I’m spending this week in a Vancouver “human rights” courtroom – actually a windowless basement whose sole link with the outside world, the clock, is stuck at 8am. Mark Hemingway provides an “idiot’s guide” to the idiot case here.
However, I was interested to see that the government of British Columbia is choosing to mark the criminalization of my opinions by burying western civilization:
Tourists were shut off from the B.C. legislature’s rotunda this week as work began to hide four historical murals behind walls.
MLAs voted in 2007 to remove the murals and display them elsewhere, because some people find the colonial depictions of aboriginal people to be offensive.. They were completed by artist George Southwell to depict Howe’s desire to illustrate the “establishment of civilization” in B.C.
• “Labour” shows the building of either Fort Langley in the 1820s or Fort Victoria in the 1840s.
• “Justice” shows colonial Chief Justice Matthew Baillie Begbie holding court in Clinton during the Cariboo gold rush in the 1860s.
• “Courage” depicts the meeting of captains Vancouver and Quadra at Nootka Sound in 1792 to turn over Vancouver Island territory from the Spanish to the British.
• “Enterprise” shows Hudson’s Bay Company official James Douglas landing at Clover Point to select the site of Fort Victoria in 1843.
Perhaps it would be quicker just to wall me up with the buried “Justice” mural.