Ontario’s Mississippi, Continued

The story of two men dressed as a KKK member and as a black man with a noose around his neck at a Legion hall dance has caused a furore, and rightly so. Royal Canadian Legion headquarters has effectively closed RCL Campbellford Branch 103. Both poppy sales and and Remembrance Day ceremonies associated with the branch are suspended.

When I wrote about this Hallowe’en party yesterday, I feared I might have been too harsh. Clearly, not every person in Northumberland County or even Campbellford is a racist clown. But still, casual racism and bigotry is not very exceptional in rural Canada*, despite protests to the contrary: the Legion story is only symptomatic.

Full disclosure here: I grew up in small-town Ontario. I have very strong connections to Northumberland County — I was married there, for instance —  and the hills and villages there come as close to being a rural idyll as any place on the planet. It’s a place I love deeply, warts and all. I think this makes my outrage over this incident even stronger, because in a sense, they’re my people, and it pisses me off because they ought to know better.

Cobourg, Canada Day, 2010: for your sleeping comfort

So I won’t apologize for putting strong emotion into words. Rural and small-town racism is a dirty little secret that no one ever talks about and everyone pretends doesn’t exist. Despite the (somewhat belated) show of community support, the man — a black restaurant owner — who initially brought the story to the media’s attention has received racist hate calls. The fact he was the only one, out of two hundred people attending the Hallowe’en dance, to think a mock lynching offensive enough to complain about it speaks volumes. Think about the attacks on Asian fishermen in the rural hinterland. Or this little bit of unpleasantness (right) I caught at the Canada Day (of all days) celebrations in Cobourg**.

It’s shit. It’s racism. It’s no good pretending it’s an isolated incident. And it needs to be called out and labelled for what it is.

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*Yeah, I know, racism exists in Toronto. I’m an ER nurse, remember: I’ve seen it.

**For those outside of Ontario, Northumberland Country again.