Some of you may have wondered why I was so quiet about the confiscation of my novel/trilogy at the Canadian border. Well, let's just say I brood on my response.
Meanwhile, I was waiting for someone to tell me that this has, indeed, happened. It's been more than four weeks, and not a peep from anyone! And now it appears that some small parcels were even seized in Europe - I have had word from Sweden and from England where people have been waiting with bated breath, since I told them that my triplets were traveling and should be arriving soon. Wouldn't that be a story if the ban on my novel were world-wide!
In Canada, a friend of the Zundelsite, meanwhile, has contacted sundry authorities, including his Member of Parliament. Here is his cogent letter:
"Reed,
I am not an impressionable youngster. I am almost 70 and I am prevented from reading a book I ordered from the USA. A bureaucrat in an Ottawa office said I must not read that book and took it away from me.
While the bureaucrat - who obeys you parliamentarians under our democracy - keeps that book I will be charged storage fees for it. To get hold of it to return it to the bookseller in the USA I must spend a couple of hundred dollars to physically travel to their Vancouver office because they will not allow me to send it back by Canada Post.
They will not tell me who in Ottawa read all three volumes of this trilogy and pronounced it to be "hate propaganda". As far as I know it is the story of a pacifist family that moved from Ukraine during the second world war via Germany and South America to the USA.
They will not quote to me the passages they have found to be "hate propaganda". They treat me with supreme contempt and subject me to large expense (for a pensioner).
Worst of all they will not let me read what I want to read. In Canada, they will not let me read what I want to read!
You, Reed, a good man yourself, passed an Act of Parliament giving this hidden bureaucrat the power to do this to me - your neighbor here on Vancouver Island, and now you are also powerless to change his/her decisions?
Taking this to an absurd conclusion, what can "they" do to me if I fight back and upset the Establishment ? As an example, if I were to load a shell into a 12 gauge to save my elderly wife from a violent B and E, I could go to jail for years.
And under the new Extradition Act that has recently passed two readings in the House, any country in the world could demand my extradition for some phony weapons charge, and Canada's bureaucrats are authorized to seize me and my property and ship me out.
It makes no difference that the figures in an RCMP report were changed to con Parliament into passing the Firearms Act, and it makes no difference that you and all other MPs are unable to read all the fine print in the Acts you are asked to pass - like the Extradition Bill C-40 you just sent me - or that you don't understand how the Acts will be used after you pass them.
Absurd example, you say ? But you have given "them" the power to write regulations to implement your Act - now you cannot control what happens.
Reed, you are part of a system that treats its own people like dirt.
To prove your helplessness, please try and get "them" to quote to me the "hate propaganda" passages underlying their decision."
Nice countryside, Canada!
In Ingrid's trusty "Peter's Quotations" is says under "Canada":
"The beaver is a good national symbol for Canada. He's so busy chewing he can't see what's going on."
Which shall be your Thought for the Day!
Ingrid