Canadian Labour, Trump, McMaster & more -- October and November on The Left Chapter in review

October and November saw 44 posts published on The Left Chapter. In terms of hits this period saw the highest number, again, for any two month period in our history!

Our top post for the month was also one of the most widely read and shared in our history.

Thanks again to all our readers and contributors.

Without any further ado the top six posts from the two months, in terms of hits, are:

1) Just what is going on with Canada's labour movement leadership?

The last few weeks have seen a series of what are seemingly truly perplexing moves and actions by some of the country's most important labour leaders.

Read More! 

2) The wages of liberalism is Trump

After a generation of retreat that saw its abandoning of the welfare state and of any meaningful advocacy for working people and much of the middle class in the United States, it can now truly be said that the wages of liberalism is Trump.

The victory of Donald Trump in the American election signifies a number of things many of which are profoundly dangerous. 

Read More! 

3) The CLC and the Liberals - Pandering to power

In what is one of several "let them eat cake" moments made by members of the governing Liberal caucus lately, this past Saturday Finance Minister Bill Morneau threw young Canadian workers under the proverbial bus when he said that they should get used to the 'reality' of precarious employment. 

Read More! 

4) The beer can toss was bad. The racism at the Blue Jays game was much worse.

By now I doubt there is a person in North America who has not heard about the great Beer Can Toss Toronto Blue Jays scandal of 2016 after some (likely inebriated) twit launched an overpriced beverage at Baltimore outfielder Hyun Soo Kim during the Wild Card playoff game Tuesday night.

It was an ugly incident that could have resulted in Kim's serious injury.

Read More! 

5) McMaster University shamefully removes anti-Nazi posters -- Yes, you read that right

In what has to be one of the single most demented and offensive examples of some bizarre version of pseudo-liberal 'impartiality' in recent memory, the good folks at McMaster University have seen to fit to remove anti-Nazi posters from the campus on the grounds that "McMaster's goal is to ensure a welcoming and inclusive community."

Yes, you read that correctly. McMaster University, it would seem, wants "to ensure a welcoming and inclusive community" including, apparently, for neo-Nazis!

Read More! 

6) The ONDP's embrace of Mike Thomas says a lot about it. But nothing good.

You would think that the 'brain trust' running the show in the Ontario New Democratic Party (ONDP) would have learned something from its disastrous attempt to try to court the right wing populist vote in the 2014 provincial election.

But apparently if it has learned any lessons they were the wrong ones!

Read More! 

The top food related post for the period was Yueh Tung -- Hakka & Chinese Cuisine by Toronto City Hall.

Do you have a left point-of-view or opinion, a recipe or a story you want to share?

Send them to The Left Chapter via theleftchapter@outlook.com!

See also: Right Sector, Liberalism, Colin Kaepernick, Pamela Anderson & more -- August & September on The Left Chapter in review

See also: Black Lives Matter, Canada Post, Tory Austerity & more -- June and July on The Left Chapter in review

The beer can toss was bad. The racism at the Blue Jays game was much worse.

Image from a public tweet by Frank Gunn

By now I doubt there is a person in North America who has not heard about the great Beer Can Toss Toronto Blue Jays scandal of 2016 after some (likely inebriated) twit launched an overpriced beverage at Baltimore outfielder Hyun Soo Kim during the Wild Card playoff game Tuesday night.


It was an ugly incident that could have resulted in Kim's serious injury.


The beer can toss caused much outrage and rightly so. It also caused the city collectively a great deal of embarrassment, especially given that Toronto baseball fans have a fairly bad reputation to begin with.

One group of baseball fans pitched in to buy an ad on Facebook apologizing to the people of Baltimore. Mayor John Tory managed to find a moment to divert from his quest for fictional "efficiencies" in driving down city department budgets to, with his usual clarity and eloquence, denounce the evildoer as a "loon ball". He further noted that it was "just the behavior that was exhibited by one person".

Major League Baseball itself called for the beer can hooligan to be "prosecuted to the extent available" while Toronto police released a photo of the alleged offender and called for him to come forward. He subsequently did, while denying all wrongdoing, and now a section of the internet is consumed by watching blurry video over-and-over again claiming they have identified the "real shooter" as if this is some sad version of JFK or the X-Files.

There is no denying that, while hardly unprecedented in any ballpark, throwing anything onto the field of play or in the area of players during a sports game is serious, stupid, dangerous and boorish and that any louts caught doing it should face some consequence. In almost all cases, given it will usually prove the alcohol fueled momentary bad impulse of someone, this will and should end up being dealt with by a stadium ban and possibly anger management classes or community service, especially as it is unlikely that the person who did it will turn out to have been a hardened criminal.

But seemingly overshadowed by all of this is the fact that several sources reported that multiple fans hurled racist slurs at both Kim and his teammate Adam Jones who rushed to Kim's side and defense after the incident with the beer can.

CBC Radio's sports commentator reported hearing racist calls at the game and you can see fans yelling at Jones in videos of the night.



It is not so easy to try to claim this as simply a stupid or ignorant act by a single fan as, by all accounts, this involved many fans.

Canadians have long liked to believe that we do not have the kind of problems with racism that exist in the United States, and yet racist incidents like the one that happened Tuesday are all too common and institutionalized racism on the part of Canadian police and the Canadian state have a long and ongoing violent and oppressive history.

Press Progress detailed many recent and disturbing racist incidents in July in an article ""Meanwhile in Canada," Canadians are forgetting Canada has its own problems with racism". 

A poll released on the day of the playoff game showed that Canadians were, in fact, significantly less embracing of cultural diversity as opposed to assimilation than Americans. 68% of Canadians said immigrants needed to do more to "fit in" while only 53% of Americans felt the same way. While 47% of Americans said that our society "should encourage cultural diversity", only 32% of Canadians think that.

This should be a truly worrying statistic for those who think a racist demagogue like Trump is impossible north of the border.

So while the focus has been on the search for one hooligan, it really should be on the reality that a number of Toronto baseball fans were quick to use racist taunts against the players on an opposing baseball team, something I think most Canadians want to pretend only happens at European soccer matches.

A person tossing a projectile at a player is very bad, but easy to explain away and relatively socially inconsequential. Many people tossing hateful racist terms at players, however, is ultimately more dangerous, much less easy for those so inclined to try to write off, and a symptom of something far, far worse.

See also: Black Lives Matter is right -- The police are the oppressor