But what if they turn up anyway?
This happens a lot these days as speakers are cancelled, invitations revoked, and passports seized.
Mexican conductor Enrique Bátiz died last week at the age of 82. His family posted a notice about his funeral, prohibiting 13 musicians from attending it. Why? “Owing to circumstances known to everyone, his family and friends respectfully request that the following persons abstain from attending the funeral and the burial…”
That was a first for me. Bátiz was known as a prickly guy, so the musicians likely just wanted to make sure Bátiz was dead. But it does speak to the lasting power of cancel culture.
The idea of disinviting or ghosting someone because you find their views abhorrent may work for the very recently departed. But it’s not a good look if you’re a justice organization committed to free speech.
Last week The Advocates’ Society disinvited a Nova Scotia chocolatier to speak at its year-end dinner in June in Toronto. Tareq Hadhad was going to talk about “…the dignity of every human being and building inclusive communities.”
But Hadhad was disinvited because some TAS members expressed concerns about his position on Israel’s War in Gaza.This caused other TAS members to resign, including Marie Henein, who is a past-president, and its incoming president, Sheree Conlon. And why not? One of the core values of this national association of trial lawyers and judges is to be “welcoming, diverse and inclusive.”
Conlon, the first TAS President from the Atlantic Provinces had proposed Hadhad who fled Syria in 2015 and settled with his family in Antigonish to set up the family chocolate business, Peace by Chocolate. Said Conlon: “Their story is one of perseverance and hope, which celebrates the joys and challenges of building a life in rural Nova Scotia.”
Even the Canadian Civil Liberties Association called out TAS: “…[The Society’s] focus is not on what Mr. Hadhad has said or would say, but rather what he did not say. To our knowledge, this is not a standard or analysis that has been applied to past TAS speakers, some of whom have opined on issues of significant controversy.”
Then a group of law professors piled on, saying: “Your own website notes that the purpose of your organization is “to ensure the presence of a courageous and independent bar.” It is difficult to understand how you could possibly pursue this admirable mission while also avoiding any perspective which might make some members or supporters feel uncomfortable.”
Earlier this week, many people asked why The Advocates’ Society hadn’t said a word to Tareq Hadhad. By midweek, TAS apologized and launched an internal review. Then on Thursday evening, it announced they were cancelling the dinner altogether.
What I find most telling in this entire fiasco, aside from the supersize irony of a free-speech organization casting aside free speech, is the vast imbalance of power.
That imbalance plays out in two ways:
First, picture the annual gala dinner this June with hundreds of guests, every single one of them an experienced trial lawyer or judge. TAS could simply have opened more time for the Q&A after Hadhad’s keynote where those lawyers, every single one of them a highly trained expert in the art of cross-examination, could interrogate him on his views on Palestine – even though his talk was not about Palestine. Has it come to this, that even the most skilled and relentless defenders of their clients’ interests, find that actually arguing their case is just so much harder than dismissing a naysayer or even a say-nothing-er out of hand?
Second, given that diversity and inclusion are everywhere in the ideals and mission statements of Canadian legal organizations, why did TAS not think to consult a single legal organization established to make the practice of law more inclusive – like the South Asian Bar Association, the Canadian Muslim Lawyers Association, Legal Leaders for Diversity and Inclusion, or the National General Counsel Network? They have all written TAS to basically say: “What the hell?”
I’m not a lawyer, but I thought free speech was sacrosanct in a democracy so that you can hear viewpoints that are radically different from your own. And the more disagreeable they are to you, the more you should welcome them onto your podium, confident that their illogic and abhorrence will ring loud to whoever turns up to hear them.
Indeed, America’s big law firms are experiencing first-hand what cancel culture really costs them, as they rush to cut deals with Donald Trump and do pro bono work for his charities. I don’t envy their CEOs who, faced with catastrophic declines in billings, cut deals with the devil, knowing the terrible price they would pay and hoping to live to fight another day.
There is one Canadian who knows the perils and rewards of free speech firsthand. She’s not a trial lawyer; she’s a librarian. Vickery Bowles is the City Librarian of Toronto, overseeing the largest public library system in North America and, depending on the day of the week, the busiest in the world.
Back in 2019, a critic of transgender rights, Meghan Murphy, tried to book a third-party event in one of Toronto’s 100 public libraries. The critics pounced. They urged, then demanded that the City, which owns our public libraries, cancel this transphobic speaker. Then a group of authors piled on against Murphy.
Then Mayor John Tory, technically Vickery Bowles’ boss, said “I’m disappointed in the Toronto Public Library’s decision to allow this talk to go ahead on its property.”
Still, Bowles would not give in. As she told Carol Off: “We are a democratic institution and we are standing up for free speech. That’s what I’m standing up for. I’m not getting into a discussion about the two sides of this issue, or the three sides of this issue, or the four sides of this issue.”
“People…have been describing this as hate speech. It’s not defined under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms…as a hate speech. Otherwise, Meghan Murphy would not be allowed to speak about these things. She would be facing criminal charges. But she’s not.”
“Sometimes…when you’re defending free speech, you’re in a very uncomfortable position where you’re defending perspectives and ideas and viewpoints that many in the community, or a few in the community, whatever, find offensive.”
“But it’s at that time that it’s most important to stand up for free speech. That is what makes Canada a democratic country, and that is what we need today more than ever.”
For Vickery Bowles, “today more than ever” was in 2019.
She retires in June, the bureaucrat who stood up to extraordinary public and political pressure. Let’s hope her successor, to be announced soon, has her spine. And let’s hope the new leadership at The Advocates’ Society has too.
Meanwhile…
1. Coca is not cocaine. Wade Davis writes how this fall, a global regulatory body could move to decriminalize the demonized plant for the first time in more than 60 years. Davis chose Rolling Stone to publish it, the same magazine that published his “Unraveling of America”in 2020, which had 5 million readers and 320 million social media hits. Davis’ “The Secret History of Coca” is just as provocative.
2. Clare Westcott lived to be 100. He died last week. Clare was my first boss. Fresh out of university in 1972, I landed in the office of Premier Bill Davis who was Clare’s boss. In my first hour in the world of work, Clare told me: “Never write anything down.” I failed miserably. Steve Paikin tells a typical Clare story here. (start at 33:40).
3. This race is to the swift. The University of Toronto is working to seal its place among the world’s Top 20 universities. Last week, U of T professor of medicine Daniel Drucker, one of five scientists who developed the blockbuster weight loss drugs Ozempic and Wegovy, won a US$3 million Breakthrough Prize, the most lucrative award in science.
This week, the University Health Network launched a campaign to lure 100 of America’s most promising early career research scientists to work at the world’s top publicly-funded hospital.
And you want really swift? Really far?
4. Alike in our differences. Do we really have too much? Not always in art and design. Plus, the difference between off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway. And what’s the difference between Liam Neeson and Leslie Nielsen? In the new Naked Gun…not much. Finally, Dolly Parton, now 79, once entered a Dolly Parton look-alike contest, and lost.
5. How-to’s to get you through. Some say you should take a burner phone to keep US immigration agents from searching your real one when you cross into the US. Wouldn’t that be the reddest of red flags that you aren’t a fan of its President?
Next, how to judge your level or privilege. Westminster City Council in London asks its staff to take a “privilege test” to boost recruitment of ‘global majority’ candidates for senior posts. Test your privilege here.
On the matter of batty Brits, here’s King Charles playing the carrot. It reminds me of Churchill’s comment on the dancing bear: it’s not that he does it well, it’s that he does it at all. Next, how to report the news. Finally, how to use AI to stay alive to 95.
6. Who has the most beautiful passport in the world? Canada, of course. Speaking of Black Swans, a bevy of White Swans is released every first Sunday in April by Stratford City Council to spend their springs and summers on the Avon River. Here’s this year’s parade (start at 1:40).
7. Light lifting on heavy issues. Richard Rooney on Trump’s American Carnage. Why small countries shouldn’t exist. Plus a new and true spy story about one of the Mossad’s greatest spies ever, who may have been a fraud or a double-agent for the Syrians. Plus an awkward counter-narrative: do we really need arts centres? Plus, the tricky technicalities of time travel. Finally, a quick answer to the biggest question of all: What is the meaning of life?
8. There’s rich and then there’s Forbes-World’s-Richest-People-rich. The magazine’s annual calculus of wretched excess is out this week. The US has 902 billionaires, led by Elon Musk. Canada has 47, down from 67 last year. Last year as well, the richest Canadian was David Thomson and his family (US$67.8 billion) who were the 22nd wealthiest billionaires in the world. This year, the Thomsons have fallen to 264th place and the wealthiest Canadian today is Vancouver’s Jimmy Pattison, 96, and worth US$11.4 billion. And you thought the decline in the Canadian dollar hurt just us.
9. Slavery? In America? Not really. Since Donald Trump took office, the National Park Service —- an agency charged with preserving American history —- has changed how its website describes key moments from slavery to Jim Crow.
Also, lost this week in the market meltdown, The New York Times reported: “Maya Angelou’s seminal autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and books on the Holocaust were included on the Navy’s list of 381 books that were removed from the U.S. Naval Academy’s Nimitz Library on the Annapolis, Md., campus because their subject matter was seen as being related to so-called diversity, equity and inclusion topics.”
Finally, Texas Senator Angela Paxton is waging war against masturbation. The wife of Texas Attorney-General Ken Paxton, she’s introduced a bill for shoppers to show ID in order to buy sex toys online.
10. An orchestra for all; a gala for artists for water. There are 45 national youth orchestras, including the National Youth Orchestra of Canada. Now there’s Britain’s National Orchestra For All made up entirely of 100 neurodiverse young musicians.
Next, on May 6, the dazzling British historian and co-host of the Empire podcast, William Dalrymple, discusses his big new book, The Golden Road, a sweeping history of South Asia’s profound influence on the world, at the Toronto International Festival of Authors. Tickets are just $15 here.
Finally, on May 8, 30 Canadian artists will donate their work to support swimmable, drinkable, and fishable water for all at the 2025 Artists for Water Gala. Tickets are $500 each.