​A debate rages over how history ought to be treated in Canada. A key question seems to be “How should we respond when we discover that our leaders of the past have been guilty of misconduct and mistreatment of key elements of our population over the years – read indigenous people, people of colour, women. and LGBTQ? One misconception is that we cannot do anything about the past. It is true that we cannot change the past, but we can do something about it.
We cannot keep turning a blind eye to it. We know that this usually ends with those same evils continuing in our own time. As has been shown rather clearly in recent weeks, the abuse of those groups listed above continues apace, systemically. Sure, we no longer have residential schools, but indigenous people are deprived of safe drinking water and meaningful jobs that do not require leaving their communities, homes, and culture. It is true that we do not have actual slavery, but many people in Canada are condemned to poorly paid jobs which, in fact, leave them unable to extract themselves from their prisons of poverty.
What can we do? I will not try to answer this from every angle, but I will discuss that of which I have some knowledge – education.
I grew up in Essex County in southwestern Ontario. I studied the courses and texts that were approved by the then, Department of Education. In 1972, I became chair of the World Religions Curriculum Committee for Waterloo County, and it was then that I first learned of the Holocaust. I wondered how, after two history degrees, this important fact of history had eluded my awareness. Unfortunately, university courses tend to be extremely specific, and it was easy, simply by chance or interest, not to be exposed to that period of European history. But I was curious about why having studied Modern History in grade twelve that I was still ignorant of this part of our past. I dug up my grade twelve text and looked up Holocaust. I found one paragraph which gave no impression that the attempted extinction of an entire group of people was of the least significance.
I ended up teaching various history courses, from elementary to grade thirteen over my thirty years in the classroom. I do not recall ever seeing anything in any text about the residential schools or systemic racism in Canada, and of course I would not because texts are one of the ways we sustain the myth of our historical purity. Of course, we ought not to burden young minds with our sins, a.k.a., our truths. For the last ten years as a teacher of adults, I abandoned texts and created my own curricula. Yes, I purchased texts because my bosses and my students needed them, but I only gave texts out to the students who felt a need for that security.
So, what ought we to be doing? First, we must no longer hide the truth from our children. That means that texts and other in-class materials must deal with what really happened. If this does not happen, future generations will grow up thinking that Canada is some perfect place where horrible deeds, often associated with other nations, are never committed. School administrators and teachers must no longer avoid topics that make them uncomfortable. A key task here is to make sure that topics taught are presented in an age-appropriate format and style.
Parents also have a role to play. Help your children to be able to acknowledge the evils of our past. Do not make them feel guilty but help them to know that change is necessary and possible and that they have a role to play in brightening our collective future.
I grew up in a farm community that originated with the United Empire Loyalist migration in the late 1700s. It was almost one hundred percent white. I did not meet a person of colour until I attended Waterloo Lutheran University in 1963. My grandfather, whom I loved dearly, once told me that Native people did not use the land properly, He knew nothing of sustainability; he sent me out to spray DDT on the weeds along the lane. For him, duty was about killing weeds and raising useful food. My family spoke disparagingly of recent immigrants from Europe whose cultures they did not understand, let alone respect. I grew up ignorant of the truth around me.
Do not let that happen to our next generations, please!
​

​“The problem is not guns! It is hearts without God, homes without discipline, schools without prayer, and courts without justice.” Service for Christ
A while back, I ran into this message on Facebook. It bothered me, but it took me a couple of days to really absorb how dangerous and misleading it was. The problem with messages such as this one, sent out on the internet via Facebook, is that they are incendiary; they stir up emotions by appealing to dimly remembered fragments of lives lived or lives imagined, but they are also seriously flawed in their thinking and in their supporting evidence. In this short article, I will attempt to explain the problems with this kind of message and with this kind of thinking and thus demonstrate how damaging they can be when spread widely on the web.
Let’s start with the first phrase – “the problem is not guns.” Clearly one of the problems is guns, especially in the case of mass killings such as the recent one in Orlando. It is hard for me to imagine this angry man entering that club armed with a steak knife and a pair of scissors and wreaking the same level of havoc. Even a pistol with nine shots would have led to much less damage, though still more than a knife. Statistics have shown again and again that states with the most guns are the states in which the most gun-related killings take place. Surely, only the most perverse minds would argue that there is no connection. Clearly one of the problems is guns, but I agree that there are other issues just not necessarily those offered by the writer.
Let’s look at phrase two – “It’s hearts without God.” As with all the component arguments in the above fantasy, this one’s meaning is obscure. Does the writer mean the god that teaches loving one’s neighbours, regardless of their beliefs and personal sexual preferences, or the wrathful God who says, “vengeance is mine”? Does the writer refer to the Islamic one god, the Christian one god, or the Judaic one god? Please note that logic, properly applied, suggests that these one gods must, by definition, be one and the same god. Finally, what exactly does having a heart with god mean? Does it mean believing in god, thinking about god all the time, or perhaps just saying you believe in god? Does it mean actually living the so-called laws of god or actually acting as god reportedly said one should act? Making this choice then creates the dilemma of which ‘one god’ one is choosing to follow? No matter how one cuts it, the phrase is vague to the point of being meaningless except to radical nuts who think they know what it means, and therein lies the writer’s purpose.
Let’s consider the next two phrases together – “homes without discipline” and “schools without prayer.” They are part of what I like to call the “things were so much better when I grew up” syndrome. I have often heard the generation that raised me say things like “our parents were tough on us, but we turned out fine”. Parents were tough disciplinarians, and everyone prayed in the schools, and life was much simpler. Perhaps that is the real reason things seemed better. They were simpler. I grew up in rural Ontario near Windsor. I lived on a farm, but my nearby town had no African, Muslim, or Asian residents. I did not even know what soccer was. In a fairly homogenous society, inter-group differences tend to be very minor. Even then though, I often heard negatives aimed at Catholics or Jews and disparaging comments about Italian (Eye-tie), Polish (Polack), Czech (Bohunk), Displaced Persons (DPs), and heaven forbid, those horrible Gypsy people. Hatred was rife even though our parents beat us, and we all prayed in our school rooms. But at least the groups at which our hatred was directed were others. That made everything simpler didn’t it? Just a further word about prayer in schools. I am quite certain that the writer likely means “Christian prayer”. But Christian prayer sets up negative feelings toward non-Christians. So how does that help?
A subtle underpinning of the prayer issue is the belief among many Canadians, and I suppose Americans, that our countries are essentially Christian ones. In fact, neither country has ever been officially Christian. Instead, they were free democracies populated mainly by Christians until western business practices and interventions in otherwise independent nations, in other parts of the world, so thoroughly disrupted the lives of those inhabitants that they had to seek refuge in a more stable area, i.e., the West. I suggest that our nations have become more complicated since then, but in fact, we have only ourselves to blame. And as a result, we are no longer nations primarily inhabited by Christians but nations with populations of diverse cultural and religious practices where having one prayer system in schools is intolerable for the majority as well as grossly unjust for all.
This brings us to the final phrase, “courts without justice,” also completely obscure in its meaning. What is justice? Who is being treated unjustly? My guess is that the writer means courts that treat the first-wave immigrants unfairly and thus favour those late-comers, or perhaps, courts that uphold laws saying it is unfair to force non-Christians (read Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus or atheists) to endure Christian dogma camouflaged as moral instruction. It is true that our courts are unjust. They routinely confine black and native offenders at higher rates and for longer terms than they do for white establishment-oriented groups. But what would one expect when police forces are rife with racism and are allowed to use subtle racial controls, such as carding, routinely? This argument’s obscurity leaves it open to wide interpretation. Again, just what the writer intended.
Let’s sum up:
First, the arguments put forth are all obscure to the point of being meaningless. But of course that’s the point. The writer is not trying to use logic here. He or she is trying to incite people: people with hatred in their hearts; people who feel unjustly treated; people for whom logical thinking is not a common practice.  The writer purposefully leaves meanings open to interpretation but is also aiming very clearly at a certain audience: white, Christian, Anglo-Saxon people or wannabes, who believe they live in a “Christian” nation that has existed for many years, but which, in fact, never really existed at all except by coincidence.
Second, the writer uses nostalgia for some dimly remembered Eden where parents were encouraged to beat their children and which wasn’t great but at least was simply white and Christian. It is natural for humans to want to go back to a simpler time, but all this really means is that we want to go back to being children because no matter how hard it was, we did not have to make decisions or work at crummy jobs for low pay just so we could eat.
So, in the end, my point is that messages such as the one above are dangerous when spread so easily on the web. First, because their meaning is unclear, they are open to interpretation by various groups but mainly those who feel unjustly treated by life. In North America, this group tends to be descendants of those who initially settled here many years ago, even before our nations existed (please note, I am making a distinction between two groups: those who feel unjustly treated and those who are unjustly treated). Ultimately such messages merely stir up the hatred that lies just barely below the surface. These messages do no good for our society. Second, such messages often employ the “common sense” argument for justification; however, one must be careful of accepting them because what appears to be common sense is not always good sense, especially when the thinkers eschew the useful, basic underpinnings of a proper argument - logic and evidence. Finally, these messages appeal to nostalgia for better places and easier times, but those times and places never existed except in our dimly recalled memories of childhood. Our parents, no doubt, saw them differently.
My recommendation is that when you see such messages or find them among the announcements of your friends, do not pass them on. Anger expressed sends angry ripples through the universe of being and thought. Those ripples will come back to lap at your ankles, rest assured.
One final point. I believe the writer may have made a spelling mistake. Perhaps he or she meant to say, “hearts without good.” Now that actually makes sense!

​To transform the world, we must begin with ourselves; and what is important in beginning with ourselves is the intention. The intention must be to understand ourselves and not to leave it to others to transform themselves or to bring about a modified change through revolution, either of the left or of the right. It is important to understand that this is our responsibility, yours and mine; because, however small may be the world we live in, if we can transform ourselves, bring about a radically different point of view in our daily existence, then perhaps we shall affect the world at large, the extended relationship with others. (Krishnamurti, The Book of Life)
As I have mentioned elsewhere, I first learned of Jiddu Krishnamurti by way of a gift of Krishnamurti’s Notebook, an account of how he first came to the awareness of his truth and thus to the work which would occupy his life. I read this book in December of 1997. I had recently retired from my teaching career with the Waterloo County Board of Education and was learning the ropes as a cab driver in Waterloo. My pension was two years away from starting, and I was relatively poor by my former standards, but I was enjoying my humble life and learning to find my way.
I was stunned by his story of discovery and became more and more curious about his ideas.  Over the next twelve years, I read sixteen books which comprised his works and a biography recounting his life. I found his view of life calming yet stimulating because he encouraged me to find my path. He did not believe in guru’s or teachers or saviors. Truth was yours to find, and it was simply that, your truth.  He did not suggest that you take your truth and try to convince others of it’s universality. Instead, he understood that the best way to change the way the world is to start with yourself. Once you have become a better person, you would not have to go about telling everyone; they would notice on their own if your path crossed theirs.
The following are a few suggestions for reading should you care to explore this interesting thinker of the twentieth century. Krishnamurti, Jiddu, Krishnamurti’s Notebook, 1976; Think On These Things, 1964; Total Freedom, 1992; J. Krishnamurti: A Biography by Papul Jayakar, 1986. The last of these presents the story of how Krishnamurti was discovered as a child in India and how he broke free from the control of his discoverers and managed to find his true path. Total Freedom is probably the most complete summary of his ideas.

Click here to In the mid-seventies, I began, in earnest, to research my family history although I had begun much earlier, informally. My early endeavours included gathering a collection of old photo albums from the farm homes of both my mother’s and my father’s parents. They were freely given since no one paid the least notice to them anyway. I have carried these albums for over sixty years. Another gem which I was able to collect was A History of Families in Essex County. I would eventually learn that this book was full of misinformation and possibly lies and that the families listed had paid to be included. Sadly, I lost this volume during my vagabond stage in the mid to late nineties. I do not miss it, however, since I have found the truth to be much more interesting.
In the seventies, the most popular way of conducting family research, at least where I lived in Kitchener-Waterloo, was to use the Mormon Church archives. Almost anyone could find some or all ancestors listed there since it was a practice of the Mormons to pray the dead into paradise, and of course those names had to be recorded. It wasn’t a perfect system. Research conducted by the untrained is often undependable. In addition, typically, researchers limited their search to a specific person, so siblings were often missed. However, it worked well enough for me to get hooked and with the coming of the age of computers, the process took off.
In the late nineties, I discovered a book by a man from Hamilton named Johannes Helmut Merz who had conducted research into a group of young German men, known as the Hessians of Upper Canada. These young men and be conscripted in Germany to fight for the British in the American Revolution. Ultimately, they stayed in North America, and several ended up in Essex County as United Empire Loyalists after the revolutionary war. One of these was Johann Leonard Kratz who happened to be my fifth great grandfather on my mother’s side. His story and his ultimate survival enthralled me, and I began to conduct even more research and to expand my family tree to the point where there are now over four hundred names the oldest of which goes back to the late 1400s in France.
In 2009, I put together what I had gathered in a short book called The Clarks of Cedar Creek. I published it only for family, but at least, now there is a printed record as well as the family tree on myheritage.com.
One thing I have learned, over the years, is that things happen in our lives that have roots in the past, and it helps us to understand this when we are faced with their consequences today. It is also humbling to realize that a trip over a rock five hundred years ago could have contributed to your existence today. I had an ancestor who was immune to the Black Plague, a great grandfather who almost died at the bottom of a well in Red Deer Alberta, and another ancestor who was shot but not killed in the War of 1812. Had any of those men not survived, I would not exist. Think about that for a few minutes because you can be very sure that your history has such stories as well.
OUR LIVES
Our lives are your history; 
you may read them 
when you visit our homes, 
when you hear our stories, 
or when you talk to our friends.
But you can know us best 
when you look in the mirror. 
Roger A. Clark 
​May 16, 2000

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​The New Hamburg water wheel was built to encourage tourists to hang out at the riverside park, but when a body is found hanging on the wheel, the bucolic life of the town is threatened. In an unlikely turn of events, the town’s mayor becomes a murder suspect,  something made even more threatening by the fact that it is an election year.
Angus MacGregor, the mayor’s former classmate and newly retired and relocated ex-Toronto police detective is called upon to try to save the mayor’s reputation as well as his job as he tries to unmask the real killer. As he travels around the region and to such far off places as Toronto and Vancouver, Angus meets up with an array of characters both good and bad and learns a lot about how small-town folk work together to save their way of life in a world seemingly controlled by big cities and big businesses.
Philip Allen Campbell is a pen name I created to honour three important men in my life: Philip Phee Clark, my great grandfather, the man for whom the word “codger” was coined; Allen Charles Clark, my paternal grandfather who always listened to me; and Charlie Campbell, my first mentor in an educational setting. I grew up on a dairy farm in Essex County, Ontario. I have worked as a teacher in Canada and Northern China and as a cab driver in Waterloo, Ontario. I am now retired and live in Mississauga, Ontario with my wife Song Anny Wang and our cats Joey and Cynthia.  
I wrote Big Wheel in the spring of 1993 shortly after defending my doctorate at UBC. Suddenly, I had nothing to do with my spare time – something I had not experienced for nearly a decade. The Big Wheel story had been tucked away in my mind for a few years, but it took shape quickly that spring.