Food Freedom Day, set for Feb. 12, is marked to show just how little farmers make in relation to the bill you get at the supermarket.

“The farmer is still getting a very, very small, portion of that grocery tab,” says Bette Jean Crews, president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture.

Indeed, even when the costs of fuel and other commodities were on the rise, food prices continued in the vein of a decades-

long, downward trend. According to the OFA, in 2003, Canadian consumers spent on average, just 10.5 per cent of their personal disposable income on food, compared to 12.4 per cent in 1998.

Indicative of this steadily negative trend, this year, Food Freedom Day arrives three days earlier than in 2007, and five days earlier than in 2005. In other words, Canadians are paying less for their food bills and farmers are seeing even lower profits. According to a 2006 report by the Centre For Rural Studies and Enrichment in Saskatchewan, the most dramatic price increase in grains is found when

corn is compared to corn flakes. The price of a box of corn flakes more than doubled from 1981 to 2005, increasing by $1.95 per box.

However, the price of the corn used to manufacture that box of cornflakes has decreased by $0.01 per box. In 2004, an Ontario farmer received a penny less for the winter wheat that went in to a box of crackers, than he or she received in 1981, while that same box of crackers increased in value by $0.75.

OFA vice-president Don McCabe notes that while the prices farmers get for their products have actually dropped, the costs of labour, fuel and other inputs have risen significantly. General inflation has also played a factor.

“For farmers, the fact is that what consumers pay for their food directly to the farmer is such a small cost of the overall food price,” says McCabe, a corn, wheat and soybean grower in Lambton County.

Steve Martin of Martin’s Family Fruit Farm in St. Jacobs says that many fruit and vegetable farmers today see labour accounting for approximately 60 per cent of their costs, despite the fact that what they are getting in return is either stagnating or decreasing.

“Where is that money going to come from? Already there are no margins to work with,” Martin says.

With minimum wage destined to rise in the next few years, farmers will be faced with even fewer options, some of which – such as conglomerating farm operations, employing cheaper growing methods, or slashing wages – are not desirable.

“I appreciate the fact that there are people, even right in our communities, that might already be struggling to afford food as it is – but I think that’s a separate issue. I’m not unsympathetic to that; I just say that that has to be dealt with through other social means. But we can’t deal with that at the backs of farmers. We can’t expect farmers to produce it for less than the cost of production,” says Martin.

Part of the OFA’s Food Freedom Day campaign is to raise awareness about the plight of farmers today and to encourage them to think locally when buying food.

“We would ask that folks seriously consider looking at, where possible, buying local,” says McCabe, who notes that

within this context there is reason for optimism as more people are looking locally.

“The bottom line is that we are seeing an uptake in ‘buy local.’ We are seeing a greater interest from consumers in how farmers

do what they do for them. And education is the utmost important thing here.”

Though supporting local initiatives such as the Buy Local! Buy Fresh! program is one way of supporting domestic farmers,

it isn’t a panacea, says McCabe, who confesses that not every trip to the grocery store for him involves a thorough search for exclusively Ontario products.

“You can’t always do what you want to do at the farmers’ market. I’m not telling people not to drink orange juice; I’m kind of partial to orange juice. Last time I checked under global warming, we haven’t picked up enough heat yet to start growing our own oranges –

you can’t get everything you want from the farmers’ market and you might not want to necessarily be seasonal all the time in what you eat.”

Another crucial aspect of the OFA campaign is to encourage consumers to learn about the issues and demand action from their elected representatives in government. Governments should work with farmers to create a sector whereby farmers get a return on their

investments.

“We’re not asking for handouts: we want that income from the marketplace, but at that point we need those shortterm programs to keep us there until the long-term solutions can be put in,” says Crews.

With climate change and global geopolitical issues an ever growing concern, it is crucial that Canadians find a way to support sustainable agriculture.

“There is a necessity to keep the agricultural industry going,” she says. “We need to be able to feed ourselves to be a sovereign country.”

Published in the Observer, February 7, 2009

“It’s pure luck, and nothing more, that I didn’t fall or disappear the way they did. That’s what motivates me to go on living and writing about the lives of my friends,” he says. He pauses again.

Cruz, a 53-year-old Coquitlam resident, came to Canada as a political refugee in 1976. A supporter of Latin America’s first democratically elected socialist government, he was like many other Chileans persecuted when General Augusto Pinochet’s military coup ousted the freely elected Salvador Allende in September 1973.

Pinochet and his party would rule the South American country for 15 years, during which time arrests, beatings, rape, executions and the disappearance of political opponents and innocents alike at government hands became commonplace. Cruz, a sociology student at the Universidad de Concepcion and armed with nothing more than his voice and his fists, took to the streets to defend his country’s fragile democracy.

He opposed everything Pinochet stood for, including the general’s political leanings and his use of violence to obtain power.

His protest made him a target for the government crackdown.

As Pinochet assumed control of the country, Cruz fled across the border to Mendoza, Argentina, but in 1976 he was caught and handed over to Chilean forces. In a remote area about an hour’s drive from the city, Cruz was beaten and tortured. Unlike many of those taken by the government, he survived.

Thirty years later, Cruz is a volunteer worker for El Comite de Expresos de Vancouver, a group of victims and former prisoners of the Pinochet regime. He is also one of thousands of expatriate Chileans around the world, many of whom live in Greater Vancouver, eligible for recently offered Chilean government compensation for the suffering they endured in the Pinochet era. Some are glad to be offered the money, small though it is, as a sign of the growing acknowledgment of the dark times the country went through in the 1970s. But Cruz says the compensation is not only too late but too little, and with his colleagues in El Comite de Expresos de Vancouver he is pushing the Chilean government to go farther.

As part of their campaign, he’s writing down his stories about his lost friends, and has plans to publish a book in their memory.

“I keep on writing to keep them alive so that they exist as something more than a name or a photograph,” Cruz says about his friends. “They were a part of history and nobody knows who they were, what their dreams were, what kind of a society they wanted, or what they were fighting for.”

During his captivity in 1976, Cruz was taken to a secret military base where he was tortured repeatedly for a week. Marines, soldiers and secret police agents stripped him naked and administered electric shocks. They dunked his head in filthy urine-filled water, in the common style his guards jokingly called “el submarino.” The soldiers threatened to kill his family and laughed at him as they forced him to watch others being tortured and executed. They deprived him of sleep or rest. Cruz was sure it was a matter of time before he became one of the bodies washing up on the banks of the Biobio river, the waters of which were used by the military as dumping grounds for victims of the regime.

But Cruz was one of the lucky ones. Interrogators soon realized he wasn’t a man of political weight or consequence and threw him into a cell. Six months later, through the intervention of a United Nations human rights worker, he was released and allowed to travel to Canada.

Cruz still suffers from the beatings he received in Mendoza. He has post-traumatic stress, is hard of hearing in one ear, and has a bad back that worsened when he took his first job in Canada as a shipper-receiver. His current job in construction doesn’t help.

Cruz is keeping a watch on the latest developments in Chile. Thirty-two years after Pinochet seized power, the Chilean government of President Ricardo Lagos has taken another step in grappling with the country’s past, a journey which began with the Rettig commission of 1990, named after the lawyer who headed it. The Rettig commission, set up under the government of President Patricio Aylwin, was the first attempt by a Chilean government to confront Chile’s violent past. The commission encouraged Chile’s victims of violence to come forward with personal accounts of torture. Over a period of nine months commission officials listened and recorded individual testimonies. A final report was written.

Coming soon after the Pinochet dictatorship, however, the commission was only relatively successful. Though no longer the country’s leader, Pinochet continued his role in the army, and upon his military retirement appointed himself senator for life with full immunity from prosecution. Many Chileans were wary of the government behind the Rettig commission. The offices and state buildings in which the testimonies took place were the same sites from which the state’s campaign of violence had been coordinated scant years before.

In 1998, Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon requested the extradition of Pinochet from England, where the former dictator was undergoing medical treatment, to stand trial in Spain for human rights abuses. Though the request was denied, Chile’s move toward truth and reparations for the 1970s got a highly publicized boost.

In 2004, Monseñor Sergio Valech, Bishop of Santiago and an outspoken critic of the violence during the Pinochet regime, held another commission and public hearings, concluding them in November with a lengthy report listing 28,000 known torture and abuse victims from the Pinochet era. The Chilean government then approved a proposal compensating the victims at $200 a month for the rest of their lives.

Cruz’s reaction to the compensation proposal is a mixture of bitterness and anger.

“They don’t talk about the millionaire pensions they’ve handed out to retired military officials, they don’t talk about the doubled pensions they receive because of war-related stress,” says Cruz. “So what happens is that the military officials who tortured us, tortured our wives, tortured our children, are rewarded, and for us the question of compensation is too expensive. What can we do with $200 a month?”

While he wants victims to receive better compensation, Cruz notes no amount of money can take away the scars of physical and psychological torture.

It’s a sentiment supported by Frances MacQueen, director of the Vancouver Association for Survivors of Torture, a non-profit providing torture survivors and their families with clinical and support services.

“First of all, we have to say that of course you are never going to receive compensation. There is no compensation for torture, for loss of lives, loss of hopes, loss of dreams. That’s not possible,” says MacQueen. “Getting some sort of acknowledgment of wrong-doing is more important for the soul than the actual money.”

Cruz is also unhappy that the number of people eligible for compensation is capped at 28,000. He says many more Chileans suffered than are officially recognized. But he says because the Valech hearings were badly publicized, many people, especially from rural towns and villages, didn’t testify.

Carlos Cuadrado, media relations officer at the Chilean embassy in Ottawa, acknowledges the problems with the Valech commission hearings and that potential witnesses might have been reticent to speak in public.

“There are many things that you might not want to talk about because they cause you a lot of pain, or because of the humiliation of talking about terrible things like rape and violence,” he says. “There are a lot of people who don’t want to remember certain things or make them public knowledge.”
______________________________
Pablo Madrid’s wife leaves the room when he starts telling the story of how he was tortured by Chilean army and naval officers.

“I don’t want my wife to hear this,” says Madrid, after she leaves.

He is sitting in the conference room at the Refugees and Newcomers Office of the Mennonite Central Committee in East Vancouver. Outside the weather is cold and wet. His interview, on a topic about which he does not like to talk, was arranged through the Mennonite organization, which acted as an intermediary.

Speaking calmly and slowly, Madrid, 58, remembers the day the soldiers took him away. He was blindfolded and driven in endless circles to disorient him. When they removed the blindfold, Madrid found himself in a remote and undisclosed field. There the beatings began. Seven or eight guards kicked him around like a rag doll. He was then taken to a naval base, where for four months in the base prison he suffered torture, including suffocation, electrocution, psychological abuse and humiliation.

He says the soldiers who imprisoned and tortured him and others showed no mercy to anyone.

“We thought that they would have some sort of respect for the children, for the women and the elders, but there was none,” says Madrid. “Today Pinochet’s family is pleading respect for the old man when they in their time had no respect for anyone. I was held captive with children and with elders and they treated them like they treated me-and worse.”

During his captivity and torture, Madrid thought of death as a welcome escape from the endless pain.

“There were times when you didn’t even care anymore and so you’d yell out [to the guards] ‘Do what you want with me.’ But that’s what they wanted, so that they could beat you even more,” says Madrid. “I knew I had to live, to look after two more lives: for my wife and my child. That’s what made me survive.”

In the middle of his story, when he begins to describe what the soldiers did to other men and women he befriended in the naval prison, Madrid’s words become broken and heavy. He stops speaking and raises some papers to cover his face.

Despite the weight of those four months three decades later, Madrid is grateful for the Valech commission and what successive governments after Pinochet have done for Chile.
“I could die now, peacefully, knowing that at least some justice has been achieved,” says Madrid. “I don’t think it is always possible to get exactly what you want, but at least something was achieved and that something will remain.”

Waldo Briño, director of the Vancouver Latino newspaper Milenio and son of a Chilean torture survivor, also praises the progress made by the current Chilean government to compensate victims of Pinochet. Briño says that though justice has been slow, the steps taken forward for compensation and reconciliation can’t be reversed. Not only have they paved the way for the trials of other accused military generals, they have changed the minds of the Chilean people, who once looked at the victims of the 1970s as necessary casualties.

“I guarantee you that many people in Chile to this day thought that if so and so was tortured, and so and so was murdered, or the father of so and so was disappeared, it was because they deserved it, because these were the consequences of a war on communism,” says Briño.

A new generation of Chileans has had the opportunity of viewing documents and hearing testimonies from the 1970s, and thanks to a fair judicial process and popular films about the era, the collective image of Pinochet in the minds of Chileans has changed.

“He is no longer seen as the great defender of the people, as having liberated Chile from communism,” says Briño. “Now he is seen as the thief who robbed the country of its riches, who kept his wealth in Swiss and North American banks, and who went from being a great hero to a thief and a murderer who disappeared many innocent people.”

The international community also played its part in pressuring the Chilean government to come out with the truth about the nation’s past. But the most important catalyst of all was the bravery of the people of Chile: the innocent victims, the widows and the mothers of those who were disappeared who began mounting daily protests in the 1980s demanding to know what happened to their husbands and sons, says Briño.

Madrid agrees.

“What we have today isn’t perfect,” he says. “But what we have we have thanks to all those people, starting with the women [the Mothers of the Disappeared] who took to the streets in 1986. They were the first ones to lose their fear and to help the whole movement in itself become fearless.”

If the past in Chile is finally being remembered and the surviving victims receiving recognition, can the crimes of the era be forgiven? Eduardo Cruz is grappling with the question.
“There can be no social peace without social justice first,” he says. “Most of us in Chile are Christian and so believe in forgiveness. But no one has ever asked us for forgiveness.”

Dr. Joanna Quinn, a political science professor at the University of Western Ontario, says both acknowledgment and forgiveness are crucial to the health of a rebuilding society. She has travelled to several war torn nations around the world and studied societies wrestling with the legacy of their human rights atrocities. Acknowledgment of what happened must come first, she says.

“You can’t have forgiveness unless acknowledgment takes place before that,” says Quinn. “Acknowledgment happens at the personal and interpersonal level but if a substantial portion of people in the country are acknowledging or trying to acknowledge what happened then you see at a societal or a collective level that the same things are starting to [change].”

Quinn believes Chile has come a long way in publicly documenting what happened during the Pinochet regime and is undergoing a massive change for the better. But there is still much more to be done, she says. As the truth continues to come out Chileans and human rights advocates around the world are waiting to see if Pinochet will be tried and convicted for the atrocities committed during this regime. A conviction, says Quinn, would be a deterrent to leaders of other countries from committing similar crimes.

The immunity from prosecution that Pinochet granted himself in 1990 has complicated the issue. While Chile’s supreme court ruled Pinochet fit, physically and legally, to stand trial, Chilean officials accused of human rights abuses but protected by a blanket amnesty invoked by Pinochet will be harder to try and convict, says Quinn.

“Only time will tell.”

No one knows if Pinochet, 89, will live long enough to be tried. But many Chileans take comfort that Chile’s bloody history is finally officially recognized in the country.

Even Cruz can find something positive to say about efforts like the Valech commission and their effect on the Chilean national psyche.

“One shouldn’t be all negative,” he says. “The Valech commission is entirely positive because it vindicates the names of all those who fell, those who were tortured or imprisoned, and those who fought for justice and who will be written into Chilean history as freedom fighters. Not as terrorists, as Pinochet portrayed them.”

But Cruz argues a better compensation package, in accordance with international human rights laws, is necessary for true justice to be achieved.

“Some of us have already received our miserable compensation, assessed and approved by [the Chilean] congress. But the Valech commission wanted something with more integrity,” says Cruz.

Cruz and his colleagues in El Comite de Expresos de Vancouver want more money for people with disabilities stemming from injuries they received during torture and imprisonment.

They also believe too many members of the Pinochet regime accused of human rights abuses are escaping justice. They want them tried and convicted.

Until those demands are met, Cruz and the other committee members will continue to meet at Joe’s Cafe on Commercial to plan their battle for truth and compensation. Cruz has waited for three decades for the justice he seeks. And as he writes down his stories about the friends he lost, he can wait even longer.
Published in the Vancouver Courier March 9, 2005
http://www.vancourier.com/issues05/032205/news/032205nn1.html
http://www.vancourier.com/issues05/032205/news/032205nn1.html

Today, Babker comes by because he knows Hashim is moving. It’s not a big move; nothing like the one he made two years ago from Darfur, Sudan, to Egypt and then to Canada. There are no planes involved, no clandestine phone calls, no United Nations intermediaries, not even an immigration official. This time the move is significantly shorter. This time, it’s across the hallway.

Sitting and sipping tea in Hashim’s now former-and significantly larger-room, Babker jokingly chides his younger cousin as he moves his things across the border between this room and the next.

“You haven’t moved yet?” asks Abdel, feigning disbelief. “Man, you’re lazy. What, are you waiting for your girlfriend to come over to help you?”

They both laugh.

Abdel and Hashim aren’t cousins by blood, though they refer to each other as such. Abdel says their familial bond is one that North Americans usually find difficult to understand. They seem to get confused, he says, when he explains that they are cousins because they hail from the same town, Nyalla. Maybe it’s a bond that was reinforced through the immigrant experience-that of finding someone in a foreign land who is from your part of the world, who speaks your language, who understands your jokes, and who shares your past and present hardships. Hardships that forced you to leave family and friends behind, and that force you to dream of the day it will be safe to return.

Both Hashim and Abdel share many things in common, not least of which is this seemingly distant dream.

But if the situation in Darfur persists, Hashim and Abdel’s dream of returning will remain just that, a dream. They say if the international community continues to ignore the call for intervention and mainstream media continue to shift their attention from what some have labeled a genocide in Sudan to other, more “marketable” crises, the people of Darfur will continue to die of hunger, disease, and ethnic cleansing.

“We must tell the world that we don’t want another Rwanda,” says Abdel. “If the international community does not get involved, Darfur will reach the point of Rwanda. What can a few thousand African Union troops and three or four planes do in a region that is larger than France?”

Judging by the sporadic coverage of Darfur in Canada’s major dailies, the average Canadian might be inclined to think the conflict in Darfur is a recent development.

It isn’t.

Tensions between Africans and the ruling Arabs in the region of Darfur have run high since the 1970s, with both groups competing for scarce natural resources in the region. In early 2003, rebels groups of mostly African Muslims attacked the Arab government’s outposts to protest the central government’s neglect of the Darfuri people and the economic inequality between Africans and the predominantly Arab elite.

The Sudanese government, which was involved in the then 18-year-old bloody civil war against the south, felt it could not crush the uprising on its own, and enlisted nomadic Arab militias known as the Janjaweed.

Since then the Janjaweed (roughly translated as “armed men on horseback”) have been terrorizing the region’s three ethnic groups, the Fur, the Masalit and the Zaghawa.

Since the conflict began more than two years ago, thousands of Darfuri people have been killed and millions displaced. The Janjaweed have destroyed hundreds of villages and cut off aid and supply lines. Murder, abduction and rape have become common place. Women are systematically raped in an effort to wipe out African blood lines. According to Medecins Sans Frontieres, at least one incident of rape is reported every day.

When the international community first pressured the Sudanese government to control the Janjaweed, the government claimed it had no control over the armed militias.

Abdel and Hashim came to Canada to leave that violence behind. Hashim left Nyalla when he was 16, and first told his parents about his plans from a phone booth in Egypt. He’s now 21 and living in London, Ontario. Although he was never attacked or robbed back home, he has childhood memories of marauding horsemen even before the recent conflict erupted.

Abdel’s experience in Darfur was more precarious.

A student of electrical engineering at Sudan University, Abdel had been politically active with youth movements protesting the socio-economic divide between Darfur and the rest of Sudan. Involved with the political opposition, Abdel, now 27, became a hunted man. Fearing for his life and those of his parents, he left Darfur.

After a long exodus, Abdel arrived safely in Canada. But not without the painful memory of the friends he lost to the violence.

The international community has spoken out against the Sudanese government but has been slow to react and reluctant to exert more than verbal pressure. Critics are unhappy with the UN’s lack of teeth in addressing an issue it called “the world’s worst humanitarian disaster” and have voiced concern over its claim that the terror in Darfur is not ‘genocide.’

Genocide, as defined in Webster’s dictionary, is considered “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group.” Even the United States has referred to the crisis in Darfur as “genocide.” Yet the political implications of acknowledging it as such are vast: they would warrant commitment and responsibility surpassing a level of rhetoric.

A UN report published early in 2005 found that government forces and Janjaweed militia “conducted indiscriminate attacks, including killing of civilians, torture, enforced disappearances, destruction of villages, rape and other forms of sexual violence, pillaging and forced displacement.” The commission also named over 50 alleged perpetrators of crimes against humanity, and suggested that the Security Council refer the report to the International Criminal Court. But by not uttering the ‘g-word’ the United Nations have in effect, placed the issue of Darfur on the back burner.

International intervention has been further delayed by the fact that the United States, a key member of the Security Council with veto power, does not recognize the International Criminal Court. So, while diplomats argue which definition is most appropriate, people on the ground in Darfur are dying. Whether or not the violence is ethnically motivated, the reality is that Janjaweed militias are as effective and indiscriminate in slaying and raping as diseases are in wiping out Darfuris.

Oxfam says that up to 2 million people have fled their homes, and many have been left without any to return to. The Janjaweed’s torch and burn practice has been highly effective in clearing the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa peoples from their hometowns. Farmers have been unable to harvest their crops because of the violence, and recent droughts have only made things worse.

Aid organizations like Medecins Sans Frontieres, Oxfam and the International Red Cross are finding it nearly impossible to meet the growing needs of millions of Darfuris, who are fleeing the danger and pouring across the borders into neighbouring countries.

Thousands of people are cramped in refugee camps, and diarrhoeal diseases, meningitis, respiratory infections and malaria are spreading quickly. According to World Health Organization estimates 10,000 people are dying a month of malnutrition or disease.

So why is it only now that the international community is taking heed of the conflict? Why have the thousands of deaths, which according to UN estimates number at around 70,000, failed to evoke the spirit of generosity that inspired so many people to empty their wallets in support of the victims of Hurricane Katrina or last year’s tsunami? Why this game of favorites with the world’s downtrodden?

Elmira went into the Galt Arena Gardens Apr. 5 up 3-2 in the conference final, and posted a 6-1 win to take the trophy from the defending Mid-Western Junior Hockey League champions.

It was the Kings’ first title since 2002, and their fifth since 1978.

“You hear people win championships and they say, ‘words don’t describe it.’ I don’t even know if it’s sunk in yet,” said coach Geoff Haddaway after Saturday’s win in Cambridge. “It certainly means a lot to a lot of us who are new to the organization and old to not only beat a Cambridge team that we respect so much, but to do it in their barn just means so much.”

After a humiliating loss to the Hawks during last year’s playoffs, the Kings got off to a shaky start this year. Losing 4-1 in Elmira, the Kings looked nervous and maybe even haunted by the specter of the previous year. But they bounced back quickly, posting solid back-to-back wins: 6-5 on Mar. 29 and 5-4 on Mar. 30. On Apr. 1, the Kings boosted their series lead three games to one and looked poised to deliver the coup de grace, but were tripped up in game five by the Hawks in a 4-1 home loss.

But rather than dwell on that roadblock the Kings took to the Cambridge ice the following Saturday and set out with one simple objective.

“No disrespect to Cambridge, but there was no way we were losing tonight. The look in our guys’ eyes and what happened to them in our home rink; there was just no way we were losing. No way,” said Haddaway.

After a split regular season series (2-2-2), the Kings got the better of their bitter enemies in the playoffs. The revenge was oh so sweet.

“Feels awesome to put those guys out. Everybody was saying after the game when we lost that they were going to come back and beat us. Said, no way to that,” said defenceman Patrick Shantz, who made the jump from the Junior D Applejacks midway through the season.

“I came here with a game-plan and that’s step one right there: going to the Cherrey Cup. Came here to win the whole thing.”

Last Saturday the Kings were the first to get on the board late in the first period when Garrett Rank scored, assisted by Brent Freeman and Michael Therrien. Both teams battled hard for possession of the puck, but Elmira showed the most offensive initiative, hammering Dave Clement, who got yanked in the second period, with 14 shots. Elmira’s Dan Morrison was busy in his own end, shutting the door on all of Cambridge’s nine first-frame shots.

Jeremy Hilliard added to the Elmira lead with two second-period tallies at 2:33 (John Lunney, Brock Zinken) and 7:21. A speedy Freeman scored shorthanded at 14:12 and hulking Addison Fisher added his own at 15:28 to make it a 5-0 game.

The far superior Kings pressed the Cambridge net and wore the team down to a nub, shelling Louie George, last year’s hero, with 15 shots; by comparison the Hawks were only able to pester Morrison - who was as solid as ever - with a meagre eight.

“We just decided to come up with our best game of the year,” said Haddaway.

In the third period, Rank added his second of the night on the power play (Therrien, Scott Lepold) to make it 6-0. The Hawks scrambled at the beginning of the third to reverse the course of the game but the reality of that quickly slipped away and the Hawks instead focused on leaving their mark by ruining Morrison’s shutout. At 13:37, Jacob Chiblow - after a flurry of preceding shots and an acrobatic Morrison - did just that on the power play, converting on a Kurt Thorner, Cody Hall helper. But other than blemish Morrison’s clean slate the Cambridge goal did little else.

As the dying seconds of the game ticked away, the Sugar Kings stormed the ice in celebration, eager to hoist the Cherrey Cup.

“You can’t really describe it. I mean everyone’s just going nuts; especially for the guys who were here last year, it’s just twice as nice because they did lose last year and they were so close,” said Morrison.

Among some of the players who will graduate out of the Junior B system this year, captain John Lunney underlined the great feeling of finally clinching the Cherrey Cup with his squad, and of being able “to go out with a bang.”

Instrumental in leading his team through the playoff run, Lunney deflected praise and said it was only possible through the hard work of the entire team.

“A great bunch of guys who worked hard all year,” said the captain, noting that the successful playoff bid began with the man between the pipes.

“He’s the number-one goalie in the league,” said Lunney of Morrison.

Despite their euphoria, the Kings got back to work the following day, in preparation for the Sutherland Cup.

After all, a week after the final in Cambridge, the Cherrey cup now seems a distant memory.

“We’re not done,” said Lunney.

Published in the Woolwich Observer April 12, 2008

Since 2003, the predominantly Arab Sudanese government has been enlisting the help of Arab Muslim militias (dubbed the Janjaweed) to terrorize-and some would say to exterminate-the Africans of Darfur. The Janjaweed have destroyed hundreds of villages, slaughtering the men and raping the women in an effort to wipe out the African blood lines. Food and aid supply lines have been cut off. As estimated 2 million people have been displaced, and the United Nations puts the number of dead at roughly 70,000.

So why have the thousands of deaths in Darfur failed to evoke the spirit of generosity that inspired so many people to empty their wallets in support of the victims of Hurricane Katrina or last year’s tsunami? Why this game of favourites with the world’s downtrodden?

Abdel Babker, a 27-year-old Darfuri refugee now living in Windsor, says the media are to blame.

“When you compare the coverage of Darfur to that of the tsunami there is clearly not enough coverage by the media. Not more than two minutes of news on what’s happening in Sudan.”

Others argue that there are indeed reporters (like Stephanie Nolen of The Globe and Mail or Sebastian Mallaby of the Washington Post) who write about Darfur.

Yet if the magnitude of a tragedy is measured by the number of lives it claims, then the media coverage of Darfur, as compared to that of the Asian tsunami, has been grossly unequal.

Arli Klassen, social worker and executive director of the Mennonite Central Committee in Kitchener, says there are a couple reasons Darfur has failed to captivate global audiences.

“Refugees and displaced people in the Darfur region are faceless and nameless. It takes months, if not years, for refugees from a specific situation, to make it to Canada - through the red tape process ….Our government’s preference is that they can return home. So, they live in refugee camps and displaced peoples camps, while their future remains so uncertain.”

Secondly, Klassen says Darfur lacks a sense of proximity for Canadians. Because of the ongoing crises in Sudan, few Canadians have visited the region of Darfur. Asia, by comparison, has been a holiday hot spot for years. When images of the tsunami were broadcast incessantly on TV, Westerners saw their own relatives caught, both literally and symbolically, in the tragedy.

“People give if they can imagine themselves in a situation and how horrifying it would be. With few images, and few contacts with people and their stories, and without white tourists there, like in the tsunami stuff, there are few handles for North Americans to personally identify with these suffering people.”

Compared to the thunderous waves that extinguished thousands of lives in a matter of hours, the conflict in Darfur has been a “slow moving tragedy.” As a result, Darfur takes a back seat to other more “news worthy” stories.

“In many ways, this tragedy has less importance for some than a baseball, hockey or basketball game,” says Wendy Gichuru, of the United Church of Canada. Gichuru is area secretary of East & Central Africa and The Middle East in the justice, global and ecumenical relations unit.

Behind western apathy, she says, is an ugly truth.

“Undoubtedly, racism plays a very large part in the western world’s inability to personally connect with the situation of Darfuris,” says Gichuru, “They’re black and poor.”

If the media in general are guilty of being unable to evoke sympathy for suffering Darfuris, they are also guilty of perpetuating a belief that Africa is a forgotten continent - an area beyond repair; that with the current socio-economic system whereby the developed countries profit off the lesser developed, Africa’s hopeless predicament is in fact a reality.

Klassen disagrees and does so strongly.

“No it’s not,” says Klassen, her voice wavering. “It’s not reality. But it needs a political will, and the interest and the will of people to be able to help make a difference.”

The problem is that people don’t want to hear about Africa.

“I don’t think that the general public is actually looking for that,” she says with a heavy sigh.

As long as the international community stands still as millions die by violence and disease the difference between “forgotten” and “ignored” is merely a question of semantics.

“You might say it doesn’t matter because it’s the same result. Regardless of whether it’s forgotten or ignored. The media will produce what people want to hear and people don’t want to hear about Africa.”

There is a double edged sword to media coverage of the crisis in Darfur.

Despite good intentions, many express sensitivity to the way global media, especially western media, portray African issues.

Arli Klassen says the message of Africa as a failed “state” is transferred through the media’s continuous casting and recasting of African stories as tragedies and conflicts. As a result, audiences are given the image of a homogenous continent unified by the single thread of conflict.

“The world seems to have written off the possibility of change and hope in the African context,” says Klassen. “Somehow, the world thinks that Africa is a “black hole”, in many definitions of that term, and that it is not worth investing in African relief or development, because it won’t make much of a difference.”

Wendy Gichuru agrees.

“The perception of the general public of Africa and Africans is that of pathetic beggars, incapable of pulling themselves out of their “self-created” tragic circumstances without the help of the West, “says Gichuru.

“I realize this may not be the intention. However, that is exactly what is being done with people’s lives, stories and images. The daily struggles and the terrible conflicts happening in various African countries are ’sold’ to the public via the media in the most negative, demeaning and dehumanizing ways. “

The positive stories, the success stories, never seem to make it beyond a country’s own borders.

Klassen, who lived in Lesotho for four years, has seen the “good stories” up close. And there are many of them, she says. If only the world would notice.

“I think (telling) more success stories, or stories of people who keep trying in spite of incredible challenges, or of communities that are working, would be helpful,” says Klassen.

Many who sympathize with Darfur regret that little if no distinction is ever made between the continent’s more than fifty countries, its myriad ethnicities, languages, cultures and histories.

Faced with this startling ignorance on a regular basis, Abdel Babker shrugs his shoulders and confronts it with a sense of irony. “It makes me laugh when people think of Africa as a single country,” he says with a wry smile. “Am I in the wrong place?” he laughs and his cousin Hashim joins in.

Abdel says he feels fortunate for not having being turned away, as others have, when he came as a refugee to the Canadian border. Compared to the many other countries he’s lived in during his transient exile, Abdel says it’s easier to integrate into the Canadian community than it is in other countries. Among his travels abroad, however, Abdel has also developed his own theories about the phenomenon of ignorance.

“In Ukraine you might even find someone who knows your place even better than you,” he says.

“When I came to Canada I realized that many people, that all they know, is how to pay the bills and about one or two (foreign) issues. And that’s because the media don’t get involved. Everybody knew about the tsunami because the media covered it really well.”

Despite this, Abdel says foreign reporters must intensify their coverage of the events in Darfur. Shedding cultural biases toward an entire continent is not done overnight, but the decision to deploy troops is. A military presence, sanctioned by the UN and the world’s civilians cannot wait any longer.

“The reality is that there is a war going on down there; people are being raped and murdered,” says Abdel. “The situation is negative and you can’t write something positive right now about what’s going on in Darfur. If the international community does not get involved…” he sighs, trailing off.

“We don’t want to see another Rwanda.”

Throughout the duration of this conversation, Hashim has moved a few things from one room to the other. He’s also taken time to make tea, cook lunch, and take part in the conversation.

Though Hashim is less talkative than his cousin he also shares his stories of hardship. But when he talks about Darfur, the Darfur he knows from childhood, his eyes light up and a wistful smile spreads across his face.

“Marra mountain is the most beautiful place in all of Sudan,” he says fondly. Abdel joins in and they make jokes about the region. Their region. Their country.

“We played there with our friends when we were young. We had a lot of things - water, vegetables, fruits - in the mountain,” says Hashim.

“I want to go back when I finish school.”