Dangerously Psychotic Yet He Lives Free To Reoffend

"He reported not having consumed alcohol beforehand but did use crystal methamphetamine, along with two or three joints of cannabis."

"He reported hearing voices both with and without the use of crystal methamphetamine, but they became worse when he used the substance."

"Counsel for all parties agreed that Mr. Pillar represented a significant threat to public safety [and that his ban on] the non-medical use of alcohol or other intoxicating substances [should be dropped]."

"[In the years before the stabbing he was the subject of] multiple Community Treatment Orders, during which Mr. Pillar continued to use drugs and alcohol and was non-compliant with his prescribed medication and appointments."

"The history also includes several attempts at mental health diversion for various criminal charges. His reported symptoms, when unwell, included command auditory hallucinations to kill both men and women, but chiefly women." 

Ontario Review Board

 

"In a significant legal decision, the Ontario Review Board lifted a drug ban for Richard P. Pillar, who was found not criminally responsible for a violent incident in Windsor. On September 28, 2016."

"At approximately 11 a.m., 83-year-old Rina Campagna was attacked and severely injured by Pillar near a bank."

"The attack, which occurred in Windsor, Ontario, left Campagna with the loss of an eye. Pillar, who suffers from multiple mental health disorders, was under the influence of drugs at the time."

UL Lawyers Professional Corporation 

Photograph of assaulted 83-year-old woman being taken to hospital by paramedics. Photo: Postmedia

 

Found not criminally responsible after stabbing an 83-year-old stranger in the eye, an Ontario man has had his drug ban lifted, despite that he had used crystal methamphetamine and smoked two or three joints of cannabis beforehand. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, social anxiety disorder and substance use disorder, Richard P. Pillar, with his anti-social personality disorder and borderline intellectual functioning was found, at trial, not criminally responsible of aggravated assault after his attack on Rina Campagna.

 

Walking unaccompanied to a Windsor bank on September 28, 2016, the elderly woman was accosted by Pillar from behind, and brought to the ground. Her assailant took hold of the woman's head and with a knife, stabbed one of her eyes. Ms. Campagna was left with severe injuries that included loss of the injured eye, pointed out the independent tribunal tasked with reviewing the status of individuals found not criminally responsible for violent crimes they commit. 

 

Witnesses at the scene recounted seeing Pillar discarding his clothing as he fled the area. An arrest took place within the day. Pillar had been bound by two probation orders which prohibited him from weapons possession, at the time of the attack on the woman. Neither victim nor attacker were known to one another. Pillar informed authorities that he deliberately withheld taking his antipsychotic injection two weeks previous to the attack. "He wanted to see what it was like if he did not take the medication", the ORB decision noted. 

 

In this Sept. 28, 2016, file photo, Windsor police, paramedic and fire emergency response crews converge in the 1300 block of Ottawa Street following a brutal stabbing attack on an elderly woman. Photo by Jason Kryk /Windsor Star

 

"I no longer feel safe and secure doing my daily routine like shopping, visiting people or going to church."

"[I've missed important family events], because I thought I looked like a monster. I don’t feel good about myself anymore."

"I say no to a lot of friends asking me to come over because I am afraid to walk alone and I have a hard time talking in a group back and forth with one eye and double vision."

"And I am so scared that if he ever gets out he might come back to attack me again."

Victim Impact Statement, Rina Campagna  

The day previous to Pillar's attack on Ms. Campagna he had made a failed effort  to attack another pedestrian, but his aim was deflected. He was given a discharge by the ORB in March of 2025 with conditions attached, that he report to a  hospital at least twice monthly, "abstain from intoxicants, submit samples for analysis [and] refrain from the possession of weapons". At the time Pillar had lived for four years in the community with no recorded hospital readmissions.

 

Now 37, Pillar lives alone in a subsidized one-bedroom apartment in St. Thomas, Ontario. The psychiatric medical team that has been overseeing his conditions advised the Review Board that they're in the process of preparing Pillar to be discharged from the forensic system, and recommends a removal of the 'abstain' clause from his disposition. 

 

Mental health issues and criminal behaviour marked Pillar's early life, beginning when he started using alcohol at age nine, cannabis at age 11, cocaine at age 14, and crystal methamphetamine at age 25. In April 2017, in pretrial detention, he struck a correctional officer, stating that voices instructed him to hit correctional staff. Months following his hospital admission as a result of the stabbing, he attacked a nursing station where a female staff member had retreated when he became angry.  

 

Police investigate area on Ottawa Street where Richard Pillar stabbed an 83 year-old woman in 2016. (CBC File)

 

"He ... continued to fixate on the [female medical] staff member, stating that he wanted to kill her. He also threatened to stab someone in the eye and kill them if he gained weight from his injection of antipsychotic medication."

"He was placed in seclusion and later tried to grab a female staff member through an opening in the seclusion room door."

"[A resurgence of symptoms], resulting from medication ineffectiveness of non-adherence, substance use, or all three, is likely to have very serious consequences."

"That history, including but not limited to the index offences, involves acting on command hallucinations directing him to harm or kill people."

Ontario Review Board 

Mexico's Disappeared

"What we want is to find the disappeared. And we are reinforcing the institutions of the Mexican State to better prevent and respond to this tragic crime."

"We reaffirm our commitment. We will continue searching for all missing persons until we find them."

"Our obligation is to continue looking for everyone, for every person."

"And, at the same time, to eradicate this crime. There should be no more disappeared in Mexico."

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum

 

"The idea that forced disappearances don’t happen, or that most disappearances are related to voluntary absences, minimizes the responsibility of the state."

"Limiting the number of missing persons to 43,128 minimizes the magnitude of a crisis that has a human face and that won’t be solved through administrative searches."

Centro Prodh human rights group

 

"We are reverting once again to the idea that only those with case files at the public prosecutor’s office will be considered."

"There is deep mistrust of the prosecutors’ offices; there is significant collusion between these offices and criminal groups – that’s common knowledge."

Rosalva Aída Hernández Castillo, Mexican anthropologist 

Mothers gather outside Banorte Stadium before the Mexico v Portugal match in Monterrey on 28 March, asking for justice for their missing loved ones. Photograph: Franco Uriel Pérez Ramírez/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

 

Volunteer search teams last year discovered an abandoned ranch where inexplicably a multitude of shoes were found. To the search teams this was evidence of an extermination camp operated by a drug cartel. When charred human remains were found there as well, Mexican authorities went into denial mode, insisting that the Izaguirre ranch in Jalisco, western Mexico, was actually a training camp for new recruits of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the most powerful of Mexico's many criminal groups.

 

Dissatisfied with the outcome of the investigation, volunteers returned to the site to continue searching for answers and another disturbing discovery was revealed. There, they found a septic pit stuffed with human teeth and bone fragments. Yet another discovery consolidating the inescapable reality of an ongoing grim chapter in Mexico. Over 133,000 people have vanished across the country and Mexican authorities have gone out of their way fruitlessly to solve the situation, then resorted to minimizing it and finally denying its existence.

People hold pictures of missing persons in front of the National Palace during the commemoration of the International Day of the Disappeared in Mexico City, on 30 August 2019. Photograph: Rodrigo Arangua/AFP/Getty Images

 

The fact that Mexicans have been struggling with, in an ongoing effort to stem the tide of the disappeared -- or at the very least comprehend how and why it is occurring -- hoping for a clue that might direct them toward prevention focuses on the reality that tens of thousands of people have disappeared in the past several decades, and the suspects causing these sudden absences in civil society are organized crime, aided and abetted by colluding government officials. 

 

President Claudia Sheinbaum has sworn to pursue justice until such time as the mystery of these wholesale disappearances has been brought to a conclusion. The rate at which the government has moved in an effort to solve the frighteningly deadly situation has been glacial and ineffective in the opinion of government critics. Societal condemnation of government has placed new pressure on the president for the urgent need of greater progress.

 

According to government statistics, homicides have dropped by 41 percent under this administration, while the number of missing persons has more than doubled since 2015. Prosecutors have been mandated by the president to open an investigation once a disappearance report has been received. A nationwide emergency alert system was launched to respond to missing person reports. Nonetheless controversy has followed these initiatives.

 

A person runs along the Sunday bike route in front of a section of the metal guardrail at the so-called “Roundabout of the Disappeared,” plastered with photographs of missing persons, in Mexico City.

(Yuri Cortez/AFP via Getty Images)

 

An audit to review the national disappearance registry was ordered in the wake of the Izaguirre ranch discovery, with a goal to ensure accurate data collection. Created in 2018, the registry merged lists from state prosecutors, search commissions and volunteers, an assimilation difficult to analyze. "There were no standards, no methodology", stated security official overseeing the effort, Marcela Figueroa. The total of 130,000 entries were divided into three groups by Ms. Figueroa's research team. Given the lack of information, argued the government, searching for one set of the missing would be impossible.

 

One third of the entries were categorized as individuals who had been reported missing, but who had been found to have married, filed taxes or received vaccinations. Of the remaining 43,600 people of whom nothing had been heard from after being reported missing, sufficient information exists to enable continued searches. This conclusion drew mixed reactions from the concerned public with some researchers claiming government failed to make its data public and as such, verifying the audit's accuracy was not possible.  

"I want to give a vote of confidence."

"The problem is they can show whatever figures they want, but if there's no evidence to back them up, it's going to be really hard to defend what they're doing." 

Fernando Escobar, researcher, Common Cause, Mexico 

Forestry workers scrape soil looking for evidence of human remains during a massive, multi-agency search through Cumbres del Ajusco National Park, which sits south of Mexico City. (Jorge Barrera/CBC)

 

Staggering Death Toll in Sudanese Conflict

"This grim and chastening anniversary marks another year when the world has failed to meet the test of Sudan."

"Sudan is an atrocities laboratory: sieges, denial of food, weaponized sexual violence."

Tom Fletcher, emergency relief coordinator, United Nations 

 

"He [young man who came to the morgue] was looking for his father and his uncle for over a year. When he came to us, he found out they had both been shot dead in the street in the early weeks of the war. It broke him, he collapsed and cried for a long time." 

"We photograph every body. We check if there's anything in their pockets to help us identify them, and we mark the spot where we buried them."

Ali Gebbai, mortician, makeshift morgue, Khartoum 

 

"[Khartoum has turned into an open-air morgue]. That leaves a mark on society, it destroys human dignity and it normalizes death."  

"The safest place to keep the DNA samples is buried separately in the ground, and marked clearly. Or we'll exhume the bodies again later."  

Hisham Zein al-Abdeen, head of forensic medicine, Sudan's health ministry

This photo taken on April 18, 2026 shows Sudanese Ali Gebbai, a volunteer responsible for handling burial procedures for unidentified bodies in the capital, Khartoum, examines one of the unidentified corpses at the mortuary of Omdurman's Al-Nao Educational Hospital. (AFP)

 

 The war in Sudan has now officially passed its three-year anniversary, since the Sudanese military and he paramilitary Rapid Support Forces opposed one another, bringing the nation to a war that shows no sign of abating, with an estimated 200,000 Sudanese having been killed thus far. This conflict represents a poster of the world's largest humanitarian crisis. A conference in Berlin on April 15 to raise aid funds and call attention to the conflict, doesn't appear to have made much of a global impact on news reportage.

 

Entering its fourth year, widespread displacement, violence and hunger has burdened the population with no end in sight, while the world's attention remains fixed on Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the Israeli response in Gaza to Palestinian terrorism, and more latterly the joint U.S.-Israel aerial bombardment of the Islamic Republic of Iran, with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz taking world headlines. 

 

Even so, the Iran conflict which has impacted rising fuel and fertilizer prices throughout the globe, has also compounded the severe food crisis experienced in Sudan. The Norwegian Refugee Council's latest report stated that the violence had "systematically eroded Sudan's food system -- field by field, road by road, market by market -- producing mass hunger."  

 

Photo: Southern Sudan city of Rabak after a drone strike hit several vehicles belonging to the Joint Forces, including some carrying weapons and ammunition, which caught fire. AP

 

The fierce fighting between the two antagonists -- both of which have been accused of vicious human rights violations, preying on helpless civilian populations -- have forced 14 million people from their homes. Arable fields  have been left untended as farmers abandon their growing crops in the face of danger from land mines and cross-fire from faceoffs by the two opponents. While harsh conditions for farming lead to a steep rise in food prices, incomes have declined and malnutrition stalks the land. 

 

Sudan's 50 million population is starved of food with over 10 million people suffering severe and extreme levels of food insecurity, while some 20 million more are confronted by shortages of basic foodstuffs in a  wartime economy. Millions of people sustain themselves with one meal daily in the two areas hardest hit by the conflict -- North Darfur and South Kordofan. According to the Norwegian Refugee Council report, desperately hungry people are left with little option but to eat foliage and animal feed for survival.   

 

 Destroyed section of Omduran, Sudan, AP

 

The ongoing crisis in Sudan is considered by aid agencies to represent the world's most critical, based on hunger and displacement. "Hunger and violence are reinforcing each other in a vicious cycle of desperation", stated deputy executive director Carl Skau, of the World Food Program.

 

Gold production and trade enables the warring competitors to finance their war with the abundant natural resources in gold that lie in deposits across the country. The conflict is also being supported by foreign powers supplying weapons to both sides. Sudan's economy has been destroyed, its health system collapsed 

 

Widespread violence against women is rife, most Sudanese children are without educational opportunities, and tens of thousands of children have died in this war. The civilian death toll is put at over 22,000 by the Sudanese health ministry, but some estimates see that number swell as  high as 400,000. 

 

As donors gather in Berlin, tens of millions in Sudan face famine, genocide and displacement   Health Policy Watch

 

 

An Attack on the Future of the Nation

"The emergence of an aggressive stance among parts of society, which can lead to conflicts, is a serious issue."

"There are indirect indications that these sentiments are being fuelled by Russia, and that a firm response is needed."

"In this way, a line of division -- a fault line of conflict -- is being provoked within our society." 

"There is no split in Ukrainian society. [However], there is tension regarding military recruitment centers, regarding mobilization, and unfortunately this tension is growing."

"Unfortunately, there is clear corruption and excessive use of violence." 

Volodymyr Fensenko, head, Penta Research Institute, Kyiv

 

"On the one hand, everyone says we must fight until victory, and on the other hand, everyone is running away from mobilization."

"This is a huge, enormous problem.Wars are not won without people. Without people, wars are lost, that does happen."

"But winning without people -- that simply doesn't exist."

Kyrylo Budanov, former head, military intelligence agency, Ukraine   

Ukraine has struggled to build a steady pipeline of recruits to replenish its frontline units, many of whom are exhausted defending against a larger Russian army. 

 

Allegiance to Ukraine in its existential struggle against Vladimir Putin's 'special military operation' is seemingly in short supply of late, as young and old Ukrainian men seek to avoid conscription simply by not responding when they're drafted. As the first shock of the February invasion in 2022 stunned the population there was no end of volunteers committed to defending their country against the Russian military ordered by the Kremlin to respond to 'threats from Ukraine' issued by its 'neo-Nazi' government. As the war wore on, that eagerness to defend also wore out.

 

Military draft officers in Ukraine are now facing violent resistance from the very men they're tasked to check on. And this resistance is occurring in the west of Ukraine, where there are vanishingly few Russian-speaking Ukrainians whose loyalties are split between Ukraine and Russia. A rising number of incidents where draft officers in the commission of their duties are facing resistance against mobilization has created tensions within Ukrainian society. 

 

The Ukrainian military stands at about 900,000 servicemen, many of whom have been mired in frontline fighting, and are overdue for rest and recuperation, but face the reality that replacements are hard to come by. The issue of  recalcitrant loyalties from a public tired of a war entering its fifth year is a bedevilling one. Who will rescue Ukraine from the military talons of Russia, if not Ukrainians themselves? Yet the situation is so tight, military authorities in Ukraine have taken to persuading foreigners to join their ranks.

 

The critical issue of rotation, to relieve overworked and exhausted Ukrainian soldiers in dire need of a break is an emergency looking for rescue. Russia's population, four times that of Ukraine's, doubtless reflects a similar situation which is why, infamously, prison inmates in Russia were drafted with the promise their crimes leading to imprisonment would be absolved with their agreement to lend themselves to the war effort.

 

While Ukraine continues to confront the Russian threat, their nemesis Putin has taken to paying rich financial bonuses and salaries as persuasion for 30,000 to 40,000 men each month to sign on to army contracts to replenish the forces sent to Ukraine killed on the battlefield in huge numbers. When the Russian draft of 2022 was implemented, hundreds of thousands of eligible fighting men fled Russia for abroad, and haven from the conflict's enlistment enforcement.  

 

An army recruitment center in Lviv, Ukraine. Assaults on military recruiters in the country almost tripled to 341 last year compared with 2024, and more than 100 have been recorded so far this year. Bloomberg.com

 

Ukraine relies on conscription and appeals to patriotism. Under its martial law, all Ukrainian men between ages 25 and 60 are eligible for military service unless they have an exemption; otherwise they are sent a draft notice. According to official data,  some  two million men in Ukraine are held to have violated the rules of conscription, leading to their being sought out by police. As a result of widespread evasion of joining the military, there is anger among those serving and the families of troops who are under arms, defending Ukraine.

 

In fear of a popular backlash, government and parliament hesitate to tighten conscription, and so look to foreign fighters and identifying personnel in Ukraine's military ranks positioned in the rear, for deployment to combat in the frontlines, to help with the needed rotation. Draft dodgers are being hunted at their homes, workplaces and in the streets, which has led to conflict spilling onto social media and dividing opinion; some supporting the draft officers, others the men who evade their military responsibilities. 

 

In early April, a conscription officer was stabbed to death in the city of Lviv, the assailant striking the officer from behind, thrusting the dagger into his neck while  the officer's attention was elsewhere. "When the law is broken and no one is held accountable, it will be broken more often. This is, first, an attack on the life of a Ukrainian soldier, and second, an attack on the future of the nation", stated Mykola Melnyk, a Ukrainian military veteran. 

 

Police checking civilians documents for military recruitment check a disabled man's documents at a train station in Dnipro, Ukraine. (Ed Ram/For The Washington Post/Getty Images)

 

 

MAiD for Mental Illness in Canada

"I and other colleagues are experiencing this: People are clearly getting MAID [Medical Assistance in Dying] for reasons that are frankly illegal."

"Suicide contagion is a well-proven reality. Don't pretend that it won't happen in Canada.:

"For the last 23 years, I've treated patients that other psychiatrists told me could not get better, and they get better."

"Suffering can always be reduced ... There is absolutely no such thing as 'everything has been tried'."

Dr. John Maher, psychiatrist specializing in treating severe mental illness 

Angus Reid Institute

 

"Under the guise of flimsy medical excuses", people suffering mental illnesses are already receiving assisted deaths in Canada, and others seeking MAID will "doctor-shop until dead" should euthanasia be extended under law to encompass psychiatric suffering alone, cautioned Dr. John Maher testifying before a Parliamentary committee of enquiry comprised of MPs and Senators. Should medical assistance in dying be seen as a legitimate option for mental suffering, he warned, the risk of a "suicide contagion" effect is high.

 

It's called the Werther Effect, referring to a notable increase in suicides following publicized reports of suicides among celebrities. In jurisdictions that have legalized doctor-assisted death, Dr. Maher pointed out, rates of suicide "have risen much faster after it was legalized, than before." 

 

Conflicting reports pro and con have been presented to the committee over the safety of MAID eligibility expansion to individuals having mental illness in isolation from any other medical conditions; a controversial topic that includes whether or how a mental disorder might be considered to be incurable and thus qualifying for MAID.  

"People are getting MAID for psychiatric reasons  under the guise of flimsy medical excuses."

"Prolific MAID providers are happy to assist with suicide while people are on wait-lists for effective treatment, [and] MAID is being offered to veterans, disabled people and people with very treatable illnesses." 

"People need lifeguards, not someone to push you under."

Dr. John Maher  

In 2023, urgent requests for same-day assessments and provision [less than 24 hours] were reported in Ontario, speaking to the possibility of impulsive decision-making on the part of people with mental disorders willing and determined to end their lives, under the influence of their mental delirium. This, in a background of long wait times for appointments with mental-health professionals in Canada's overworked health care system. 

 

"You're describing criminal misconduct, are you not, when you describe mental health as already qualifying people in the eyes of some assessors and providers for MAID?", asked one of the Members of Parliament on the committee. "I absolutely am", responded Dr. Maher. He informed the committee of his attempts to report his concerns with a doctor, to a provincial professional accreditation college and the response was "until the patient is dead, there is no malpractice".

 

And then, there were the counterarguments, as when University of Ottawa law professor Daphne Gilbert spoke of a small "very limited" number of people ultimately qualifying for MAID solely for mental illness. "This matters, because one justification for continued exclusion is the speculative claim that large numbers of people will become eligible if the ban is lifted. There is no evidence to support that claim." 

"[Denying MAID to those with mental illness is predicated on the belief that they lack decision-making capacity and] must be protected from themselves and that their suffering is somehow less real, or less serious."

"In 2026, we are reinforcing historic stigma and paternalistic assumptions. The law continues to infantilize those with mental illness."

Professor Daphne Gilbert, vice-chair, Dying with Dignity Canada  

 

And So, It Is Done...Ottawa's 'Bubble' Bylaw

Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe

"By a vote of 20-4, city council adopted a new bylaw to protect schools, hospitals, long-term care facilities, and other community facilities from intimidating demonstrations."

"After consulting carefully with the public, a lot of work went into this new bubble bylaw."

"It strikes a careful balance, protecting free speech and the right to demonstrate, and also protecting safe access for children, families, seniors, and communities."

"I will support what the community is asking for: an approach that allows safe access to schools, places of worship, hospitals, and care homes, while preserving our Charter-protected rights to free speech and protest, an approach that enhances safety, fosters community trust through fair enforcement, an approach that continues to explicitly allow labour demonstrations at workplaces as well as protests outside City Hall, Parliament, embassies, and other important democratic institutions." 

Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe  

A crowd marches in downtown Ottawa in solidarity with Palestinians on Oct. 4, 2025. [Brendon Poste/the Charlatan]

 

The protests that began the very day following the unforgettable onslaught when Palestinian terrorists in their thousands storming across the border from Gaza into Southern Israel -- to loot, rape, slaughter and take hundreds of hostages on October 7, 2023 led by Hamas, despite a ceasefire in effect with Israel -- which continue to this day in Canadian cities. Protests organized by Palestinian student groups, joined by sympathizers from within and without the Canadian Muslim population and organized labour unions. It was one thing to decry the predictable war that resulted, yet another to place the onus on Israel, defending its population from the Palestinian death-cult, declaiming 'Final Solution', 'Globalize the Intifada' and 'From the River to the Sea', all formulaic messaging constituting hate speech and incitements to violence.

 

These hate-marches spread and gave birth to encampments on university campuses, to marches past old-age homes housing Jewish elderly, to marches through traditional Jewish neighbourhoods, to marches blocking access to hospitals and synagogues, to marches blocking entrance to Jewish-owned businesses where participants shouted abuse at those they took to be from the Jewish community, including children entering Jewish parochial schools. Setting aside criminal acts of vandalism of Jewish properties, of gunfire aimed at Jewish schools and synagogues.

 

In the sacred name of freedom of expression guaranteed by the nation's code of freedoms as set out in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, authorities have been loathe to respond, under the letter of the law where charter rights meet headlong against the rights of citizens to live in peace and security, free from harassment, and where clearly illegal activities such as blocking roadways for mass Muslim prayer sessions in displays of 'cultural/religious' ascendancy were given free rein, there has been no blowback. But finally, in Ottawa, the decision was made by City Council to enact a bylaw long overdue. 

 

Protesters gather before Centre Block, Parliament, Brendan Poste/The Charlatan

 

City Council gave its overwhelming support to the new 'controversial' bylaw, in the face of warning of potential overreach, to validate the need for safe access to socially vulnerable infrastructure. Demonstrations within 50 metres of schools, hospitals, long-term care centres and community health facilities will henceforth from August 1, be protected. The bylaw was approved by a 20-4 vote. The four dissenting votes came with two motions to amend the bylaw, both of which were also defeated by the majority in Council. 

"[The bylaw represents a] slippery slope."

"Today it is schools and places of worship, tomorrow it is convention centres, then city facilities."

"Eventually, anything that makes people uncomfortable becomes a reason to move dissent out of sight."

"History shows us we do not become safer by gagging dissent."

Merivale Councillor Sean Devine

"We all agree that people should be able to access essential services, schools, health care, places of worship safely and without intimidation."

"At the same time, we also have a responsibility to uphold the right to lawful, peaceful demonstration in a free and democratic society."

"This isn't about monitoring content or expression. It's about ensuring that it is applied when it is appropriate."

Southgate Councillor Jessica Bradley  

The designation for safe-access zone status would apply 24/7 to residential-care facilities and would be in effect one hour before opening through to one hour after closing time. City solicitor Stuart Huxley introduced Calgary's bylaw challenge on Charter grounds defended successfully, that it "is relevant to municipal efforts to balance freedom of expression and safe access".  

 

"What we heard in committee was an outcry from our minority, vulnerable communities for help."

"They want to be safe when they go to their school, to their place of worship, to their hospital, and they do not feel safe."

Barrhaven West Councillor David Hill 

 

A pair of CTV News reports – a news article and an accompanying broadcast – covered a recent anti-Israel rally on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, drastically exaggerating the crowd’s size and sanitizing the extremist elements at the centre of it.  Honest Reporting Canada

 

 

Unconscionable Human Skeleton Museum Displays

Ilvy Njiokiktjien, New York Times

 

"What the museums have in common is that they all see it as a problem -- and that's already progress."

"They all deal with it in different ways, although there are many similarities."

"Some are more proactive than others."

Jos van Beurden, repatriation expert, researcher, Free University of Amsterdam

 

"It makes me sad. The Dutch destroyed everything of ours, our language, our culture."

"First they forbid it, and we all had to become Christians and learn the Dutch language, and then they displayed and traded our ancestors' skulls." 

Menucha Latumaerissa, 45 Dutch customs official, ethnic Moluccan

 

"What it should emphasize is the idea that, in an ideal situation, collections like these -- racialized collections -- should reach their final resting place, with their communities."

"The empty stands show this important absence so we don't forget these things happened."

"We do feel a sense of shame, but also responsibility. What does it mean to have these remains housed here?"

"We need to find a way to somehow address these collections."

Laurens de Rooy, director, Museum Vrolik, Amsterdam University Medical Center 

The Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Among its collection are unusual or deformed organs, an iron lung and Einstein’s brain. Photograph: Allentown Morning Call/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

 

 A book, published in 1917, discovered in a thrift shop, motivated Menucha Latumaerissa to begin looking into history reflecting the Moluccan people. The book that so fascinated him to begin his career of searching out museums' artefacts dating from Europe's colonialist days when indigenous peoples' skeletons were taken from their places of origin to become curiosities placed in cabinets and displayed for public view, essentially treating the remains of people considered inferior to Europeans as commodities of curiosity, available for gawking at local museums. Descriptions of studies of human skulls from the Indonesian archipelago taken to the Netherlands during the colonial period, demonstrated the fascination of 'race science' by researchers.

 

As a Dutch customs officer, Mr. Latumaerissa developed a hobby of tracking Moluccan islands specimens taken to Europe, feeding off his own ethnic origins as one of Moluccan birth. A small diaspora from the Mollucan islands arrived in the Netherlands in 1951 following the Indonesian war of independence. On arrival in the Netherlands they were forced into internment camps and minority districts leaving him to contemplate: might those skulls still be on display somewhere in the Netherlands?

 

Ramses I Mummy. The mummy of Ramses I was looted from Egypt around 1860 and held in various private collections in Canada and the US up until 2003. The mummy is currently on display in the Luxor Museum.  Wikicommons

 

 He eventually found them in a tiny anatomical museum, part of the Amsterdam University Medical Center called the Museum Vrolik, dating to the 19th century where jars of body parts were on display. Aside from the feet and ears and irregular fetuses, there were cabinets full of skulls and bones. The Moluccan skulls lined up in the museum have now been returned to the archipelago which gave birth to them, while the empty shelves in the display cabinets and their empty stands are testimony to the uncaring attitudes of scientists and colonists who viewed the Indigenous peoples they dominated as less than human.

 

Today, the Museum Vrolik is featuring a new exhibition which it has titled "Imagine: The Future of Human Remains from Colonial Contexts", scheduled to be on display until June of 2027. The point of the display, according to the museum's director, is to provide food for thought in calling attention to the human treasure troves, taken in a spirit of conquest and contempt, now finding their place back at their beginnings, granting dignity to that which was once a living human being. Needless to say, it is not only the Netherlands alone that indulged in these colonialist-era curiosity cabinets, but a Europe-wide practise.

 

The Hyrtl Skull Collection on display at the museum. Photograph: Allentown Morning Call/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

 

 Thousands of colonial-era human remains; skulls, skeletons, mummies, hair and teeth, were preserved and labelled in European collections; many representing anatomical troves used for scientific research at medical institutions; others on display in natural history museums. Most of these human artefacts were procured from hospitals, hauled out of pauper's graves, or procured through commercial trade in skeletons, while a smaller number were gathered through archaelogical looting or as trophies from  colonized geographies in Africa, Asia and Oceania.

 

The European penchant for these public displays dates from the 17th century when anatomists developed preservation methods, placing specimens in jars as educational tools as well as for the purpose of giving the public an opportunity to view spectacular specimens of the human skeletal architecture. "Race science" motivated scientists and anthropologists to collect  human bones with a focus on specimens from Indigenous and local populations from colonies, taken to Europe where hierarchies were invented to justify colonial subjugation, discrimination and slavery.  

 

The museum of Ole Worm, Copenhagen: interior. Engraving, 1655.   JStor