The truth always wins

My talk from our Vancouver Island Speaks! event at the Cowichan Community Centre, Saturday, June 8th, 2024

On Saturday evening, we held our long awaited (but planned on very short notice) Cowichan event. As I’ve documented, last October, our planned event at the Cowichan Community Centre (CCC) was cancelled on account of intense pressure and bullying from local activists who claimed I would engage in “hate speech” (without evidence of this, naturally) were the event to go forward. We were told that the B.C. Human Rights Code determined the speech I had not yet spoken was essentially illegal in Canada. This was not true of course, and we pushed back, with the help of our wonderful legal team at The Democracy Fund. On Friday, May 31, after months of exchanging letters back and forth, the CCC informed us they had decided to allow us to book for June 8, 2024. We were thrilled, and hustled to put something together.

The event was wonderful and inspirational, as we heard not only from the panelists, but from audience members who shared heartbreaking stories, as well as stories of changed minds, growing courage, and a desire to come together, as Canadians, and fight back.

I cannot describe how beautiful and galvanizing all our Vancouver Island Speaks! events have been, from Nanaimo, to Parksville, to Victoria, and now Duncan, B.C. I am touched and humbled by the community support and the courage these Canadians have shown in showing up, standing up, and speaking out. I feel blessed to be able to connect with and connect all of these community members across the Island, silenced by their political representatives, media, and institutions. No more!

We are planning more events later in the summer and fall, as the need remains and is growing, so be sure to subscribe here to stay up to date with new event announcements!

I’ve published my talk from Saturday’s event, lightly edited for readability, below, for paid subscribers.

To many more!

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Hi everyone. Thank you so much for coming out on short notice and during, I’m told, a hockey game. That’s very big of you, as Canadians, again, I’m told. I am lacking the Canadian hockey gene, though I make up for it in ehs.

I am just thrilled to be back on the Island again. I love it here. I’m relieved to be able to spend my time in such a beautiful place, and not in Vancouver, where I am actually from. Land of the holier than thou.

Vancouver is baffling to me, in retrospect. Having left I can see it more clearly, as a place teaming with proud progressives who believe themselves to be very invested in diversity and inclusivity but want nothing to do with people who aren’t exactly like them.

Not only that, but for people who consider themselves so very much more educated and worldly than everyone else, I’m shocked, again, in retrospect, at how insulated they are — how little they seem to understand about how people in other parts of the world, other cultures, other classes, and other communities think. The CBC blinders have offered not only a political virtuousness that prevents them even wanting to see outside their bubbles, lest their purity be tarnished by a wrongthought, but has also offered a version of “facts” and “truth” that don’t adjust according to the facts and the truth.