Journalism and peaceful protests illegal in Hamilton, Ont., but tearing down statues is just fine
Police and city officials in Hamilton, Ont. take a different approach to statues being torn down compared to journalism and peaceful protests.
So, what was more disgraceful last Saturday in Steeltown? The fact that a mob of cancel culture enthusiasts tore down a statue of our first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald? Or that members of the Hamilton Police Service simply allowed this travesty to happen, merely “observing” the vandalism rather than doing anything to prevent it?
Then again, Hamilton is a very weird place indeed when it comes to law enforcement.
For example, last year, Hamilton police did not warn residents that a notorious pedophile was living at a halfway house located near schools and playgrounds. The cops were too concerned about his privacy rights or something.
More recently, Hamilton police and Hamilton bylaw enforcement have been ticketing (and in some cases, violently arresting) peaceful anti-lockdown demonstrators at Hamilton City Hall. Why? No protesters with the Black Lives Matter movement were treated this way last summer.
Their disdain for anti-lockdown demonstrations extends to certain members of the media, too. Case in point: My colleague, Efron Monsanto, has received numerous tickets for simply chronicling the demonstrations. Why? Last I checked, journalism is not illegal in Canada… yet.
Several weeks ago, I, too, received a ticket in Hamilton for lack of social distancing… which is to say I got within two metres of a person that I was interviewing. That apparently makes me the modern day version of Typhoid Mary when it comes to Hamilton bylaw enforcement.
Indeed, a few days later I received an email. It indicated that I was being served with a ticket for a whopping $560. At first, I thought this was a joke. Whoever heard of being served by email? Usually, service is conducted by a peace officer, or at the very least, by a courier. And yet, here was this electronic notice of a violation sitting in my inbox, sent by bylaw officer Ranjeni RJ Reddy She/Her.
(By the way, the ticket I received is known as an Administrative Monetary Penalty System ticket. Translation: you cannot fight this ticket in a court of law.)
I reached out to Ranjeni RJ Reddy She/Her to see if she had ticketed any of the thugs who tore down the Sir John statue. She never got back to me. Perhaps she/her is working on she/her’s pronouns.
And so it is that yet another Sir John A. Macdonald statue bites the dust, while the authorities simply turn a blind eye to the carnage, only emboldening the cancel culture mob to further eradicate history by tearing down other statues in the months and years to come.
And why not? Unlike protesting against lockdowns, there’s no penalty for such wanton vandalism.
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