Book - The Next Civil War

Charlotte Whitton, mayor of Ottawa from 1951 to 1964, famously said,

"Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult."

I grew up in a time when a woman who became pregnant was required to leave her job or be fired. I had three sisters who were each at least as smart as me, and certainly harder working and more conscientious than me. I was the only one who got to go to university because I was male. My university studies were supported by bursary money that was available only to male children of an engineer or clergyman who was also “white, Anglo Saxon, and of a Protestant faith”.

I grew up in a time when a common expression in the US to indicate that someone really had the best in front of them was to say they were “White, male, and 21”.

In British Columbia, the government employees’ union took a case to the Supreme Court of Canada to establish that job requirements must pass a “BFOR (Bona fide occupational requirement) test” to address discriminatory hiring practices that were based on “objective merit tests” that were constructed in a way that resulted in institutionalize d discrimination. (Meiorin decision)

I’m not interested in a Make Anywhere Great Again society that wants to return to faux “meritocracy” that discriminates in favour of people like me… male, White Anglo Saxon Protestants and against so many others.