My Journey to Africa's Dano Village

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By

F. Stanley Boyd

I’m Tina Murphy-Kaulback when I met Frank Boyd for the first time in
Halifax years ago I was overwhelmed by the feeling that we had known one another
at a time centuries before in the much-fabled and ancient city of Atlantis. With
my belief in reincarnation and as I am an ancestoralization medium through which
the dead speak to the living, I learned much from my African journey. The
thought of contacting my friends when I returned to share what I learned was
very much on my mind. When Frank heard my story of how the trip transformed me
as a professional rebirther, he was impressed; he also wanted to share its
message with others, who seek adventure and also want to understand life’s
meaning more fully. My Burkina Faso trip will forever be fresh in my mind and it
is as fascinating to me now as it was when my two-day flight took me to that
place, the Dano village in Africa. Don’t miss it.

Quotes from Tina Murphy-Kaulback

“Dagara people see with their third eye – they don’t see what we see – they see more – they know what’s going on and they can tell you.”

“They exist over there to survive – not to download ring tones from the Internet.”

“They are happy people; they are very, very poor, but they don’t want for anything; they are very happy people. We have so much; they have so little.”

There are two of us, Canadians from Nova Scotia, who make this journey to Africa. Both of us are always seek the meaning of our lives and we are both women. My travel mate is my friend, Marie Lucas; we are like soul mates in that we travel often together. In any case we travel from Halifax south to Boston to east to Paris, France, across many datelines and time zones. At Paris we meet others who are going with us to our first African stop, Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. I would say the reason I am going to Africa is to go home and it is to connect with the ancestors on a deeper level.

As I am flying and Marie and I are talking, covering mile after mile in the sky and I reflect back on the East Coast Village in upper New York State where our journey actually begins.

The East Coast Village

The leader and founder of the East Coast village is of the Dagara tribe, a spiritual leader whose name is Malidoma Patrice Some. The Dagara creation story sees the planet as a frozen extension of a much brighter and more harmonious spiritual world. Malidoma says, “If we don’t maintain this world, something will happen to the Other World. Our relationship with the Spirit World is a two-way stream, and we need to fine-tune and maintain the lines of communication between the two worlds.”

Malidoma says his past is his best teacher and in writing, “Rights of Passage,” he says My name means, “be friends with the stranger/enemy,” I was taken from my village when I was 4 years old by Jesuit missionaries to be trained to join a new generation of Catholic priests. At 20, no longer able to endure the abuse and indoctrination of the seminary, I escaped back to Dano, my village. Once I was home, however, I received a mixed welcome. Many people in the tribe considered me a “white black,” contaminated by the sickness of the colonial world. Determined to reconnect with my tribe, I relearned his native tongue. A year after my return I asked the village elders to allow me to undergo the arduous process of initiation, a rite of passage usually undertaken by 13- and 14-year-olds.”

I pass the six-week ordeal and I am enthusiastically welcomed back into the tribe. I later go on to earn a Ph.D. in political science at the Sorbonne and another in literature at Brandies. I am the author of Ritual: Power, Healing and Community (Swan-Raven Books) and Of Water and the Spirit (Putnam Books).

“The Dagara people understand that the spirit that animates each of us in our life can be reborn, and that the purpose of this reincarnation is to try once again to fix this world. And this is why when we are not at peace until we find ourselves useful, wanted, valued and needed. We do not come here into this world on vacation. We come here for service and we have to remember what that service is. The nature of our service – our purpose – is configured already in the Spirit World before we come here. Community is the mirror that allows us to see our purpose, and the school is where we first learn the meaning of service.”

At the East Coast Village Marie and I learn much from Malidoma. Marie writes to Malidoma: “Opening to my heart, my ancestors, my life purpose and my African lineage has been a life saving experience.” Writing of his experience with the East Coast school and with Malidoma’s teachings Jonathan Post of Cherry Plain, NY says, “ There is an old technology that we lost a long time ago: the recognition that you can know in yourself, and in your bones, Spirit in Nature.”

We learn divination: how to communicate with the Spirit World. There are the “katomblais,” spirits that live in caves, they assist when through divination we undertake to seek unity with the spirit world.” They assist us in the determination of your life’s purpose. Using something like a divining stick and objects from the divination kit that have symbolic meaning one divines one’s life purpose. That, among other rituals, is what we learn at the East Coast village. The village is in the Taconic Hills in eastern New York, near the border with Massachusetts, a half-hour due east of Albany, New York.

“The program aims at teaching the medicine of Mother Nature, at recreating the natural instinct in the souls of people and reopening the eye to see the sacred again with an eye unhampered by modernism.” Says Malidoma.

That was then, and now it seems so long ago, and only after the passage of two days of air travel since we landed in the sweltering heat of “Ouaga.”

By contrast Halifax is about to fall under the spill of a cold weather pattern, a blizzard of some 95.5 centimeters of snow, white Juan that was preceded by the devastation of that tropical hurricane, Juan. We’ve been “Juaned” to death. The bill to remove white Juan from the streets of Halifax will top $10m, but for us to travel to our destination in Africa will not cost quite that much. Right now, some snow would keep the dust down and us cool.

The Independence Hotel in Ouagadougou

The bill to remove the polluted air from “Ouaga” might even match the cost of cleaning up the snow in Halifax caused by white Juan. The villagers wait for us to welcome their visitors from the West. A leader from our village in New York, Robert prepares the way for us by being there two weeks before our arrival.

Sareal helps us through the baggage checks with ease. The driver of our van is ready at all times to assist us, to take us to town for supplies, to make telephone calls all things we do with ease and take for granted here in Canada. In the van the driver sleeps but at the airport still we load up the van and away we sweep for the Hotel Independence. Here we meet another of our group, Laura and her friend, Afta, who makes drums. Afta promises me one that I shall pick up on my way back to Canada where it shall be the envy of all my drumming acquaintances who will want to play it in their groups.

The next morning Stephen joins us to go to Dano; he was with us in New York and he comes from Germany to take the course with us. We meet to discuss the events planned for the day. Throughout the entire trip we need to exchange money. On starting out we have Canadian currency, in New York we acquire US in Paris we get a little Euro in Ouaga we obtain CFA’s (Communante Financiere Africaine) and our driver takes us to the local money exchange, or bank.

It is January 12, 2004 and it is hot, very hot. We must go to the teller one at a time and we each require a translator to get what we want. Small bills and coin are in short supply. This takes about one hour and a half as things move in Ouaga.

As we finish we go out back to sit and wait some more. We are overlooking the street where there is much activity. The air carries with a grey hue, car fumes and other exhausts. Vendors surround us asking us to buy. Women men and children carry items on their heads. As our cars stop the children would come up to our cars to sell fruit of different kinds much as the squeegee kids do at major intersections here in Canada, with one difference in Ouaga they are everywhere.

Ana and I are walking and talking and at the same time we are visually taking everything it: we are moving slowly but our minds are racing at top speed. Visually we survey the entire scene as we are walking when, all at once my eyes meet the eyes of a beggar, a tall African man and they are fixated on him by his gestures, as the local people speak French and Dagara together. Motioning with his hands we know he’s asking for money or something to eat. Moving on, some of us went back to the Hotel but Ana and I go on. Vendors are bombarding us trying to get us to go to their booths to buy.

Then, there is this booth where there are beautiful hats of many sorts. I want to wear it, and take one back home as a reminder of this trip. As with everything, you need to dicker, if you do not dicker, the vendors are insulted. I feel that everything here moves slower and is stress free.

The Dano Village

We spent what seems like hour after hour of waiting to go to Dano and around about 2 pm we embark on a five-hour van trip to our destination in the remote village of Dano in Burkina Faso. (The Dano village, located in Burkina Faso, is about 12 degrees north of the equator in latitude and 4 degrees in east longitude of the prime meridian. (See, map of Burkina Faso.)

Finally we load up the van and we are on our way. Everyone is very excited and when this happens everyone gets very chatty. We drive and drive. The highway is paved since the last time some members of our group made this trip. “Thank heavens”, I think to myself. There are still potholes in the road. We see people walking and some driving bikes. Animals wander into the road we must honk, swerve and race to miss, or dodge them.

We stop at check points to pay tolls so that we may move on to Dano. About half way we stop to get something to eat and drink and to take a bathroom break. We are approaching this roadhouse with a very beautiful thatched roof and fortunately it is open and it has tables and chairs.

So we stop and instantly the windows of the van populate with about 10-children selling fruit and sesame cakes, a sweet treat. We buy and then go for our drinks. After about twenty minutes we get back into the van and after dark we arrive at Dano.

Our journey is yet incomplete as the compounds to which we are going are some five miles off down a very dusty road filled with even deeper potholes than the road is dusty.

Suddenly from out of nowhere I have a heart tugging sensation as we approach closer to the compounds that seem to get stronger and strong as we inch forward. It all seems like slow motion. I feel a total peace come over me and a very deep sense of belonging here and it is as if I am coming home. Tears well in my eyes so that I can hardly keep them back from my fellow pilgrims’ notice, so I look out the van’s windows in vain but there is no way to hide these feelings that are so profound that I imagine that others are also feeling. My tears are tears of joy; I know you know what I mean.

Finally we reach Malidoma’s compound and here we meet others who join our group, Palma and Kenon and Jonathan, the beer maker, Stephanie with her son Sam. We settle down in our new quarters. Our dwelling for the remainder of our visit is made of cement block with nothing in it. The windows are metal that open a little; the reason being is the mosquitoes that carry malaria. We need nets to cover our beds to protect us from mosquito bites and we also had an entire round of vaccinations before we left Canada and this is essential. Also while here we take pills to avoid malaria on our return to Canada, the USA and Germany where the members of our international group reside.

To maintain us here the villagers do a lot to each day including cleaning the sidewalks with brooms and carrying on their heads enormous jars of water for cooking and bathing. The connection here is that I have been able to communicate with those who have crossed over, ancestors, those who are dead and this helps me with my work as a healer and through rebirthing I am able to help many other people who experience problems in their lives. I have been doing this for quite a while now and it is fascinating. African spirit medicine that I am studying here is helping many people in the developed world and I use this medicine when I am rebirthing.

You see the Dagara people see with their third eye – they don’t see what we see – they see more – they know what’s going on and they can tell you. They are happy people; they are very, very poor, but they don’t want for anything; they are very happy people. We have so much they have so little. I just want to be here and to observe and to connect with them. I am at home here and I believe I am at home now. I tell Marie, who has African origins, that I am still a black person in a white body. When I came home to Canada I find it hard still to venture out, things are so confusing here; in Africa everything is reduced to simplicity. They exist over there to survive – not to download ring tones from the Internet.

All Rights Reserved Copyright 2004 © - F. Stanley Boyd
To Contact F. Stanley Boyd by email: fsjboyd@yahoo.com

--30--

Harold T: From JR'S Diary of the Hood

The tale was originally published in Fredericton New Brunswick's Northside News on September 21, 2001 at Page 19.

It was a town just like Dartmouth, Halifax or Sydney in Nova Scotia, or like St. John's in Newfoundland. It was much like Charlottetown in P.E. I., or like Saint John in New Brunswick. It was a college town like Wolfville and Antigonish in Nova Scotia, or much like Fredericton, or Sackville in New Brunswick.

Just like many kids my age I began to keep a diary of day-to-day events of my life. When I was just about eight and being a boy, I loved to climb trees. But I was­n't my "hood's best climber and I think that every small village and town has one exceptional child who thinks that he, or she is the best climber in the 'hood. You can probably think of someone who is known for his or her climbing abilities, or who thinks that they are the 'hood's best ape, that is, best climber whether it's a fence, a tree, a building, a military tank or the side of a fortress, or just a plain old cliff or mountain. Whatever it is, they claim to climb it better than anyone else. They climb it because it's there, that's the only reason and take it away and they'll climb something else. Perhaps, you know that person by the name of "the tree kid" because he's always in a tree, or perhaps he's called Mr. T. There's one in every 'hood.

Well, in my 'hood there were two Harolds: one was a musician, Harold M and the other was the tree kid, the 'hood's best climber, Harold T. The latter kid was a very wiry and tall for his age and he was coloured, too. He had very curly hair, and it was very thick and black. He had healthy dark, brown eyes and he was as agile as a cat in heat. Harold M was just the opposite; he was a bass player; he was round, thick and heavy: he had music in his soul that sparkled from his dark brown eyes, like but­ter shines on whole-wheat toast. Like a duck glides on water he was calm and passive, except with music.

On Sundays, after church, we boys had the habit to gather at the schoolyard to play jackknife on the old, fallen oak. We'd straddle the tree's trunk and twirl the knife until its blade lodged into the tree. Then, we moved quickly to see how many fingers we could get under its handle in order to determine the eventual win­ner of the game. Five fingers were five hundred; three fingers, three hundred and so on. There was always a dispute because some hands are larger and others are smaller. The eventual winner is determined by the greater number if finger under the knife. Normally, the fingers used to determine the winner are those of the players in the game at the time. Some others had a very different take on that rule.

The Tree Challenge

The whole gang, except Kenny, was there… Harold M, his little brother, Gordie, Harold T and me. Things got a little upset when Harold M beat Harold T at jack­knife, using little Gordie's fingers. Harold T thought of himself as the leader so with his pride hurt he challenged Harold M to a climb at the chestnut, the tallest tree in the 'hood. The challenger climbing to the point highest would be the winner. There would be no challengers or so thought Harold T thought because Harold M was afraid of heights. I was not allowed to climb any­thing so I just watched and Gordie was just a small fry so he gawked too.

When Harold M wouldn't agree to climb; Harold T said that he'd tell the rest of us all about the things they were saying about Harold M's mother. Now, that was a serious challenge in those days, threatening to talk about someone's mother was sure to get a reaction. Those who wouldn't respond were cowards and ashamed of his mother. Everyone in the 'hood would talk about it. So the challenge was on.

I watched as Harold T ran up the old chestnut to places up there that none of us had ever been -- to the eagle's nest very near the top of the world he climbed. Looking down, all the while taunting Harold M to· climb higher. He went so far that we could barely see him anymore. Near the eagle's nest he rose up on a big limb, beating his chest with his hands like Tarzan, King of the Hood, and bellowed his call in triumph because Harold M was deathly afraid of heights. Everyone knew that Harold M would lose.

So, we were about to offer Harold M our condolences when a loud cracking sound· shattered the quiet. It was the limb from which Harold T was shouting victory that was coming crashing down, giving way under the influ­ence of gravity.

We could hear it coming; it and Harold T were hitting other larger limbs, gnarling their way through like a glacier through the tree's foliage, crackling, thudding everything in its path. The limb on which Harold T stood was first to hit the ground and bounced back, half way up, almost as fast as it came down.

Shortly after its arrival, Harold struck the pavement at the base of the chestnut on the top of his head. He didn’t bounce as I thought he would. He collapsed in a heap and went unconscious in like a coma.

Although it was not funny as we stood there shaking him to consciousness we noticed he had no socks or shoes on.

Someone said: "Where are his sneakers?"

"He's got no socks!" I said.

Then, out of the blue one of his sneakers came down and hit him on the chest, and then like a feather one of his socks whirled to the ground ever so softly. At that moment the thought ran through my mind that it would have been better if Harold T had not climbed the chestnut in the first place, but since he had, he would have been better to be like a feather.

The other sneaker was up the tree, the other sock we never found. Harold T lay unconscious in a heap on the ground with us trying to revive him until one of us ran for help and we found "Big Red" coming home from his Sunday shift at the City Field, the public works depart­ment. Big Red took Harold T home with us in tandem carry­ing his sneakers and a sock to report what had happened. Sunday dinner was a big thing in those days and everyone gave reports of their day’s activities.

I can be blamed for failing to report Harold T's fall m grace. As daylight gave way to darkness my gang and I thought about the day's event, and we met on the street corner, where we always hung out, just before the curfew horn, around 8 pm. All of us together, including Kenny, were there, but the tree man, Harold T, wasn't.

When the curfew horn sounded, I was in bed and it was Gordie, I could hear playing his Spanish guitar and hollering for his brother, Harold M to come· home from wherever he was playing his bass and Little Gordie cried:

Haaa-haa orl! Haaa-haa haa orl!

From my bed I would imitate Gordie every night that summer:

Haaa-haa orl! Haaa-haa haa orl!

By the way, that same chestnut yet stands in it place; while some of us who were there that day are gone from the landscape.

Confessions of An Accidental Tourist

This article appeared in Fredericton, New Brunswick's Northside News on September 7, 2001 at page 21. Northside News has the distinction of being one of Canada's smallest bi-weekly newspapers in the picturesque province of New Brunswick.


By
Frank Boyd

Each spring, like a rite of passage, Atlantic Canadians make the annual, obligatory, business pilgrimage to Toronto. Yet, as I begin this "business" trip there are, struggling with­in me, a conflicting persona - the businessman seeking cash rewards and the tourist seeking something that's been lost - community, a sense of belonging.

My tight agenda - carved on granite tablets and impec­cably organized to be cost efficient ~ leaves no time for unplanned stops. In fact, to avoid the cost of a hotel room, I am undertaking a 12.5-hour trip over night. Just consult the computer and you will find websites that can get you to Toronto, defining the shortest, most cost efficient route in miles, or kilometers. The weather is sunny; the temperature is rising, the day is June 6th and the time is 4 p.m.

My travel route begins in Fredericton and extends across Maine, through New Hampshire, and Vermont on to Montreal and down the 401 to Toronto just in time for busi­ness to begin the following morning.

At Houlton, Maine we pick up the Interstate 95. It's a smooth performer. In no time I am passing the base of the Appalachian Mountains. In the distant haze one can see the Longfellow range.

At Bangor, where I gas up and take Route 2, Maine becomes a study of contrast with the towns and villages of Canada. Time, in Maine, has changed the landscape very lit­tle. Maine is, still, the sportsman's Mecca it used to be; it is now, after all, home of eccentric novelist Stephen King. So, Maine does have some diversity. The towns of Maine blur as I pass them- Newport, Skowhegan and New Sharon.

The Village of New Sharon's public library must be famous the world over for its small size. It forms a stark con­trast to the mammoth Chapters of Fredericton and other places in Canada. Yet, there is still something quaint, a time­less quality to what you see. Like a journey through a bygone, yet unforgotten, era, the 50's in Maine shall never die.

As I cross the Maine - New Hampshire border at Bethel, there's a sense that the era of the 50's is behind me, and a new era is about to begin. Although sunset has not occurred, day­light is starting to fade.

Between Gorham and Lancaster there's New Hampshire's Mt. Washington and the White Mountains, where here tourism is king, and where manicured motels and Inns are in abundance.

At Lancaster I enter Vermont and between Danville, Barton and Orleans the sun is setting, but the Green Mountains can still be seen. In the shadows of this mountain I can see Vermont's history, its old General Ethan Allen, his Green Mountain Boys and Benedict Arnold at Fort Ticonderoga during the Rebellion.· "Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year."

We have a unique heritage which binds us, we Canadians and Americans, and sometimes it even eludes us. If we lose sight of what we have, a border of thousands of miles and on both sides a common heritage, we are lost.

An accident is on the horizon, if, I don't soon rest. As that thought fades, it happens. Somewhere just ahead in the dark­ness, I am catching the glint of eyes reflecting my headlights back at me. A deer or a moose perhaps! Slow down! My foot hits the brake, I dim my high beams and I flashed on my cau­tion lights and substantially reduce speed.

I see it clearly now. It's a large deer. It looks well practiced or trained in crossing roads because it seems to look both ways before it saunters past. Like crosswalks for ducks in Nova Scotia, perhaps Vermont will lead the way and estab­lish deer and moose crosswalks with flashing caution lights.

''My engine's going"

Here's Newcastle and my motor's getting very loud. I am pulling over for assistance. That was quick the mechanic tells me my engine's gone. That's when you get deeply suspicious of mechanics, isn't it?

In an instant of losing control, an enormous mental transi­tion occurs from that of "getting somewhere" to that of "being somewhere". Events occur so rapidly that I became an accidental tourist almost without realizing it.
It's noon June 7 and in 2 hours my appointment in Mississauga is scheduled to begin. I postpone my meeting until tomorrow, Friday, June 8, at the same time, 2 pm. In my hotel room I collapse and fall to sleep.

The new connections take a lot less time to make than even the travel time from the downtown hotel to this office. So, I take the subway back to the hotel. Out the front of the Hotel is Jarvis at the back is Gould. At the end of Gould there is an unexpected and very remarkable place, a plaza.

Dawn the "Accidental Tourist"

Tree trunks cut into stumps dot the plaza. They look out of place there, just like stumps in a clear-cut forest do. But in fact they aren't stumps at all; they are chess tables and what looks like stumps are really stools or chairs. At the intersec­tion of Gould and Yonge Streets, this plaza, known informal­ly as the Chess Corner, has an official name. It is called Hacksel Place, named after Alfred Hacksel, a one-time immi­grant, who died in 1997 and who, since 1972, played outra­geous chess there.

"It's unique to Canada," says Sandy, a South African who says he's traveled allover the world, and who's been playing chess at the corner for over 20 years. ''There· are master Chess players here from all over the world," says Casey from Poland, adding, "I have been playing here as long as Sandy." Like wrestlers, chess players here don't have, or don't use their last names. There's Ray, the Mad Egyptian; Gabriel, the Killer Kosovar; Larry, the American; Vince, the Italian; JJ, the East Indian and George, the Great Hungarian.

Four of the corner's Chess players and myself have dinner at Reilly's Sports Bar on Yonge Street to watch the women fight, the daughters of the boxing legends...Mohammed Ali and Smokin' Joe Frasier. In the bar chess is being played. The day is being toasted with drinks, iced tea, and now I am returning to my hotel. It's around 3 am.

At the Chess Corner they're still playing and there's one big game going on right now - a five-minute format game. The winner takes $20.00 a game.
Gabriel, the Kosovar, is losing right now to Dr. Hum, the illusive Asian. Both players believe that they can win; what looks finished is not - not until time runs out.

I play chess here for two more days and make acquain­tances with some of the most interesting and shadowy char­acters I have ever seen and still I know no one's last name. The only tie between us is the game of Chess. Most impor­tant, I feel at home here and at peace with myself - I belong here even though I don't know anyone's last name and that is the way everyone wants it.

I find acceptance here without explanations as to who I am and what I do. At last I am renewing my long-lost sense of community that I once had enjoyed in the neighborhood of the small city in which I was born. Remarkably, what was lost is found again and in no place other than Canada's largest city - Toronto. Who'd a thought it?

Is it the trip or is it the destination in which we find per­sonal fulfillment? I believe the pilgrim's ultimate objective is to find Orion's Gate; the doorway to forever, and once you find it, there are just two important questions left: Do I have the courage to open that gate voluntarily?

Do I have the courage it takes to pitch, or erect my tent inside?

Extra Billing: the doctors' view

Battle-lines are drawn on the future of Medicare
By FRANK S. BOYD

Before Medicare in 1969, only patients worried about medi­cal costs. Today, only re­sponsible politicians seem concerned about them, but the weight of patients' anxiety is mount­ing over uncertain access to physi­cian care. Once physicians ulcerated over growth in uncollectible fees. Today income is secure. Thanks to government, uncollectibles are cher­ished heirlooms of the past. Relics of free enterprise that to some in the profession are beginning to look good.

Open market conditions pre­vailed before Medicare. A fee in­crease could result in patients mov­ing to a rival doctor. There were inequities - those who could. pay demanded physician care and got it; those who could not, did not de­mand it and perhaps went without. In those days demand for physician care grew slowly and a physician catered to his paying patients to keep them.

Medicare changed all that. It produced a sharp increase in physi­cian-care demand and the clientele changed too. The new demand was undifferentiated, now the poor as well as the rich demanded and got treatment. Physicians' income rose with demand and has continued to increase.

The medical profession's alliance with government was good. It was good even though in most provinces physicians were asked to accept 85­90-per-cent of the fee-for-service as full payment, in lieu of uncollect­ibles. Still, the 10-15-per-cent of the unrecovered tariff were collected by billing the patient directly, thus ex­tra billing was born and through it physician incomes took another boost.

The problem of tariff increases gave new life to medical societies, formerly fraternal clubs. Today they are powerful unions negotiat­ing with government, paymaster of what are still technically "self-em­ployed" professionals. But Medicare wasn't perfect. Arise in government

"We're not Missionaries basically, doctors are free-thinkers, used to being their own bosses and doing their own thing."

red tape and insufficient tariff in­creases left physicians still with un­collectibles. To maintain their eco­nomic status, they began ~to work harder, lay-off more staff and see more patients. Fee-for-service and extra billing income went up, at the expense of professional freedom and, some say, the quality of care.

Statistics Canada shows that over a 28-year-period (1951-1979) physician incomes have stayed ahead of inflation and kept pace with other professional groups. Rapid, early­1970-growth was slowed by modest mid-1970-gains, h9wever, physi­cian-income--increases have exceeded the change in earnings of other self-employed professionals, even den­tists. (See table p. 35)

In Atlantic Canada the income picture roughly parallels the na­tional situation. Physician income continues to lead the way among self-employed professionals.

"We're not missionaries. Doctors are free-thinkers, used to being their own bosses and doing their own thing." said Nova Scotia Medical Society president Dr. Murdock A. Smith of Sydney.

Dr. Smith said overhead costs are rising constantly. In specialities like opthalmology, which requires high-priced technologists and expen­sive equipment, start-up and con­tinuing overhead costs are high. In addition, he said, a high demand is placed on doctors' services. They feel the fees they receive are insuffi­cient to meet overhead, to pay staff and to provide for their families.
''I'm a bargain; the government's got a good buy in me," said Dr. Smith. ''I'm providing a lot of medi­cal care, about 80-hours a week, and I'm keeping a lot of other people going." He said he is putting a lot of money back into the economy as well as paying taxes. He describes himself as a working-harder-than­average general practitioner, who is at the peak of medical proficiency after 13 years of experience. He said that a physician in a group practice who is well-established is making a little more than $100,OOO-a-year. Of this about 25-per-cent goes to the taxman, another 33-per-cent pro­vides overhead and the physician retains about 42-per-cent as earn­ings. From this must come pension allowances and other expenses which self-employed professionals must pay.

"I need every cent I can get my hands on to run my house and fam­ily," he said with a chuckle during a telephone interview, ''I'd like to get a little time off every now and then, and take care of the future a bit."

Total fee-for-service payments, since Medical Services Insurance (MSI) began in Nova Scotia, have been vast. The Nova Scotia Health Services and Insurance Commis­sion's executive director, Jack G. Hare, denies that expenditures are out of control. The Commission's responsibility is to audit the system, although the audits are performed by Maritime Medical Care Inc. The Commission's main concern is with fraudulent claims and their detec­tion. A claim is fraudulent when the Commission is billed by a physician for unnecessary and unrendered ser­vices. The easiest to prove, Mr. Hare said are where services have not been rendered by the physician.

"No one is ever completely satis­fied that they are doing everything." Mr. Hare, an experienced chartered accountant said. "But you have to balance the cost of doing that other, against the amount you're liable to detect."

Fee-for-service payments have increased 178.0-per-cent over the 10­years since Medicare began, while billing-above-tariff, or extra billing, has increased 167.2-per-cent. While, as Provincial Health Minister Ger­ald Sheehy has repeatedly said, ex­tra billing is small, only about 3.0 - ­per-cent of total fee-for-service ex­penditures, inequities of the system lie in who and how many physicians extra bill their patients. (See chart p.35)

The financial incentives of Medi­care could prove to be the seed of its own destruction. The more the phy­sician works the more he earns in fee-for-service income, the more he extra bills, placing greater and greater financial burden on the provincial treasury.

The man responsible for nego­tiating the tariff increases for the Nova Scotia Medical Society is its executive director, Douglas D. Pea­cock, a busy man in his fifties. Be­tween 1951 and 1979 physician workload increased 252.4-per-cent while the number of physicians in­creased by only 148.9-per-cent, he said. Despite improvements in productivity since 1951, there has been an increase in public demand for physician care of 96-per-cent. But government, instead of using finan­cial deterrents to limit excessive de­mands, are attempting to control physician manpower.

"Who do you think is paying the taxes in this country?" he asked. "If you examine the MacEachen budget you'll find the people who are using Medicare excessively are not the ones paying the taxes by any stretch of the imagination; they really are not!"

The ones putting the pressure on the system and increasing costs are not paying taxes he said, they are on welfare and unemployment insur­ance. He has no statistics to prove his point, but he has talked to doc­tors and this is the "type of clientele they have." Doctors, he said, are unable to do anything about it. It is not the physicians who should be re­quired to provide the deterrent, but government. Doctors are required to report excessive users to M.S.l. so that restraint can be implemented.


"We've got a large-scale problem on our hands." Mr. Peacock said. However, the commission's execu­tive secretary D. H. Waller knows nothing of this.

"No, I can't say we have any system like that in effect," he said. "There has been a rare case where a physician has had an occasion to write the commission, making a complaint, maybe one or two times in all the years its been in opera­tion."

"It's up to the physician, we can­not tell him not to see the patient," he said. There have been more occa­sions when the commission has writ­ten physicians asking if all the calls a patient made were necessary. Phy­sicians are not always paid for all the visits they bill for.

The issue of extra billing turns on whether or not Medicare is per­ceived as an insurance program or socialized medicine. The medical society takes the view that Medicare is an insurance program, requiring user participation in the form of 'balance billing.'

The Canada Medicare Act and matching provincial statutes make it clear, Mr. Peacock said, that Medicare is an insurance program and government's role is that of a carrier, the body obligated to pay its share of medical costs. The society denies that extra billing is a barrier to reasonable access 'to health care despite suggestions to the contrary by two recent federal inquiries.

'The provincial act says that physicians can bill the patient what­ever they want," Mr. Hare said. "Therefore, as long as physicians follow the rules nobody can com­plain. They may not liKe it ... but what can they do?"

The only protection for the con­sumeris that the law says the physi­cian must make the patient aware that he does bill, the patient must agree to the billing and the physician must report the amount of the bil­ling to the commission. It is on the basis of these reports that the com­mission's civil servants make month­ly reports to the minister.

"Of course too, there's always the possibility that we are not get­ting full records." he paused, and then added, "But I would think that anyone that's reported to us $40,000 of extra billing hasn't hidden any of the rest of it."

"Balance billing is a discretion­ary thing on the part of the doctor." Mr. Peacock said, "There's no doubt about it, errors in judgment are made and somebody without two nickles to rub together is asked to pay an additional fee."

The society's policy is tha t peo­ple on provincial and local welfare, war veterans allowance and most pensioners are not required to pay extra billing. The society has also established a Billing-above- Tariff Review committee to examine and mediate disputes that arise and to evaluate extra billing data on an on­going basis. The committee has no sanctions in mediating disputes but it can bring peer pressure to bear on physicians who go too far.

The distribution of extra billing revenues seems to be highly concen­trated and while it is a small per­centage of fee-for-services payments to physicians, it raises some ethical questions: The physicians who extra bill most also receive the greatest share of fee-for-service income. Do they really need it? The fact is that extra billing has increased in all but one of the 10-years of MSl. The dol­lar amount of extra billing fell only in 1977. Since 1977, the number of physicians extra billing has con­tinued to rise. (See table p. 39)

It is important to note that not all physicians extra bill. That is why examining the distribution of extra billing revenues is important. In ad­dition, some of the extra billing is probably uncollectible. But in 1979­80, 32.S-per-cent of extra billing was recorded by only 7.6-per-cent of physicians and who were earning $100,000-a-year or more.

In the following year the trend continued. In 1980-81, 43.1-per-cent of extra billing was recorded against 1l.8-per-cent of physicians in the same income bracket. By the end of this fiscal year the total will be larg­er. The extra billing average income in 1980 was $8,098 for $100,000-earners from MSI; (They may have earned more from Workers Compen­sation.) and in 1981 it was $8,249.

The range of extra billing moved from a high of more than $40,000, reported by one physician, to a low of less than $10, recorded by others. Although the absolute number of middle income physicians fell, by 16 doctors, the amount of extra bil­ling in dollar terms was about the same.


"What it indicates to me at least," Mr. Hare said "is that they are not extra billing because they need it to meet their overhead. They're extra billing for some other reason ... dollars and cents."

"In all honesty, there are some physicians who charge every patient who comes in the door," said the medical society's Doug Peacock, "they have declared in their own minds that they will not accept the society's policy."

There are some who come to know their patients well, he said, and either do not or would not extra bill them. Ordinarily, new physi­cians do not extra bill because of the red tape associated with doing it. It is only when they become more established that physicians extra bill, he said. The society has no dis­ciplinary authority over its mem­bers, he said, it is a matter of per­suasion.

"I don't think it is entirely the doctors' responsibility to control fees." said Dalhousie associate pro­fessor of health economics Murray G. Brown, "They're operating within the rules of the game as set down by the legislature of this province and as long as the Medical Services Insurance Act does not prohibit extra billing it is hard to claim that this behaviour is wrong." It is im­portant not to draw the conclusion that high incomes mean that physi­cians are practicing excessively, he warned, some service items especi­ally those of specialists have a very high unit price associated with them.

"Extra billing is a matter of inter­nal discipline and it is very difficult," Mr. Brown said, "for the medical society to get agreement among its members to discipline themselves."

Still, the Nova Scotia govern­ment shows no sign of a willingness to ban extra billing. 'They're in bed with us on this issue." Doug Peacock said and he added, "Medicare is not sick but as far as this issue is concerned we may be sitting on a time bomb. We don't know what the federal government has in mind for Medicare."

A look ahead

Atlantic Canada's most estab­lished profession has a very uncer­tain future. Economic committees of Atlantic Canada's medical socie­ties will be meeting, pondering what impact British Columbia's settle­ment - the society's loss of extra billing - and the recommendations of the Parliamentary task force on federal-provincial fiscal arrange­ments will have on tariff negotia­tions and the future of their profession. There is also the MacEachen budget to be concerned about. Hope within the profession is dwindling that the island of free-enterprise can withstand the onslaught.

Among other things, the task force recommended the banning of extra billing. Legitimate interests of doctors must give way, the report says, to the broad public perception that uncontrolled billing of patients beyond the levels of provincial med­ical plans will ultimately destroy medicare.

"You cannot fight the times; the federal government is a socialist government." the medical society's executive director said, "It has a majority and can pass any laws it likes in the House. We know quite clearly what the feelings of Monique Begin are but the feelings of a lot of her confreres will be a levelling force. Fortunately, the entire Liberal government is not as socialistic as Monique and Marc Lalonde are."

Only nationally can Atlantic Canadian physicians deal with the federal government threat to social­ize their profession. The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) is their national voice. It must wait until the federal government makes the first move; only then will the medical profession know what it has to face. "It will be part of our game plan to do all we can," Mr. Peacock said, "to prevent the banning of extra bil­ling."

"Who do you think pays the taxes? People using Medicare excessively are not the ones paying taxes."

The medical society claims that extra billing has served an important function in its working relationship with government. Physicians say that the power of extra billing has kept their options open in tariff and other negotiations with government and rather than strike, they say, as long as they have extra billing they can offer their services directly to patients by billing them. In this power war the patient is in the mid­dle. In Quebec, where that govern­ment has imposed income ceilings the system has not worked, said the Nova Scotia medical society presi­dent Dr. Murdock Smith. In that province recently doctors have gone on strike because they lacked the option of billing patients directly and, he said that this, government bureaucracy, combined with income ceilings placed on earnings, have stifled physician initiative there.

In Montreal there is a doctor who left the plan altogether, he said, and high-income executives are wil­ling to pay him $100 a shot.

"There are always elitists in every society you know. You don't think that the Commissars in Russia go to the feld­shers (Soviet nurse practitioners) for treatment, and in England there are at least two systems of health care, public and private."

Total ban

Active community, consumer and labor groups across Atlantic Canada are opposed to extra billing. New Brunswick's Health Coalition chairman Bill Petrie suggests a total ban be put on it. Nova Scotia Feder­ation of Labour president, Chester Sanford, said that there should be no deterrents to health care. Health care costs should be met totally by government, he said. The Federa­tion's position has not changed since ­the program began and its position is that extra billing should be ban­ned.

Nova Scotia's Health Coalition chairman Ian Johnson said it op­poses extra billing because it creates a two-tiered system of health care delivery, one for the rich another for the poor. It is a problem not just in Nova Scotia and in Atlantic Canada but across the country, he said.

"I've seen some very sympathetic doctors who are willing to work with consumers," said Ian Johnson, "and they are not out to gouge the consumer; they are concerned first about quality of their service and second about their incomes."

Medical societies throughout At­lantic Canada claim their members are falling behind in income relative to other occupational groups. Truck drivers, carpenters and plumbers, they say, are closing the gap on them and they are angry about it.

Federal Finance Minister Allan MacEachen has given them nothing to smile about. He has taken from them, and all other self-employed Canadians, some important tax fringes: income averaging and tax write-offs on the cost of money bor­rowed for RRSPs.

The finance minister's budget brought the two-sides, physicians and their opposition, together mo­mentarily by his expressed intention to eliminate provincial transfers from Established Programs Financ­ing's revenue guarantee portions, but as the dust settled it became clear to the national federation of provincial health coalitions, the Canadian Health Coalition, that the two-billion-shortfall would mean increased extra billing. So the war goes on.

"Physicians say they are fighting for a way of life they call free enterprise. But if Monique Begin has her way, they may be denied the right to extra-bill."

Altantic Canada physicians say that they are fighting for a way of life they call free enterprise not just, increased income. But if the health minister Monique Begin has her way
physicians may be denied the right to extra bill. They say that judging from past performance the health minister seems determined to change their way of life and the face of health service delivery in Canada. The response from the nation's phy­sicians is uncertain. They wait on pins and needles for the next move from the federal government.

Socialized medicine, salaried physicians with no additional money incentives to spur them on, moves steadily closer and closer. Mean­while, dentists and other health professionals, not quite in the physi­cians' plight, stand by and watch. AB

Bermuda's Thriving Economy

By
Frank Boyd

Imagine a frost-free, subtropical climate in the south Atlantic where the absolute minimum temperature never falls below 50 degrees Fahrenheit. No snow and most people have golden-brown suntans.

Imagine a country where there's no unemployment and government civil servants report the employment rate, rather than the rate of unemployment. Every­one who wants to work has a job and some have two or three.

Imagine further that the last public debt occurred more than four-years ago, a mere $4.3 million, an amount equivalent to the cost of financing Nova Scotia's massive public debt for a mere 4.3 days.

The country is Bermuda, a paradise vacation island for many Atlantic Canadians, permanent retreat for some of the region’s richest tax exiles and a safe heaven for many leading corporations.

As a tourist Mecca and business base, Bermuda has influence way beyond it size. With a land area of only 19.5 square miles the island has almost no natural resources, and a work force of only 22, 000. Yet its gross domestic product per capita in 1980 was $11,888, $599.00 more than Canada’s.

Bermuda is now operating home of the Castline, a major competition for Atlantic Canada’s container shipping industry. But apart from tourism and such well-known tax exiles as K.C. Irving, the economic links are few. Saguenay Shipping has given up the last of the direct Halifax-Hamilton sea calls and total Canadian exports now represent only seven per cent of Bermuda’s foreign trade. The United States has 54 per cent and Britain 14. But this hasn’t slowed Bermuda’s progress.

In February, Bermuda's finance minister J. David Gibbons announced that a mile- stone in. the country's financial history was turned -- a billion dollar economy. In a country where all vehicles drive on the left Bermuda’s economy is moving right. But a paradise, it isn’t.

Bermudians have no direct taxation in the form of income tax such as we have in Atlantic Canada. There are however numerous forms of indirect taxation on luxury items. The country's taxation policy has attracted thousands of international businesses to Bermuda in the form of offshore or exempt companies. This sector of the economy has grown dramatically.

Not until tourism emerged in the early years of the 1940s, along with the development of Bermuda's first airport by the Americans, did this tiny isle, the fair weathered British colony just 580 miles from the United States, start its transition into what it is today, the genteel money factory of the mid-Atlantic.

What the casual Atlantic Canadian visitor finds in Bermuda are luxury hotels, bone-white beaches, an interesting mix of Bermuda's proud African heritage, some Portuguese, and a generous slice of 0l’England, all less than two-hours flying time southeast of Halifax International airport.

About 60 percent of Bermuda's 56,000 people are of Black African origin; most others are also Bermuda-born and include - White British and Portuguese immi­grants. The island is self-governing, but still boasts of its British colonial status, as one, if not the last, remnant of the British Empire. Still, foreign policy is decided in Whitehall as it's always been; its defence is in the hands of British troops, though the presence of American servicemen is felt everywhere, and its governor His Excellency Viscount Dunrossil, C.M.G., represents the Queen.

There are no beggars tugging at your sleeves, no neon American signs marking hamburger joints jumping out at you from all directions. No souvenir vendors greeting you from sidewalk boutiques no fried chicken stands and no gam­bling casinos, just a quality resort. Bermuda, often called the Switzerland of the Atlantic, is far more subtle than that and its thriving economy is just as diffi­cult to describe.

At the center of Bermuda's remarkable economic growth stands the country's Premier the Honourable John W. Swan (UBP- E. Paget), an American educated black Bermudian and a reputed millionaire. The premier's offices are located in a square -­limestone building, surrounded by a tall, oxidized iron barrier and lined by aged royal palms. The Cabinet Building, dignified and business-like, stands on Hamilton's Front Street. Access to the premier is guarded by a thick electronic door, operated by remote control from a monstrous reception desk, in the impressive main foyer of the quietly elegant building.

Moving away from his mahogany table-desk, surrounded by the finest dark maple paneling, 6 ft. 4 ins., second black premier of Bermuda flashed a smile and sat down on a nearby beige sofa.

"Bermudians are saying we want unbridled opportunity and I am satisfied that that process has started." the 47-year-01d-father of three and former reel estate salesmansays.

Swan leads the United Bermuda Party (UBP), which many Blacks call the "White man's party." They say the UBP is fronted by Swan but controlled and run by the “Front Street Boys,” or “the Forty Thieves.” Swan insists that today everyone shares in the benefits of Bermuda's booming economy. The opposition Progressive Labour Party (PLP) denies this claim. Swan said results speak for themselves and urged an objective look be taken at Bermuda's prosperity and in particular the impact of international business on the' country.

Whether the benefits derived from Bermuda’s international business actually
outweigh the costs incurred in its operation remained until recently an open question.
Reservations are now being expressed over the Reisman report's recommendations
promoting Bermuda's expansion as an international banking center -- the Switzerland of the Atlantic.

All industry has an impact on a country, but especially an island. Whereas Bermuda’s chief industry is tourism there are equal concerns about an industry’s impact on both the economy as well as the physical environment. Whether Bermuda's international business pollutes or not is not is not the issue, for the industry has generated pressures on land use and created housing shortages, traffic congestion and other political and economic problems.

Data are difficult to obtain on international business in Bermuda, as elsewhere_ for, anonymity is the' stock in trade of such operations. A report prepared for the ministry of finance in November, 1977 states that the 1950 Exempt Companies Act brought on the boom. Simon Reisman states the legislation was aimed deliberately at increasing the number of international businesses, which have enjoyed a remarkable growth. From the outset in 1935 international businesses development grew rapidly from virtual1y nothing to more than two-thousand firms by 1970.

The main attractions have been Bermuda's absence of restrictions, low tax liability, good infrastructure and excellent communications. But will too rapid growth and success change all that?

Estimates of local spending made by Bermuda's international business sector illustrate its worth to the tiny island's economy. According to the Royal Gazette, one of three island newspapers, the industry produced $ 30million in 1971 and seven ­years later the figure had almost doubled at $53-mil1ion. Included in these estimates are direct expenditures for salaries and operating expenses, government taxes, fees and professional services.

Professional firms grow along with the international businesses: legal, accounting, management services and banking firms have sprouted up. In 1966 ten local firms earned nearly half of their revenue by servicing a thousand exempt
companies; whereas, 26-local firms by 1971 earned half of their annual revenue from about 2,250 exempt companies. Hence international business has contributed greatly to Bermuda’s economy, but they are also consumers of the island's meager resources at a even more remarkable rate.

The Registry of Companies listed 4,872 exempt companies as of September, 1979. Bermuda's Chamber of Commerce, International Companies Division (ICD) estimates that 300-exempt companies have office space in Bermuda, with about, 30-other management and accounting firms providing the remainder of the industry's space allocation. Exempt companies occupied 302,028-square feet of office space, which was about one-fourth of Hamilton's office space in 1979 as estimated by ICD. In terms of land use this represents about two-and-one half acres, or about one-percent of the island's commercial acreage. This figure increases greatly if a proportionate share of office space for the 30 or so local firms providing services to exempt companies were added.

In addition exempt companies employ Bermudians as well as non-Bermudians,
who in turn occupy residential space. The exempt companies employ about 2, 350-workers: about 1,600 Bermudians and 750 non-Bermudians. These groups together are estimated to use upward to one-and-one-half million square feet for housing, without gardens and other structures which is estimated would at least double the land use figure.

Not surprisingly, rents have jumped dramatically. Bermuda has no rent control and none is foreseen. Property purchase by non-Bermudians has been restricted by law to specified locations. Not just anyone is allowed, or can afford to purchase a property on the island. British or Canadian citizenship and at least $100,000 provides a fighting chance, but few could afford the like of Frank Sobey’s estate “Nova Heaven” in Warwick Parish and K.C. Irving’s “Skyline” tax retreat in Southampton.

The government has good reason to be grateful to its expatriate, individuals and corporations. In 1979 ICD estimated about $ 60 million, including some $300,000 in educational aid, was added to the economy by exempt companies, or about 11 percent of the GDP, others estimate that contribution to be about 20-to-30 percent.

One of the more obvious costs of Bermuda’s economic success is its traffic problem. Since the general introduction of the motor car 1946, their number has grown to average by a car a day for 34 years, with the total number of licensed vehicles now more than 36,000 compared with 3,176 three decades ago.

There is roughly one motor vehicle for every six yards of road, a traffic density second only to Hong Kong, and quite a few of them are driven by “corporate immigrants.”

Exempt companies also compete for labour. The Bermuda International Business Association (BIBA) wants the Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA), the island’s central bank, to take a much harder line on applications from exempt companies seeking management powers in addition to the right to operate. The BIBA pressures government to deny management rights to exempt companies.

"These companies have been setting up here and touting for business,” said BlBA's accountant spokesman Tony Curtis-Brown adding, "We see absolutely no need for an exempt company to be allowed to have management powers when there are already about 80-management firms doing business in Bermuda. These applications shouldn't even be considered," he said.

In the competition for space, the offshore corporations have had a twofold effect. Not only have rents gone up but the quality of the accommodation offered at the higher price range has fallen.

Once Bermuda's working class obtained mortgage financing, fixed at a seven per cent
ceiling, from John W. Swan Ltd, a deposit company. That option is no longer available since the recent sale of the company by the premier, leaving the less well off with no source of alternative mortgage financing available to them. Mr. Swan totally rejects the suggestion, saying the Bermuda Housing Corp. is providing far more residential mortgages than his company ever did.

The only consideration is what is in the best interest of Bermuda, keeping it viable and as unrestrictive as possible,” said Swan.

As for the BIBA’s claim of unfair competition from the exempt companies Swan said that each application is considered on its own merit by the BMA, and that Tony Curtis-Brown’s comments were unfounded.

To solve the island’s traffic problem, a gradual reduction to 10,000 cars has been proposed.

As far as imposing any restrictions on the future growth of tax-exempt foreign corporations, Mr. Swan says “obviously, there are those who are in, who want to see to it that those who are out, stay out. That’s the basic issue. The question which then arises is what best serves Bermuda. That’s my interest and such decisions are made based on the merits of each applicant.”

Ordinary Bermudians, particularly men and black people, mistrust international companies, due to their practice of hiring of foreign administrative staff and Bermudians, mostly women, as clerical support workers. They also fear that international companies will obtain undue policy influence over the government, and activity of some Bermuda’s international companies is suspected, particularly since more have come under the scrutiny of the United States government.

Premier Swan went to Washington last year and shared a breakfast prayer meeting with President Reagan. The president apparently requested information on U.S. international businesses incorporated in Bermuda and their escape of U.S. taxes.

The following day Premier Swan flew to London for a meeting with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher concerning constitutional matters. Independence for the colony was not on the agenda.

ENCOUNTER WITH THE KLAN

Saturday March 6 1993 The Chronicle—Herald/The Mail-Star Page B 1


ENCOUNTER WITH THE KLAN

Byline: By Frank Boyd SPECIAL



KKK’s Canadian roots run deep

By Frank Boyd SPECIAL


Few Nova Scotians realize that the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan have a long history in Canada, although Confederate soldiers established the organization in the United States in 1805.

The early Klansmen formed as a social group; the name, from the Greek “Kuklos”, means circle. They saw themselves as a moral force upholding law and order. Their chief aim was to intimidate blacks into submission following the civil war and to drive the northern carpetbaggers out of the south.

Throughout the South and into the northern states, bands of nightriders, dressed in white robes and hoods, terrorized blacks as well as whites who did not toe the color line.

By the turn of the century the Klan had been officially disbanded, but continued to exist.

In 1915, William Joseph Simmons led a robust revival of the Klan. Early Klansmen were primarily anti-black; later followers also opposed Catholics, Jews, organized labor, Communism and foreigners in general.

Canada saw a sharp increase in membership in the early part of the century, especially in Saskatchewan and Alberta. Many prominent people joined the Klan, including David Mullin, later Social Credit minister of agriculture in Alberta, and former Progressive Conservative Prime Minister John Diefenbaker.

Until the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on school desegregation became law in l954 and school busing became mandatory, the Klan’s membership had steadily declined. These laws, along with the l960’s civil rights movement gave new life to the Klan.

By the late l970’s, hard-core Klan members were estimated to be some 10,000 strong, with about 100,000 active sympathizers. There were more than 300 autonomous Klans in the U.S.

The three best known were the United Klans of America, Inc., led by Robert Shelton, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, led by the David Duke, and the Invisible Empire of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, headed by Bill Wilkinson. Shelton’s, the largest, had an estimated membership of 3,500 to 4,000.

Former Louisiana governor hopeful David Duke has had the most impact on Canada’s Klan organizations; in l976 Duke claimed to have organized affiliated branches in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary and Vancouver.


Duke referred to Canada as “the last bastion of white supremacy because it is already too late to save the U.S.”

In l977, Canadians James Alexander McQuirter, John Ross Taylor, and Wolfgang Droege went to New Orleans to meet with Duke.

Droege, now head of the new-Nazi Heritage Front, was charged last year with violating the Canadian Human Rights Act by communicating racial-hate messages over a phone-in line. The human rights tribunal hearing the case in Toronto is to reconvene at a date not yet set.


RISE OF RACIST RIGHT:

Throughout the west, white supremacist groups are on the rise. In Germany, where neo-Nazis have carried out thousands of attacks against foreigners in the past year, three members of a Turkish family were killed when neo-Nazis firebombed their home in November. In Ontario, Wolfgang Droege and his white supremacist heritage front groups are appearing before a human rights tribunal on charges of operating a phone-in hate line.

Closer to home, a youth pleaded guilty in February to promoting hatred for distributing Ku Klux Klan literature in a Bedford high school. Frank Boyd, a black freelance journalist, recently interviewed a Nova Scotia organizer of the Ku Klux Klan. The organizer agreed to the session on condition his name not be published.


I SET UP my recording equipment at the hotel and order a thermos of hot coffee. A knock strikes the door. I open it and there is Cyclop, whom I had met before, accompanied by his Knight Hawk, a stranger, who is dressed entirely in black, including tight—fitting, black leather gloves. He looks like a walk on the wild side. He is an enforcer, protection for Cyclop.

Cyclop is wearing his usual battle fatigues, with camouflage trousers tucked snugly into the top of long, black boots. Everything about them is militaristic; I suppose to strike fear into the hearts of their opposition.

Knight Hawk refuses coffee and is unable to relax. He is on duty, and if his only equipment is that pair of gloves, then I have little to worry about.

Cyclop shows me his membership certificate in the Klan. It says The Flaming Sword on one line and below it, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Grand Knight Hawk Hank Schaffner and Grand Dragon Andrew Jones sign it; I believe they are Klansmen officers of the New Jersey-based Flaming Sword.

As I read, Cyclop puts on his uniform over his fatigues. It is a mind game of a sort at my expense and it seems to have a cathartic effect on both of them.

The robe is white, except for two crests at breast height on either side of the front of the robe. The sleeves are long and flared toward the ends. At the cuff are wide black stripes or chevrons, indicating the rank of Grand Dragon. His hood is cone-shaped, with two eye slots that conceal Cyclops’s identity.


I feel a rush of adrenaline. Self-preservation is a powerful, primitive urge. I realize that I am ready for war with my enemies. The feelings pass. I remind myself that I need to talk on the record to Cyclop for many reasons: some personal, and others for the good of the community at large.

Q: Cyclop, you are sworn to protect the purity of the White Race in Nova Scotia.. .What are you protecting the white race from?

A: Everyone thinks that our sworn moral enemies are the blacks, and lately, well, a lot of people say Jews. These are not our sworn enemies. I have not sworn to hate these people. The media always has this thing that we want to kill and gas all these people. That’s not it. I’d say our major enemy would be the government that would implement policies that are inimical to both races that would want to force them together, when they don’t want to be.

Q: Most of the new immigration to Canada has been almost strictly non-European.. .How does this make you feel?

A: That goes back to the government. I would say that given a poll tomorrow, and there was one a couple of years ago, taken on the news about immigration and it came out a whopping 90 per cent against. I am sure those people who phoned in were not 100 per cent white people. Every job that you give away to an immigrant who comes to this country, that’s one job taken away from a white man, or black man who lives here or Indian or Asian, who are already born and raised here, first—class citizens.. .1 would personally like to see immigration cut down to needy people, people who are genuinely persecuted.

Q: If immigration were restricted only to needy people, what if those needy people all happened to be people of color?

A: Well, if these people were permitted to come in, I would also like to see a policy implemented, not exactly segregation, as in the old-fashioned sense of the word, but a geographical separation, where under a sincere program of help that these persecuted (people), if they were blacks and Asians, or what have you, would go into their own quarters, much like they have Chinatowns and Little Italies, much like they have already and their brethren and kinsmen would help them out.

Q: Why are you the local organizer of the KKK?

A: I’m not sure. All my life I know that going to school I was kind of picked on a little much by blacks and I started to see them in a very bad light. I don’t know what I ever did to them, but I was kind of a quiet, little child. So when I first heard about the Klan, and I believed all the stories that I was told, that they were going to night ride and we were going to whip them and put them back in their place and all that stuff, I thought, ‘‘Now that’s what I want to do.’’ I started out being what you might call a hatemonger, but after I got involved and really learned what it was all about, there were a lot of them told me hat this way was wrong. We want to do this in a progressive way, in a way that would be beneficial to both of us. Like I said, we are against mixing the races. We are not for violence against any one culture or creed . . .At first I thought it was an order that had died. . . Slowly I began to find out that it was an order that was still around. I thought it was so underground that I’d never be able to get in touch with it. But I made contact with people in Canada and I became a member. I’ve been a member for two years now.

Q: Last Halloween there were copies of the Klansman distributed in Halifax.. .Was your group involved?

A: My group was not involved in that at all. That was another group and they are a member of a different Klan that comes out of North Carolina.

Q: Are your views on the Holocaust similar to those of Ernst Zundel?

A: Similar, yes, not exactly. Things I’ve read from what is called the revisionist point of view, I haven’t exactly read anything by Ernst Zundel. I know what he stands for, I know what he believes. I believe that there were many internment camps, many people were killed and many just died. But I don’t believe in the Final Solution, so to speak. No!

Q: Do you think that 6 million Jews were killed?

A: No, not 6 million. There’s been different numbers from time to time. There was 5 and then I was taught in school 6. I even watched a documentary one time which first quoted a number like 9 and then another number of 5, and basically, when I sat down and added, it was like some ridiculous number like 15 million Jews in this documentary. I don’t think anyone who watches these actually adds these figures up.

Q: Are you saying that people are lying to us?

A: Yes, I say people are lying and there are also people who are misinformed for some reasons and who say they honestly believe it.


Q: Last year a survival camp was found in a wooded area in this province... and telltale signs of a military manoeuvre were present. What was happening at that time?

A: Well, I know where it is, if they did find shell casings, they didn’t come from us.. .If we want to shoot, we go to the range and do it legally.

Q: But you are not denying that it was your camp?

A: Well, we were there and I will say this, that the cross found there we used, but there was no camp, and there was no training and there was no shooting. They also mentioned cabins being built. Well, my Knight Hawk can tell you since he’s from the area that those foundations have been there for a good 15 years at least. We didn’t put them there.

Q: So what was the purpose of you getting together, was it a military manoeuvre then? A: Oh no, not a military manoeuvre. There is no military training, or anything like that. We get together there and we have a little fellowship.. .We have fellowships there.

Q: Why do you burn crosses? Why do you wear hoods?

A: We don’t burn crosses. Burning crosses implies a sense of destruction. In our ritual, and that’s what it is, we refer to it as lighting a cross, or the War Cross, and it has a history that goes back for generations. In Scotland they used to do that as a sign, like a lighthouse beacon, a sign that Vikings were coming to attack. Our symbolism in that is a religious symbol, a cross, the fire is as in the Bible in the Book of John that says Christ is the light of the world and he dispels the darkness from around us. We believe in that ritual and that’s what we’re doing: dispelling the darkness of this age from around us.

Q: What is the darkness, the enemies of the KKK?

A: Well, it wouldn’t be just our enemies. I’d say it’s the enemies of our entire civilization. I mean Canada and the whole Western world has gone downhill in the last 50 to 60 years in just about every respect you can think of. Our religion is failing us and we have thousands of youth walking around in zombie states. They don’t know what they are doing, they can’t get jobs, they turn to drugs, they turn to violence. I think it’s all personally a systematic plan.

Q: If it is a systematic plan, whom is behind it?

A: Well, for many years the Klan and other right-wing groups have pointed to and were saying that the Jews are. Now, I don’t personally think it’s quite that simple.. .1 know a lot of Jews are involved, but I think it’s the work of social planners, the left-wing intelligentsia of which a lot of Jews happen to be members.

Q: Is your organization a serious threat to your enemies?

A: Well, I really don’t know how to answer that.. .1 am not setting this up, and I don’t think a lot of us are setting this up with the actual intention that some day we are just going to rise up and seize power, or take over and do all those things that they like to show you in movies that we supposedly do. I am more interested in building a Christian fellowship amongst white men, who believe and think the same way that I do.

Q: How big is your group in Nova Scotia?

A: All totaled I’d say.. .it’s kind of a hard thing to answer ‘cause one number I could say and you’d say that’s too high and ridiculous, and another number would make me look insignificant. But all totalled, I would say... a hard-core group of supporters and not all paid members really, but a hard core group and paid members all put together, about, I’d say about 50 in the city alone. Outlying regions, there’s people we have in Cape Breton and the South Shore and whatever, that’s going to drive the number up to 90 or more.

Q: Last year, Cyclop, you attempted to get a firearms certificate and failed, didn’t you? Why? Is your group armed and organized?

A: Armed and organized. An! Like I said, I believe in the principle of bearing arms and arming oneself but the group itself is not armed; we’re not planning any coup d’etat. I’d rather do it by ballots, not bullets, to tell you the truth.

Q: Knight Hawk, did you have something you wanted to say on this? (Knight Hawk)
A: Most Klansmen are average people who like to hunt. So they like to have firearms to go hunting. So just because someone’s trying to obtain a firearms doesn’t mean that they want to kill someone or cause force upon someone else.

Q: You, Cyclop, the local organizer of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, have refused to be identified. Why not go public?

A: The easy answer to that is that I would fear reprisals from of course the first thing I would fear reprisals from would be the blacks. They would think, I don’t know, that they’re doing something for their race by wiping us out, or whatever. I think they’re wrong in thinking that, or from our own hostile white renegades, I call them, who see what they perceive as the Klan on television, or what they’ll read in books and newspapers. They think we’re some violent threat and we’ll want to pick a fight and that’s just one reason to do it. Also, we have plenty of genuine enemies who just hate us. They wouldn’t think twice, those like the JDL (Jewish Defence League) or the ADL (Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith) who have mailed letter bombs to comrades of ours in the States. They have done this for years. Stone their houses, get them fired from their jobs. The emotional strain on them is just too much. That’s why I wouldn’t want to go out of the closet. Plus we have tried to be a secret order anyway.

After this article was published the writer received a call from a man who introduced himeslf to the journalist as the Grand Dragon of the KKK in New Jersey. The called offered to make the journalist "an honourary White man." The caller said that the journalist had so fairly profiled the KKK and that had not ever been done before. The Journalist declined the honour.

See, http://www.pointsouth.com/csanet/kkk.htm;

http://www.awkkkk.org/AWKKKK.htm

http://www.heritagefront.com/

The Community Reacts to the Interview

The Chronicle-Herald/The Mail-Star Published: 03/06/93
Category: News
Page: B l
Keywords: Cult, Religion, Minority Correction:
Photo/Graphic:

BLACK, JEWISH COMMUNITIES OBJECT TO KKK INTERVIEW

Byline: By Joel Jacobson STAFF REPORTER

MEMBERS OF the Jewish and African-Canadian communities are concerned that interviewing a Ku Klux Klan leader gives the Klan more exposure and furthers its aim of developing a white supremacist society.

Lee Cohen, Atlantic Jewish Council regional chairman of community relations, says the above interview by Frank Boyd "is nauseating to me. It is a skilled exercise in public relations.

"The civility of the interview lulls conscientious objectors, who might otherwise speak out strongly, to respond in less probing and less critical ways, and that's dangerous," says Cohen, who was among several people whose views were sought before today's publication of the Klan article.

Wayne Adams, executive director of the Black Cultural Centre, is upset the Klan is getting any publicity at all. "I don't think they should be getting any press. Anything printed furthers their cause and that furthers the degradation of my people. Any reaction by me would give them credence.”

Dr. Bridglal Pachai, executive-director of the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, said the stance taken by the Klan on immigration (separate communities for immigrants), "is the position of the hard-line people disposed to a white society in Canada. It is not a position open to reason or flexible to understand how demographics have changed.

"We can't survive by placing blinkers on or by placing boundaries in our country,” he says.

Cohen says the interview shows that nothing in the Klan's agenda has changed. It still targets minority groups, "but maybe their priorities shift from time to time. ' ,
Cohen says he knows Jews are principal targets in Nova Scotia and all across North America. "We have to be very concerned with anything that is said by the Ku Klux Klan.”

Cohen is aware of Klan activities by a small group in Nova Scotia, with a large group peripherally interested.

The growth of the latter group is causing the greatest concern, he says. That sector is made up of everyday people who may have had one experience with a minority group. They stumble on the KKK literature, read it and offer some support.

"That may be in the form of money which is used, first, by the core group to produce more literature which goes into the schools and pervades our children, and secondly, to buy guns.”

He says the above article "may seem non-offensive, but its basic message is to clean up the nonwhites.”

Joan Jones, a legal aid lawyer and a member of the Nova Scotia African Canadian community, says the interview "seems like the Klan is trying to make their purpose very palatable to Nova Scotians, and that scares me. Because of the economic times, their remarks about immigration, which is really separate but unequal, may sound like a not-so-bad idea to some people.

"In prosperous times, people could see right through the Klan's statements,” she says. Jones says the interview sounds like the Klan is trying to rearrange its original words.

Dawn The Politics of the Minority Game

1983 and ‘84 were years of embarrassing spectacle for Nova Scotia’s 30,000 blacks. An audit of the government funded Black United Front (BUF) revealed that executive director Haamid Rasheed had used BUF funds to pay for insurance on his private vehicle, had mysteriously received nearly $5,000 in payroll advances, and had somehow failed to forward over $9,000 in staff benefits and income tax remittances to Revenue Canada. In the protracted swirl of allegations and denials that followed these revelations, Rasheed was dismissed, and eventually provincial funding was withdrawn from the organization.

Frank Boyd worked for BUF in 1973 and ‘82, for the Human Rights Commission in the 1960’s, as a consultant, and during the events of BUF’s demise in 1984 he was director of the Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia. The decline of Rasheed’s BUF, as he explains it, has a lot to do with the original place of the organization in the power politics of minorities in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, and the role of state agencies in demobilizing public unrest. Editor, New Maritimes Magazine Vol. 3, No. 6, at pp. 10-13, where this article originally appeared.

Keep the Faith, Baby: Black Panthers Staying Away


“I draw the line in the dust,” said Alabama governor George Wallace, “and throw the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.

Wallace wasn’t the only person throwing down gauntlets in the 1960’s. Martin Luther King Jr. told a throng of some 200,000 Americans that he had a dream, “that one day, on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and sons of former slave-owners will be able to sit together at the table of brotherhood.”

Black Nova Scotians were caught up in these strong currents of social change. They responded, in truly Canadian fashion, in a manner that was more orderly, organized and restrained than the black revolution in the United States.

Racism in Nova Scotia was a more discreet business than segregation in Alabama. Colour lines were (and still are) drawn in housing, social services, and community activities, but these lines were quietly enforced. The black community in Nova Scotia had responded to this racist climate by developing its own institutions and by trying to soften the worst aspects of discrimination.

This quiet climate started to change in the 1960’s. One key moment was the Nova Scotia Human

Rights Federation meeting in Halifax, held on two days beginning Friday, December 6, 1968;
and one key element was the perception that the Black Revolution, symbolized by the militant Black Panthers, might suddenly come north.

“No Black Panthers will coming to Halifax to disrupt the human rights conference this
weekend.” Black power activist Burnley “Rocky” Jones announced on Radio CJCH the day before the conference began.

But the presence of the Panthers had stirred the Halifax Black community, forcing it to speak out as never before. The Human Rights Federation meeting became a forum for the expression of long suppressed black sentiments.

“The black people of Nova Scotia do not in any way themselves with the views of the Black Power movement,” said Nova Scotia African Baptist Association moderator the late Ross Kenny.

“We want homes,” a black woman from Preston pleaded; “we ye got the land . we’ve got the men; we’ve got the work power give us a chance.”

“The thing the Panthers have done - which most blacks in Halifax haven’t done - is think out the problem . . . one of the most rewarding ethnic experiences I’ve had with the Panthers is learning how they think, how they point out the contradictions in the white standard as applied to the black society,” said Halifax lawyer Don Oliver.

“Your (White peoples’) enemy is not Black Power, but ignorance of the Black man as a human being,” said Nova Scotia Home for Coloured Children matron Mary Paris, and she queried: “Can you discern the signs of the times?”

“I see the possibility of violence but if it occurs, it will be an imported thing . . . spawned by outside agitators,” said Baptist minister Rev. Wrenfred Bryant.

“I look to the Black United Front,” said Windsor schoolteacher Wilhelmina Williams, “to bring about a new dignity in the Nova Scotia Negro.”

At the federation’s conference that Friday night, former Progressive Conservative premier, the late Senator G. I. Smith, promised far—reaching changes in human rights legislation. Twenty—four hours later, the Premier announced the appointment of a white, Ontario newsman, Marvin Schiff, to the post of the first full—time human rights director.

Rather than appease black community leaders, the move enraged them. Black leaders charged that qualified black applicants were ignored. Marvin Schiff, Nova Scotia’s first human rights director, had his work cut out for him - his first assignment -- to investigate his own appointment.

“I’m bloody mad, and I don’t like much what I heard here this morning,” Schiff said. “I can only promise you that I’m committed to this job, not just for blacks but for every minority group,” adding that “If they [black applicants] got short shift, it makes me very angry.”

If there had been any doubt in the minds of black and white people that Black Power was essential to obtaining justice, the hiring of Marvin Schiff changed all that. The Black United Front took hold of the hearts and minds of black as well as white Nova Scotians. The human rights conference followed by just one week the conception of BUF at a “black family meeting” held in Halifax. At that meeting I was present. We chose to seek Black Power. Instead we lost our liberty.


Seek Black Power, Lose Liberty: The Founding BUF Meeting


IN 1969 SOME black Nova Scotians thought that with $500,000 and the Black United Front they could change the world.

As time has shown it was not that simple. In their innocence, they not count on the money and the power changing them, too.

On August 15, 1969, Health Minister John Munro and Minister of State Gerard Pelletier announced a $500,000 grant to BUF. At a press conference in Halifax, Munro described the grant as a means of assisting an under—privileged group to control their own destiny.

On the last day of November 1968 - a typical frosty-cold and dark November evening -some 400 blacks from around the province met for the first time (and only) time, in a black family meeting at the Halifax North End Library.

I, like many others, was seated on the floor of a room full to overcrowding, waiting for what everybody was waiting to see and hear — the Black Panthers speak.

They spoke eloquently. They were true race men, stirring everyone s emotions and sense of national pride. They made us determined to change decades of neglect and exploitation — the racist legacy which had so recently destroyed the community of Africville. They gave us pride in being black, a sentiment rarely shared together.

The Black Panthers then stepped aside yielding the floor to the local leader. When church and statecraft come together as they so often do in the black community, whose power and glory are greater than those of the black preacher?

Rev. W.P. Oliver rose like Moses and eked out the following consensus from the teeming room: to investigate the feasibility of establishing a black united front, similar to the one the Reverend described operating in the United States.

By the time Rev. Oliver spoke to the press several days later, the concept had become much clearer to him. A BUF, he explained, would not “take the initiative in future action, it will be a co-coordinating and catalytic body.” It would not be an independent organization, but an “umbrella” for all existing black organizations in the province.

Mandated with this responsibility was an ‘‘interim committee”. Those appointed that evening were: Rev. W.P. Oliver, Burnley “Rocky” Jones, Miss Edith Gray, Ross Kinney, Keith Prevost, H.A.J. “Gus” Wedderburn, councillor Arnold Johnson, social worker Buddy Daye and Churchill Smith. In all, these people made up an interim committee of nine.

Assembled in the auditorium that evening were the province’s black elite. There were others who were there solely by virtue of their proximity to the meeting place. Few realizes that in the balance rested job opportunities, new salaries, not to mention career progression — the things which matter most to a highly disadvantaged group. Like vultures, some came prepared to fight for these benefits, and fight they did.

Those who knew what was at stake went to the meeting and spoke eloquently where


possible, anticipating the social and economic changes and opportunities that were about to come. Those who understood the gravity of the situation, but who were not well placed or respected within the Black community went to watch because the meeting had generated so much publicity. Others went to see a good fight. When the battle was over most were satisfied it had gone in accordance with plan of the leaders.

The black family meeting barred all whites, including the press, and denied all white citizens access to a major city, owned institution and a public library auditorium. The glow of Black Power was within us. A segregated meeting, held in a public place, led by a clergyman of the African Baptist Association, had never occurred before in the long history of blacks in Nova Scotia. Never in our homes, never in our churches or public meeting places, never on festive occasions, but it did happen in a facility owned and operated by the city of Halifax.

It was a perfectly natural reaction to enjoy a meeting from which those whites who had barred us for so long from barber shops and other public places, were now being barred -- even though it was from one isolated, individual meeting. Or so we thought. How they did protest, those who had been barred. And how wrong we were to allow it, and to think of what was happening merely in terms of its publicity, and our personal hidden agendas, rather than in terms of its impact on race relations and on some friendships we had enjoyed all our lives!

So the stage was set for a large turnout at the black family meeting. The publicity had worked. I know of no larger turnout of black people in living memory, funerals accepted. However, the price of admission was higher than we thought. Giving away the hard and bitterly earned currency of collective experience in Nova Scotia – the currency of years of indifference,
discrimination, joblessness, and the everyday struggle for life to our “black leaders” of the moment -- was a tragic mistake. It was all too easy, all too fast. It seemed to us then that time was of the essence.

Perhaps the interim committee’s mandate allowed them to select an Ottawa delegation to seek funds to establish a now— feasible BUF, but somehow taking this step seems to have been beyond the power granted the interim committee by the black family meeting. The committee never reported to the black family meeting on the feasibility of BUF. In fact another black family meeting was never held, not even after the committee had acted on its finding that a BUF was feasible. In fact, the committee formed the nucleus for a board of directors who were never mandated by the black family meeting.

So it was on these undemocratic foundations that Rasheed’s BUF was built. The mechanics of BUF’s foundation were ill conceived, behind closed doors. It is to this legacy of expediency that all past and future BUF’s must look for their tradition.

Dawn The Politics of the Minority Game

The Internal Politics


JULES OLIVER was hired as executive director of BUF when his father had been chairman of the interim committee and then became “special adviser” to and honorary chairman of the board of directors, but not before Jules’ uncle, Halifax lawyer Donald Oliver, resigned as chairman of the personnel committee, charged with the responsibility to recruit, among other personnel, the executive director. The appearance of nepotism notwithstanding, the black leaders chose Jules Oliver.

The every-man-for-himself game went beyond Jules Oliver’s appointment and continued through the term of office of his successor, Art Criss (Haamid Rasheed). It ended when the public was made aware of Rasheed’s dismissal in March 1984. The factors creating the likelihood of the abuse of power date back to the points of consensus reached during the black family meeting: denying information to, and only allowing input from, local whites through trusted and recognized black leaders.

We black Nova Scotians were to have the discipline of a political party, but unlike a party, we were to have no control over, or input into, the party’s policy—making in any open or democratic way. The fact is that historically black Nova Scotians have never been allowed to really believe in democracy for themselves; moreover, that English Canadians have never really wanted it for others is of little consequence. The fact that slavery is a poor training ground for democracy is no excuse and inconsequential. The galling thing is, however, that we black Nova Scotians denied ourselves democracy by destroying the democracy potential of 1969 by ourselves and for it we have no one to blame but ourselves.

In 1969, if we did not like what we saw in the policies of our black leaders we had no opportunity to vote against them. By the time some form of democracy was restored -- when popular elections were first held on June 8 1974 - it was more than four-years after BUF’s official birth and only when the original federal grant had run out. BUF then required a fresh mandate and the ‘74 elections were to provide a facade of democracy. Today, in 1984— 85, BUF seeks another “new mandate”. This time, however, they are not calling for new elections; they are purging themselves of Haamid Rasheed. But, collectively the same people who allowed Haamid Rasheed to do what he did are still making the decisions at BUF. This of course shall not do.

At best, it can be said that most of the people involved with BUF’s revival still believe in the party discipline more than democratic principles. The business of the black community and its organizations are still considered of no concern to anyone else — and those who break the code of silence surrounding BUF are still outcast. BUF’s leadership have provided for its constituents’ approval a grim record of undemocratic behaviour and decision—making.

Yet, BUF’s code of silence is not just an internal rule. The silence goes much further, it goes beyond BUF, it makes its way into the realm of political power — the provincial and federal governments, where, through conspiracy, it is used rather dishonestly to shore up the Black ethnic vote.

The Federal-Provincial Politics

At Ottawa the new Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau was in power and in Nova Scotia the dying remnant of the Stanfield era ere on their way out. It was easy through BUF for black leaders to assume greater control than ever over their black constituents. They aimed their sights at the defeat of the Nova Scotia Progressive Conservatives. The provincial Tories put up a good fight for control over the black vote, but BUF, a creation of a Liberal government in Ottawa, clearly changed the political equation in Nova Scotia. How black leaders must have relished their newfound power! Black Power!

The disciplined federal Liberals, always aware of the road to power, had made the ethnic vote their target for quite some time. Demonstration grants, such as the $500,000 grant to BUF, served their purpose. These grants captured the ethnic vote for the Liberals, both in Nova Scotia and elsewhere in the country. They assisted in the defeat of the Buchanan-and Stanfield-led Progressive Conservatives at home as elsewhere in the country.

The Conservatives at home viewed the federal Liberal funding to BUF as an intrusion into their provincial jurisdiction, and for some time refused to co-operate with BUF’s leadership. What held up federal funding to BUF was the provincial Conservatives refusal to co-operate with the federal Liberals. This continued for some time to the chagrin of the black community in Nova Scotia. Of greater significance was the fact that the federal Liberal funding left BUF free to kick any, and every, sacred cow of the provincial Progressive Conservative government it chose. Of course the black leaders knew it, and when you got it, you flaunt it.

This animosity endured for the longest time and re-surfaced to frighten the hell out of BUF. Provincially, the Liberals defeated the Tories. Under the Regan liberals Nova Scotia established Canada Assistance Plan (CAP) funding for BUF. That was a big mistake, fixing the formerly independent BUF to a cost sharing arrangement between the provincial and federal government would lead BUF to greater dependence on the provincial government. This was the way the Regan Liberals wanted it, and the federal Liberals allowed. BUF was to kick no sacred cows under a Liberal provincial government, but the Stanfield government had to take it. Provincial Progressive Conservatives forgave neither the federal Liberal government nor BUF for the humiliation they suffered at the hands of black leaders.

So long did this animosity endure that BUF’s executive director worried out loud whether the CAP funding would be honored when the conservative forces of “Honest” John Buchanan defeated Regan’s liberals. Still BUF’s new executive director, Art Criss, had some Progressive Conservative credentials -- he was a title searcher for the Tory law firm of Mclnnis, Cooper & Robertson before going to BUF. But still the BUF Council was in worried disarray. The tide in the politics of the minority game has run its course, and now the blacks were caught like other provincial Liberal organizations in the thick of things between the Tory ‘bleu’ and the Grit ‘rouge

For some time neither Rasheed nor the BUF Council twigged to how a swing in political fortune could bring a renewed political life, and allowing a rough, but nevertheless certain transition from Grit to Tory patronage. The Tories now enjoying the game took their pound of black Liberal flesh. And without a blush the very members of BUF’s board of directors who excelled under Grit patronage made a triumphant transition to the Tories. It was a truly remarkable transition for BUF -- other Grit organizations had been unable to flip-flop to Torydom quite so easily. Yet with one shoe down, still there is another one up.


What made BUF different was political opportunism with the highly visible black community. The Tories did in fact steal the page from the Grits. Now the blacks toe the line and pay the price of Tories.

BUF had to change its focus from that of social animation (black consciousness-raising action, i.e.. protest) to the delivery of social programs like any other civil service organization. Politically, BUF was now dead, it now had to defend program delivery, both its own, or lack of it, and that of the provincial government. Provincial government funding muted BUF’s voices of protest. The once proactive organization grew increasingly reactive, remote, invisible and finally irrelevant to the cause of Nova Scotia’s black community.

BUF had allowed itself to be used by the federal Liberals, as the provincial Tories are now using it. If black Nova Scotians had had a history of being in the backwaters of Canadian political life until 1968, what a way we chose to come to the fore!

Last Days of Rasheed’s BUF

DUBBED a five—year experiment in black self—determination in 1968, BUF was 15 years old when, in 1983, it suffered a funding cut after a government audit revealed “13 areas of concern,” which “at worse constitute . . . a violation of our funding agreement with the BUF and an abuse of public funds.”

With the resignation of BUF Council Chairman Clyde Bishop, came an announcement of a second audit. The text of Social Services Deputy Minister John A. Mackenzie’s seven-page letter, outlining the 13-areas of concern revealed that the first audit, was published in the local press. The entire black community divided on the issue. Liberal Opposition leader Sandy Cameron issued a public statement, accusing the Social Services minister of ignoring the legitimate concerns of black Nova Scotians. The federal department of the Secretary of State reluctantly froze all future funds to BUF until long overdue activity and financial reports were received. These were some of the more significant events characterizing the last days of Rasheed’s BUF.

The first audit revealed that Haamid Rasheed had: a) rented a car from a national dealer on a continuous basis for some time with BUF funds; b) used $2,000 of BUF funds to pay for the insurance on his private vehicle, a 1981, blue 4WD Toyota; and c) received somehow $4,987 in pay roll advances.” (One occurred previous to March 31, 1982, the remainder as at March 31, 1983.)

Moreover, BUF salary cheques were improperly signed, minutes of meetings were inadequately recorded, and $9,371.51 in staff benefits and income tax remittance was not paid to Revenue Canada. Rasheed retained sole and exclusive control over all financial record keeping at BUF.

No stranger to controversy, Haamid Rasheed (born Art Criss, 38 years—ago near Kentville, N.S.) had changed his name and converted to Islam back in the 70’s, causing quite a stir in predominantly Baptist black Nova Scotia. Persistently. Rasheed dismissed allegations as a combination of unfair press coverage and irresponsible charges from embittered former employees. His worst mistake, however, came at the July 30, 1983 “emergency meeting” of the BUF governing Council, where in response to accusations regarding car rentals, Rasheed countered: “No, no, no! How many times do I have to say, No?”

Faced by yet another “Emergency Meeting” on August 10, Rasheed’s answers were somewhat different. By this time BUF Chairman Clyde Bishop and BUF Councillor Rev. Charles Fox of Amherst had proof of the car rentals. Rasheed admitted they had occurred. He explained he thought they had been given the authority to exercise his own discretion on the issue.

He also admitted using BUF funds for his vehicle insurance, excusing his action as an honest mistake, and indicating that he would correct the err-or by repaying the $2,000 sum. In addition he agreed to repay his $4,987 salary advance by March 31, 1984. Still, the BUF Council did not remove Rasheed.

A January 23, 1984 letter from the Social Services Department made clear the provincial government’s view of Rasheed’s future role within the organization: “no provincial funding will
be provided. . . in any event if Mr. Rasheed is to be chief administrative officer the Department made it clear in its letter of December 23, 1983 that if a proposal [for renewed funding] were submitted showing Mr. Rasheed in any position . . . he could have signing authority involving
provincial funds.”

BUF Council chairman Edith Cromwell only officially announced Rasheed’s eventual dismissal some two months later, in March 1984.

Responsibility for delay lay at least in part with the then Social Services Minister, the late Edmund Morris. The January 23 letter constitutes a complete reversal of his position taken in October 1983. At that time Mr. Morris issued a statement to the press saying that: “They [BUF Council] must take a livelier role in keeping their books in the proper form.” Regarding demands to freeze provincial funding to BUF the minister said: “We’ll not be doing that.”

The signal to Rasheed and BUF Council was clear — things were under control, and they relaxed. All the information available to Edmund Morris in January was available to him in October, before he issued his statement clearing BUF on October 20. On October 11, 1983 the Deputy Minister’s letter, outlining the 13-areas of concern, was received at BUF offices in Dartmouth, so surely the Minister had received his copy of that letter by the time of his October 20 statement to the press clearing BUF of wrongdoing. What had happened, then, to change his verdict?

A shift in public opinion was occurring. By now, the details of the Deputy Minister’s letter had been published in the press in their entirety (save appendices), just eight days after the Minister’s statement in question. Morris was under siege from the Black communities’ committees - in particular the North Preston Ratepayers - which were agitating for a full public accounting.

In addition to Liberal leader Sandy Cameron, NDP leader Alexa McDonough told the Minister “to stop pretending that there is no serious problem at BUF,” and start listening to the hundreds of black people complaining about the organization. Editorials were appearing in the local press, and jokes were being told throughout the city about how you could get your parking tickets paid through going to work for BUF.

Perhaps there were other electoral, reasons for the delaying tactic used by Morris. Perhaps the Tories had learned from the Liberal masters years before: shoring up the ethnic vote is a basic ingredient in political survival. Morris, MLA for the constituency of Halifax Needham, has more than his share of ethnic voters. His continuing inability to win convincing electoral majorities in Needham seems consistent with his reluctance to cut off BUF funding when all available information suggested that the action was the only prudent course.

But if anyone was late in taking decisive action, or in getting the message, it was the BUF Council. Even when Rasheed’s resignation was announced in March, some Council members wanted him to stay. A BUF insider told the press that “Some of them want to continue without public funding,” in order to have Rasheed remain.

Still, the Department of Social Services, in its own words, “continues to be sympathetic to, and available for, funding support of an agency that will effectively and responsibly address the social development needs of black citizens of Nova Scotia.” In the department’s eyes, that agency continues to be BUF.

Even before the ballots were cast in the last provincial election, the Minister announced a renewal of funding for BUF. A new BUF staff has been hired and put to work. However - and this is the crucial point - the same board of directors is making the decisions in the same closed—door environment. There has been talk of a public hearing.


In November, 1968 I glimpsed, along with many other black people, the promise of a truly democratic organization that would unite blacks throughout Nova Scotia in a struggle for social justice.

Instead the organization born of that movement, BUF, has degenerated into a private, undemocratic, patronage-ridden clique. Bureaucracy and secrecy have replaced the democratic impulse.

The lack of democracy in BUF has many roots. The long legacy of oppression - from slavery to today’s more restrained forms of racism - has provided a poor training ground for democracy. Poverty and dependence produce cynicism and resignation more often than they produce democracy or democratic reform movements among oppressed people. But while black Nova Scotians have not really believed in democracy for themselves, white Nova Scotians have not really wanted it for anyone else. Patronage appointments and co-optation have been easier than genuine power sharing and co-operation. Democracy in Nova Scotia shall continue to be thwarted so long as black Nova Scotians hardly believe in it and so long as white Nova Scotians continue to provide ample proof for distrusting it in the hands of other people.

In 1968 the blacks of Nova Scotia could pull together because volatile racial issues forced them to do so. Since 1968, an every-man-for-himself game, replete with paternalism and patronage, has replaced what we hoped would be a genuinely democratic movement.

The actions of Morris and BUF Council point to the need for a full public hearing into the issue. (Would, for example, the public interest be better by prosecuting Rasheed and having a full airing of the entire affair?) Until we know what led to the degeneration of BUF, we won’t know whether today’s BUF is any better than the old one. BUF will go on and on, and few of us will be any wiser for its passage.

Still another concern arises from the problem created by BUF and it points to a need to better understand how the politics of the minority game is really played. We need to know how to avoid becoming a pawn in political games that do not serve our interests. We need to understand how to avoid the co-optation of minority leaders that separate them from their own constituencies. Once we understand how to avoid these perils, we might be better able to place the noble struggle of principle between black and white Nova Scotians on an honest and dignified footing where it should be.

We might all be able to recapture the democratic potential of ‘68.


This article originally appeared, together with six photos, in the March, 1985 issue of NEW MARITIMES Vol. 3, No. 6, at pp. 10-13.