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The Citizen, 2017-07-27, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, JULY 27, 2017. PAGE 5. Other Views We need to expand our knowledge That story in last week's paper about Belgrave native, and Western University professor, Tom Cull calling for more of the history of Canada's First Nations people to be taught in schools made a good point. "We need to know more about that," he had told Shawn Loughlin. "That's why I want to get more comprehensive understanding of where I came from." Cull was interviewed because he was one of 150 people chosen by the office of the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario to contribute stories for a book celebrating Canada's 150th anniversary of Confederation. Contributors were asked to reflect in their idea of home. He spoke of his memories of growing up in East Wawanosh Township and going to school at East Wawanosh Public School — but when he was young he had no idea what Wawanosh meant. Only later did he find out the township was named for Joshua Wawanosh, an Ojibwa Chief who had fought for the crown against the Americans in the War of 1812. It's important, Cull said, that young people understand that the land now occupied by Huron County has a story that goes back much farther than the 150 years of Confederation. It goes back much farther than the 170 years since the northern part of the county was cleared by the original European settlers. The one place I've seen that gives some recognition to pre -settler history of the region is the Lambton Heritage Museum south of Grand Bend which has a timeline that goes back to the geological formation of that region and moves on to the Attawandan people, who inhabited the area. They became known as the Neutral Indians because they refused to get drawn into ongoing battles between the Hurons Banishment ordie Bishop of Newfoundland may have set some kind of modern-day record when he and a judge both agreed to banishing Bishop from an entire province for a year — the length of his probation. The 33 -year-old Bishop received the sentence as a result of dragging a police officer with a vehicle in 2015. He is not allowed to return to Newfoundland and, according to reports, will be staying with his mother in Fort McMurray, Alberta. The conviction, which is the latest in a life of crime that some accounts say have left Bishop with a 27 -page criminal record, has resulted in him being ejected from the province as a means of curtailing bad behaviour which reports indicate has something to do with the company Bishop keeps. Bishop is technically on probation for the next 12 months, with a condition of the probation being he isn't allowed back into Newfoundland. I've got a lot of problems with what I've typed in the previous paragraphs: First and foremost, dragging a police officer with a car isn't a probation -worthy offense. If you're going to assault a police officer with a vehicle (and I mean assault in the linguistic way, not the legal way) you need to spend some time behind bars. Bishop was charged with aggravated assault of a peace officer and assaulting a police officer with a weapon. Call it NIMBYism (Not in my backyard) if you must, but if you add those charges to the 27 -page criminal record Bishop is toting, he's the kind of person I don't want as a neighbour. Secondly, the idea behind separating Bishop from the elements in his life which Keith Roulston From the cluttered desk in the Georgian Bay area and the Iroquois south of Lake Erie. Because they possessed flint beds necessary for making weapons and tools, they were able to maintain their neutrality. But when the English settlers in the U.S. gave firearms to the Iroquois, and the French in Quebec armed the Hurons, flint beds weren't a protection for the Attawandan. The Iroquois attacked them and destroyed them. By the time the European settlers arrived, the land in the Grand Bend area was mostly only visited by roaming Chippewa bands. Since there was so much land and they didn't occupy it full time, the Chippewa leadership was willing to sell it. The Crown purchased the future Brooke, Enniskillen and Warwick Townships for a promised payment of two pounds, 10 shillings for every man, woman and child in perpetuity — as long as there were never more than the 240 people who lived in the area at the time. That's a pretty scanty history and doesn't apply directly to our own area but it's more than most of us know. It shouldn't be. People lived here for thousands of years before written history began and we need to know more about their experiences. Of course that "written history" is the sticky part. Educators like documented proof and there are few documents prior to European settlement. I'd extend Tom Cull's suggestion even further. To properly understand the world live in, we not only need to add First Nations' history to our knowledge base but also the history of China, India, Africa and other important regions of the world. I can feel you history haters bristling out there. For many people, any history is too much. It's one more of those difficult and uselessly old-fashioned subjects like English grammar and penmanship that are now seen as a waste of students' and teachers' time. A better use of everyone's time would be to teach skills for the future — like computer coding. Educators have already scaled back the British, European, Canadian and American history that had been previously taught, to the point that many Canadians don't even know their own post -settlement story, let alone teaching about the pre -settlement era. Nobody wants to be on the side of "rote -learning" methods in a time when people are only supposed to study topics they enjoy. Part of the problem is that history books and historians have too often forgotten the "story" part of history and made things too much about dates and figures to be memorized. They could learn from the oral, storytelling tradition of First Nations people to engage students more. Every country and every era has stories that can fascinate even the history - haters. But even if history is a little work, it's work we need to do if we want to be citizens of a democracy. The notion that in this consumer society we choose which facts we want to hear and ignore reality is what got Americans the dangerous president who now threatens world stability. Being an informed citizen takes a little work but it's worth it to have a healthy, functioning democracy. we a modern day practice? led to him breaking the law, speak to a lack of free will. I'm not going to get into some debate about free will versus determinism or fate versus destiny or anything existential like that. The simple fact is that Bishop can choose whether he does things like drag a police officer with his getaway car regardless of what people are around him. Thirdly, we're well beyond a third strike here (and I know, Canada doesn't subscribe to the same three -strike system courts south of the border do) and at some point, with 27 pages of criminal offenses, someone has to put their foot down. Some people aren't being rehabilitated and a different solution needs to be found. The last problem I'll discuss is one that I'm not alone in believing: it's just passing the buck. I'm sure Bishop's lawyer convinced a great many people that by sending Bishop to Alberta he would be able to start over. However that isn't the way that President of the Canadian Police Association Tom Stamatakis views the problem. In an interview, aside from voicing his concern about a peace officer being jeopardized by reckless behaviour, he said this was just moving a problem somewhere else and worried about Bishop causing concerns for the police officers in Bishop's new community. Two mayoral candidates for Wood Buffalo, the municipality in which Fort McMurray sits, are also against the decision. Allan Vinni and Don Scott weighed in on the issue with Vinni calling it "a slap in the face" to Fort McMurray and Wood Buffalo. Scott said anyone who is convicted of harming a police officer belongs in jail. I've very rarely covered court cases in my time as a reporter and, I've got to say, that's probably for the best for my mental health — I'm constantly shocked by the laissez-faire attitude that seems to accompany court rulings. Maybe you can blame television, but growing up, I was constantly reminded that you shouldn't commit a crime if you weren't willing to do the time. And just in case anyone wants to say that a year of exile and probation is "the time" that Bishop has to serve, I'll say that, in my mind, "the time" meant time behind bars to be rehabilitated and punished. Maybe I'm just a little too straitlaced for the world we live in, but the amount of times I see someone being handed probation or other non - incarceration sentence for a violent crime, I have to wonder if we're not leaning too far to protect the people who have chosen to break the law. I'm not going to suggest eye -for -an -eye justice or anything so barbaric, but if you injure someone, especially a police officer, the idea of probation seems absolutely ridiculous to me, even if you are "exiled" from the scene of the crime. My problem isn't primarily with the people not being punished, but the message it sends. How can anyone fear the repercussions of breaking the law if there isn't threat of a punishment that fits the crime? Shawn Loughlin Shawn's Sense A long time coming The International Plowing Match (IPM) is almost here. In just under two months, the little community of Walton will play host to tens of thousands of locals and visitors alike as part of a one -of -a -kind salute to agriculture. On one hand two months sounds like a long time. However, looking back at how long this process has taken, two months is a drop in the time bucket as far as we here at The Citizen are concerned. No doubt those involved with the Huron County Plowmen's Association and the IPM committee feel the same way. As The Citizen inches its way towards the match, we're working on a comprehensive special issue/guide for the match, which meant digging through the archives a bit to view things through the prism of history. Much to my surprise, our coverage of "the IPM" began in March of 2012. The modest headline stated that Huron County planned to bid for the 2017 IPM. In 2012, 2017 would have felt like such a long time away. Think of all that has happened since then. Later in 2012, Barack Obama would win the election, earning his second term at the U.S. President. When you think of who sits in that office now, that really puts the time span into perspective. I wasn't engaged to be married in 2012 and Jess and I didn't even own our house in Blyth just yet. Denny had yet to marry his now -wife Ashleigh and they certainly didn't have their daughter Mary Jane yet. Citizen headlines around that time told of the closure of the Bluewater Youth Centre in Central Huron and residents protesting the formation of a new fire department in Morris- Turnberry. My, how the times have changed. But then again, other headlines from that month herald the raising of taxes and criticism of wind turbines and the Liberal government's Green Energy Act — so, perhaps the more things change, the more things stay the same. What I'm getting at here is that it was a real eye-opener to build an archive of IPM stories that reached back five and a half years. To think of where we started and where we are now is to take an amazing journey from an idea to a fully -formed concept for one of the biggest events in Huron County's history. First Huron County would bid for the match. Then the county won the match, followed by the announcement that Walton would host, thanks to landowners like the Ryan and Ringgenberg families, among others. Jacquie Bishop was named chair of the IPM (the first female chair in IPM history — because Huron County is progressive like that) and then came all types of icing on the cake, such as that the Brussels Fall Fair would be hosted at the match, etc. When I look at the amount of ink (or pixels for you online readers) used on the IPM, it really has been an extensive process — likely the most extensive in my decade with The Citizen. Even that statement makes me think. Over a decade with The Citizen, and for about half of it I've been writing IPM stories. That amount of dedication, however, doesn't compare to those behind the match, like Bishop and the McGavins, Doddses and Townsends, among others, who have made this endeavour their lives for the last five or six years. Now, it's drawing near and it's still hard to believe. If you drive past Jack Ryan's farm, you'll see hydro poles starting to go up and real, physical preparations being made, which really make the process feel real. Well, it is real and it's coming fast.