A Turn In The Right Direction

What's Going On, And What To Expect

A Framed Copy Of My First Published Article - What’s Going On with Unmarked Graves In Canada - for True North.

Friends, I have been a little slow in getting content to The Turn. This is something I aim to rectify in the near future. Please let me explain the nature of the delay. Exciting things have been happening on many fronts. I don’t even know where to begin. I suppose I’ll start with the biggest news first.

With the encouragement from friends, I submitted two written columns (on the subject of unmarked graves in Canada), one to True North and the other to The Frontier Center For Public Policy, to my surprise and delight, both were accepted. On June 4, my first piece was published  GUEST OP-ED: What’s going on with the unmarked graves in Canada? | True North (tnc.news), and then on June 6, A Narrative Reversal Like No Other | Frontier Centre For Public Policy (fcpp.org) was published. 

Even though all of this has gone to my head, I plan on continuing to write substack content - both for The Turn and for Woke Watch Canada - I love Substack, and I especially love the freedom of being able to write in whatever mode I feel like, and say whatever I want without fear of cancellation. And I am still very much interested in turning some of this writing into a book at some point. So, the more Substack writing the better!

But I’m also very much interested in writing for publication on larger platforms like True North and others. As we speak I have three new pieces submitted, so fingers crossed that they get accepted. Either way, if no one wants them, I will publish them here. Gentle readers, no matter what, all writing will get to you (you can count on me!).

Both of my unmarked graves pieces were also posted to Woke Watch Canada. In the case of What’s Going On With Unmarked Graves, the Woke Watch Canada version includes an additional thousand words (give or take), as it had been edited down a fair bit for True North.

What has been informing this writing is my involvement with a couple informal independent research groups collaborating around various topics related to identity politics (wokeism) in Canada. One group is focused on the issue of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools - including adjacent topics like the unmarked graves stories - and the other group is focused on education (K-12 for now, but post secondary education is also facing enormous issues related to ideological indoctrination and the clamping down of academic freedom and free speech - this group will eventually cover the Academy as well).

So needless to say, the developments outlined above have kept me busy, and the Turn has suffered a slight lack of content because of it. However, during all the excitement I was able to publish Why Is Situation Widdowson So Compelling, which was cited by Professor Emeritus at the University of Waterloo, Ken Westhues in his piece Woke vs. Widdowson, 2022.

While all this was happening I have also been kept busy curating the content for Woke Watch Canada. There have been some remarkable contributions. To start, the piece written by Canadian teacher Chanel Pfahl, regarding her illiberal “cancellation” - Intimidation Masquerading As Virtue Is Chilling Free Speech (substack.com), has been read over 22,000 thousand times and shared all over social media. On June 19th, the Society For Academic Freedom And Scholarship released a statement on Chanel’s case Ontario High-School Teacher Disciplined for Questioning Teaching Methods – SAFS.

On June 13th, Michael Melanson (who previously was a guest contributor to WWC), became a regular contributor with his smart analysis in When Justice Becomes Just Us - by Woke Watch Canada (substack.com). Expect to see more from Michael in the coming weeks.

On June 7, We published an essay by Mr. M (who is working with the education research group I mentioned), called A Moral Chimera - by Woke Watch Canada (substack.com), subheadline Diversity, Illiberal No-White-Male Policies and the Power of the Black Radical Tradition. Mr. M is a great researcher and writer, I’m very stoked to be working with him. 

The same can be said about Zachary Strong (another researcher working with the education group). On June 11 we published his Bill C-4: Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis (substack.com) - as a friend of mine said - “this is the most heterodox thing I’ve read on the topic.”

So please bear with me friends. I have mountains of research material to read through, and at some point soon I will go on another writing spree. For at least the next few days I have to catch up on the latest developments in Canada’s Indigenous world - most notably stories about unmarked graves at or near former residential schools - and start going through the material compiled by the new and super exciting Canadian education research group!

Thanks for reading! And thank you to all the new subscribers. For those not familiar with the other Substack I run, here are the essays I’ve written for Woke Watch Canada:

1. Billboard Chris Takes His Message To Toronto And Ottawa Schools.

2. Gender Nonconformity Is A Straight White Person’s Ticket To Woke Acceptance.

3. Hand Picked History - The Peel District School Board Forgets Remembrance Day

4. The Peel District School Board And White Supremacy (Part 1 of 2).

5. The Peel District School Board And White Supremacy (Part 2 of 2).

6. Profits Of Division: The Unfair Equity Of The Diversity And Inclusion Industry.

7. Woke Piety: The Encroachment Of A Successor Religion

8. The Resentment And Fragility Of Anti-Racism

9. The Corruption Of Canada’s Indigenous Victim Industry

10. Postcolonial Theory and Indigenous Traditional Knowledge

11. Re-Evaluating Canada’s (Un)Truth and Reconciliation Commission

12. The Race Essentialism of Ultra Woke Ontario Schools

13. Exploring The Grievance Pathway Of Anti-Racism

14. Good Canadians Hunted In The Name Of Anti-Hate

15. Before We Talk About The Indigenous And Alcohol

16. What’s Going On With Unmarked Graves In Canada?

17. A Narrative Reversal Like No Other - by James Pew