About the CBC and that African-Canadian war hero from 1857

HMCS William Hall named after first African Canadian to win Victoria Cross declares the headline at the CBC. It's all part of the Harper gang's program to reinvent Canada as a "warrior nation" by celebrating war heroes of the distant past.

We are celebrating Mr. Hall's exploits in 1857 by attaching his name to a not yet built ice-breaking vessel in the many times announced but not yet begun Arctic Patrol Vessel program. His name is to go on ship number four. Whether the Arctic Patrol Vessel program ever builds four ships is a matter of conjecture, but there's no denying that the selection of an "African Canadian" certainly underlines the fact that Canada is not only a Warrior Nation, but a diverse and inclusive one.

Whether it's kosher to call a man born 38 years before Confederation an "African Canadian" is a minor quibble at this remove. Seems to me there couldn't have been "Canadians" of any ethnicity before there was a Canada; we were just subjects of the British Empire; but let's get back to our Warrior Nation past...

1857 was a tense and trying time for the British Empire. Here in British North America the colonial government introduced the Civilization of Indian Tribes Act, the precursor to the Indian Act and the entire project of assimilation that was recently labelled cultural genocide by the Chief Justice of Canada's Supreme Court.

At the same time, in another part of the British Empire, those other Indians rose up against their colonial masters in what has become known as the Indian Mutiny of 1857. The uprising was ruthlessly suppressed by the colonial masters, and India remained a British colony for another 90 years.

It was in the context of suppressing that mutiny of the Indian people against their colonial oppressors that William Hall, an Able Seaman in the Royal Navy, was awarded the Victoria Cross.

That may say rather more about our glorious warrior past than the Harper clique intended.

Canada can't build ships but Navy brass keeps busy picking names for them

It came out today that the top guns at the Royal Canadian Navy have picked a name for the second of the new ships in the Arctic Patrol fleet. She'll be known as HMCS Margaret Brooke.

The first will be named HMCS Harry DeWolf.

Both sound like perfectly adequate names for ships in Canada's new Arctic Patrol armada. There's only one problem with this story...

There are no ships.

That's right.

Although the ship-building program to provide six to eight dedicated ice-worthy patrol vessels was first announced with great fan-fare in 2007, as of yet no keels have been laid and no steel has been cut. In the meantime, numerous re-announcements of the program, replete with more fan-fare and photo-ops, have masked the fact that Ottawa nincompoops have squandered many years and many hundreds of millions in "designing" a ship that is a straight-up copy of a Norwegian design that is already serving in several navies.

What's to design?

To add irony to insult, the much ballyhooed discovery of the Franklin expedition ships last year was forced to rely on a chartered Russian ship because the Canadian Navy lacks the operational capability to operate in the Arctic waters Canada claims to own.

Maybe they should stop posturing and get on with building the boats already!

That old Irving magic; charging the government $287 million to design a ship that has already been designed

Hey, don't blame Irving... the Harper gang signed off on this!

Irving Shipbuilding is just doing what they are supposed to do; look out for Irving.

But this story does raise some interesting questions.

Who in the Harper gang is responsible for such grotesque waste?

Heads should roll.