Speak Truth to Power

Digital art collage by Stella Kalaw

At the post office, I am relieved to encounter the kindly postal worker rather than her stern colleague. Unsure about postage requirements, I hand over my envelope containing a birthday card for my daughter. She meticulously weighs and measures it—Canada takes its postal standards seriously, none of Europe’s casual “any size goes” approach. After determining the required postage, she directs me to the stamp display.

While selecting stamps, something catches my eye: what looks like barbed wire with red letters reading “INTERNMENT/INTERNEMENT in/au Canada.” Intrigued, I pick up the 6-stamp booklet, and read the tiny print bilingual message: “This is a complicated and, at times, messy and confusing story encompassing arrest, displacement, and confinement. And this story spanned—and still spans—war and peacetimes, having affected persons from a wide variety of political backgrounds and ethno-cultural communities.”

More tiny text explains the handwritten markings on the stamp: fragments of names, numbers, and one clear word—Petawawa. The armed forces base near Ottawa where I live, I wonder?

I read further and discover these fragments are copied from an actual “certificate of release” from an internment camp near Petawawa. The accompanying text reveals the full scope:

“During both world wars—and even in peacetime—Canada confined or detained thousands of people in camps across the country. Internees were denied their civil liberties and often subjected to forced labour, all in the stated interest of domestic security. In addition, tens of thousands of people were forced to register with and regularly report to the authorities. These measures mainly affected immigrants from states legally at war with Britain and its allies, as well as their Canadian born children. Efforts to achieve official recognition for these injustices continue.”

Reading these disturbing facts fills me with emotion. I am awed by the magnitude of brutal measures that brought lasting tragedy to thousands of lives. How can such suffering—the merciless uprooting and loss of freedom—be compressed into a four-by-two-centimetre stamp? It seems impossible to me.

My mind drifts southward, where inhuman camps and prisons are again being constructed to “hold” growing numbers of supposed enemies of our mighty neighbour.

Yet I am also impressed by this official Canadian commemoration of past cruelties. Acknowledging abuse of power in such a widely accessible way feels like a sign of national maturity. This ordinary postal item represents a noteworthy decision to educate the public about a malicious government edict from eight decades ago.

In my naive twenties, I had expected Canada to be a land of innocence, pure like the brilliant white of its polar bears. As a postwar German raised amid silence and denial about horrific deeds, I was shocked to discover in the 1980s that I was again living in a country oblivious to its own dark past.

By chance, while researching at the National Archives, I stumbled upon the forced displacement of Japanese Canadians during World War II. Stamped “dangerous” to national security due to assumed “enemy alliances,” 22,000 Japanese Canadians were mercilessly uprooted from their established communities in British Columbia.

This racist federal decree, enacted in 1942, was widely supported and later conveniently forgotten. It took 45 years for the Canadian government to issue a formal apology.

Perhaps that is speedy, considering Canada has spent over 150 years hiding the systematic oppression and degradation of Indigenous peoples. As I continued learning about wartime discrimination against other legal residents based on their countries of birth, my longing for a trustworthy place on earth crumbled more and more.

Yet this little stamp offers me balm during these times of growing nationalism and the threat of new witch-hunts for presumed “enemies.” Who qualifies as an enemy and who as a friend? By what definitions, and who decides?

Current Canadian patriotism presents me with a dilemma. The term triggers alarm bells from my German past—patriotism so often leads to full-blown nationalism. Yet I have joined the anti-US sentiment: rejecting American vegetables, declining New York visits, feeling guilty about sneaking US cherries. Am I a good or bad citizen? Where are the lines?

Isn’t unity against external threats a peaceful show of loyalty? Or does “closing in” inevitably mean “closing out”? I fear the slippery slope toward identifying “enemies” among us—those with different clothes, skin colour, accents, gods, or mindsets. How can we trust “them”? The verdict too often becomes: we cannot.

When I immigrated in 1966, the official seemed relieved my names (Andrea Maria) weren’t Italian. I soon learned that Italians, Spaniards, Middle Easterners, Eastern Europeans, and Jews were nearly as looked down upon as immigrants from Asia or Africa. White skin was the entrance fee—though even that would not have saved me from an enemy camp twenty years earlier.

Canada has progressed since its racist immigration laws, as Halifax’s Pier 21 exhibition diligently shows. Yet Canadians proudly see themselves as a beacon of “multicultural” values, flawlessly accepting and inclusive.

This flattering self-perception has conveniently tuned out that things are far from perfect: that, for example, discriminatory rules decide who can enter Canada, and that many fellow citizens encounter racist attitudes on an almost daily basis. It is the closing of ranks to ALL the facts involved here that is my issue.

We, I, have to stay alert, aware, awake to the dark side of Canada. And keep on top of our own internalized judgmental thoughts, which creep up easily as well. This stance, for all of us, and for the country, feels essential to stand firm against further vicious choices.

I give credit where it is due happily, but also plead for honesty, for facing facts, past and present. I believe this is the basis for a true “coming of age” and fundamental for a country to call itself inclusive and humane.

I therefore plead for retiring the naive spirit of self-congratulation and low tolerance for self-criticism that I have detected since I landed here. I advocate for adopting a courageous wide-angle lens that is unwilling to censor out inconvenient realities.

I actually plead for posting uncomfortable facts and imperfections, or even crimes, not only on minute stamps, but on huge billboards, everywhere. Only in sitting with the truth, in seeing, naming, facing the full picture of shameful injustices close up, a nation may have the chance to learn from the past and to be on guard for forebodings in the present.

This little stamp on my daughter’s birthday card feels like a promising omen, bringing me rays of light amid gathering clouds. Perhaps there can be hope when we speak truth to power.