebecer and it's the first time I write a political comment in English. So I want to apologize in advance for the incoming grammar and syntax errors and gallicisms. (Oh, and another one: I didn't vote for the guy. I'm not a party hack either; I'm an independent.)

There's a huge something left unsaid in the passing of Jack Layton, either in your reader commentary or Mr. Horgan's. It's the impossibility of Layton's career that makes him so remarkable as a person. This man was what we call in Quebec a "maudit anglais" – a damn Englishman. A scion of one of the great colonial families that ruled Canada from the Golden Square Mile in Montreal, whose forebears were ministers for the Conservative Party. He became a leftist in the '70s and surged as the leader of the NDP (the Canadian version of the Labour) in the last decade. In the last election he gave the NDP its best results ever AND was able to beat the nationalist Bloc Quebecois on its own turf. He ended the career of the most popular politicians in Quebec, Gilles Duceppe, son of the great Quebecer actor Jean Duceppe. He broke the back of the Liberal Party (which was still called the Natural Ruling Party of Canada three years ago).

This is awesome. This is incredible.

by Chris Bodenner

A reader remarks on the news from up north that broke this morning:

Given the Dish's interest in political conduct, it's a shame that (so far) there has been nothing written about the passing of Jack Layton, Leader of the Opposition in Canada, from cancer.  The response has been overwhelming: astonishingly decorous, remarkably decent and emotionally genuine.  Layton wrote a letter from his deathbed that has had newsreaders' voices cracking as they recited it on air.  There's a kind of muted poetry to the way the country, more or less to a man, is responding with shock, respect and sincere sadness, even from his most ardent political opponents.  It's a rather stunning reminder that politics needn't always be toxic: there can be admiration in dispute and nobility in purpose.