LETTER

 

Bilingual Ottawa, residential schools

 

I am writing in response to Fred Ryan's editorial, "A bilingual Ottawa, a 150th anniversary infrastructure project," April 6, 2016.

I am calling for Mr. Ryan to make a public apology to all First Nations for his insensitive and flawed comparison between the fairness of creating a bilingual capital city and the atrocities and abuses endured by the children of residential schools and their families and the impact the events have had on subsequent generations.

 

Such a fallacy in argumentation is something I often remark in his opinion pieces and other articles, but this time I could not stand idly by. Please step up to the plate, Mr. Ryan, and issue an apology.

 

Kim Nesbitt, Aylmer

 

REPLY:  I am deeply sorry to have given this impression, and, yes, apologize profoundly for any confusion of the sufferings of First Nations people with the inconveniences of unilingualism in our nation’s capital. The editorial did refer to this proposal helping only two of our three founding peoples, and my mention of residential schools was to point out that we now seem willing to move on difficult but important files.  Naturally not all those difficult files are of the same magnitude, but we have seemed stalled on all of them for years.  I hope this clarifies the editorial; as to this being a type of “argumentation” I employ “often”, it would be helpful to see further examples. 

 

Fred Ryan