A Contemplative Canadian

I think of myself as a proud Canadian. I watch CBC (and TVO) as my primary sources of news and entertainment, I am an avid CBC radio listener (and enjoying the burgeoning world of CBC podcasts), and it was very important to me that I had a website that was .ca. Add to that list that I enjoy curling, Canadian music, and Canadian plays, films & documentaries. I do enjoy various commodities from other countries, but I will tend towards Canadian.

On CBC Ottawa morning on Dec 22, 2020 Deputy Minister Daniel Quan-Watson talked about how our Prime Minister Justin Trudeau talks about the importance of diversity to being Canadian, that diversity is our strength [1]. He said that most Canadians tout this, that they believe it. Rex Murphy (retired CBCer - beloved and curmudgeon-ish) wrote an article entitled “Canada is not a racist country, despite what the Liberals say … To any fair mind, Canada is a mature, welcoming, open-minded and generous country” [2].[1]

Deputy Minister Daniel Quan-Watson posted his response to Rex Murphy’s article on LinkedIn [3]. He talks about a problem of perception - people who deny a problem of racism in Canada view racism in the extreme - burning crosses and overt brutality and the like. But the racism that is more concerning is the less perceptible kind, the kind that leads to a death of a thousand cuts. As Minister Quan-Watson puts it,

Racism is more like an iceberg to a ship travelling at night. You may or may not see it as you travel, but if you do, the visible part is only the smallest percentage of the danger you face. Because of this, sometimes you do not notice it at the time. You just realize later that a gash has been torn below the waterline that you need to deal with. [3]

I am ashamed to say that I caused a few gashes – and very recently. This is my story.

First experience: Running online webinars from Ottawa

I am the first to say that overall, I have benefitted more from this pandemic than had it not occurred. I have met many, many people through online webinars – many of them free. And I have had the privilege of contributing to such webinars by being a speaker. From my house in Ottawa, I have done many talks, from showing clips of movies that I have access to via CBC Gem, to resurrecting some talks given at in-person conferences, to running a 4-part series on “Let’s Take a Look at Work”. I love giving talks, and really enjoyed that others found value in what I could offer. Most of these talks began with a title page naming the subject, and off I went.

It was only on Nov 25 2020, after I had done many of these talks, that I attended a talk that also originated from Ottawa [4].  On this talk, the presenter began with acknowledging that he was bringing this webinar to the world from unceded Algonquin Anishinaabe land.

I was instantly ashamed. I had fought for just such an admission at my former employer’s formal proceedings. I had made a 1 min video earlier this pandemic for a group that I joined, to describe where I was from (Canada), where I opened the video with an acknowledgement that Canada has a long way to go on its reconciliation journey. I thought I knew this stuff. I believed I was helping spread the message that as a white person, I have a role to play in ensuring that I promote the understanding that Canada’s track record with its Indigenous peoples is incredibly far from where it needs to be. 

And yet, I gave 10 talks (as well as 4 podcast interviews) where I gave no recognition to the fact that the land from which I am talking is stolen from the Algonquin Anishinaabe peoples. 

I luckily had a chance to talk to a broader international audience once again and opened my talk on Dec 17, 2020 with such an admission. I was encouraged to see in the chat that people were talking about it – so I might have been able to open one more mind to the idea that Canada has a long way to go in its reconciliation efforts.

But how many minds could I have opened if only I had remembered what I thought I held so strongly?

Second Experience: Sending a message through the Linked Selling programme

I am a new entrepreneur, and as such have a lot to learn. I am a student of the Linked Selling programme, in large part due to their emphasis on relationship building and de-emphasizing a 7-figure revenue stream. As part of this relationship building, private LinkedIn messages are sent in batches to prospects. I have chosen to begin exclusively with Canadian connections. I was advised to write a message by the latest the 3rd week of December, and to not start up again until the new year, with the holidays being over, and everyone focusing once again on starting up their albeit COVID-normal lives.

I wrote messages to all of the groups, the text of the messages dependent on the phase of communication. However, I ended all messages with a nice free picture of “deer in snow” and wished everyone individually and their families and networks a very happy COVID Christmas. I remember being slightly proud of the alliteration.

I later watched a video of someone who has very quickly become a dear friend of mine, where he thanked everyone who had followed his 8 days of Hanukkah on Facebook.

I was stunned. I had no idea that this guy, with whom I have had several fantastic conversations, is Jewish. My shame was instant and severe. 

I then attended a holiday Zoom social, where someone had wished a “Merry Christmas”, which was met instantly by another participant with a “no - Happy Holidays”. I lamented that I was so incredibly culturally insensitive that I did not have the instinct to realize that wishing a COVID Christmas, while cute, is helping gash holes in Minister Quan-Watson’s ship. 

How on earth could I have sent out a message to as diverse an audience as I knew I have in my LinkedIn contacts, the diversity that Justin Trudeau talks about Canadians seeing as their strength, and yet I pull from my white privilege Catholic existence to come up with a presumably universal message?

Reflection and Introspection – Inattention to values

On July 23 2020, the Canadian Occupational Safety Magazine published my article on Values [5]. In this article, I explain that values come in different varieties:

• Core – not very many, defining and not forgotten
• “Accepted” – the values of your group
• Aspirational – what you would like to work towards, but are not now
• Accidental – adopting values externally imposed, contrary to your core

Values are not right or wrong, good or bad. But being aware of them and living by them is a challenge that people have far too infrequently engaged. (A fantastic podcast on this was recently released on For the Love of Work [6].)

It is dangerous to label aspirational values as closer to you than your actions demonstrate they are. This mis-calibration can give rise to painful experiences and shame.

I’d like to propose what happened to me in the experiences I shared above.

First experience: Running online webinars from Ottawa

I love sharing my knowledge through talks – this is a core value for me. Acknowledging that I am on unceded Aboriginal Anishinaabe territory is what I thought was an accepted value for me (both being from Ottawa and being Canadian). However, in this unusual environment of Zoom calls with people who I did not know before this pandemic, it was revealed to me that my pride in alignment with Aboriginal issues is more accurately categorized as an aspirational value. 

Second Experience: Sending a message through the Linked Selling programme

Embracing diversity I thought was an accepted value for me, as I do believe there is value in diversity, not only in the Canadian context, but in all sorts of professional contexts as well. I do not believe it is as fundamental as a core value for me but is certainly something I have espoused. Once again, though, my actions speak otherwise. I took such pride in my little alliteration that I did not recognize that the alliteration was from a very monocultural lens. I had an extraordinarily strong reaction to the realization that something I thought I had correctly categorized as being close to my inner circle of values is again farther away and is better labeled as another aspirational value – one that I want to work towards but cannot claim I am truly living now.

I can tell you that realizing that I had mis-calibrated my values was painful – I shed a lot of tears and felt a lot of shame.  I felt this shame not only because I was wrong, but how I have inadvertently offended others, and that I came close to not having realized it. However, as Susan David continually reminds me, there is worth in these uncomfortable emotions, and if we can work through them, we can discover things about ourselves that perhaps we didn’t know before. And as Todd Conklin has said on many occasions, not knowing does not make you smarter.

With these values now exposed before me as aspirational, I can resolve to bring them into the accepted value set by being far more mindful that I really need to live them to have them in that set. I hope I can learn from my experience in living with values - it isn’t easy but can be immensely insightful, and as such, rewarding.

Epilogue

Am I overreacting? Isn’t it weird that I have had such strong emotional reactions to what may be called very innocent oversights? Perhaps. There is no doubt that I am suffering COVID fatigue along with you and everyone else, and I am sure that COVID fatigue played a role. However, with the reckoning this year on race relations, I believe I need to be far more conscious of how I continue to contribute to the race problem in my “innocent oversights” and be more deliberate in my attempt to live my life according to my values.   I am a proud Canadian and realize that I have much to work on in my relationship with this identity.

I thank you for reading. Take care.

Resources

[1] D. M. D. Quan-Watson, "CBC Ottawa morning," 20 12 2020. [Online]. Available: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-100-ottawa-morning/clip/15815545-federal-deputy-minister-pens-open-letter-systemic-racism. [Accessed 20 12 2020].

[2] R. Murphy, "National Post Opinion," 01 06 2020. [Online]. Available: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/rex-murphy-canada-is-not-a-racist-country-despite-what-the-liberals-say.

[3] D. Quan-Watson, "LinkedIn," 21 12 2020. [Online]. Available: https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/daniel-quan-watson-33814ba0_response-to-a-national-post-column-by-rex-activity-6746865475403292672-y6Vs.

[4] Performance and Planning Exchange, "The Knowledge Uptake and Use Tool," 25 11 2020. [Online]. Available: https://ppx.ca/en/the-knowledge-uptake-and-use-tool/.

[5] T. Hewitt, "Values - our essential pathfinders," 23 07 2020. [Online]. Available: https://www.thesafetymag.com/ca/news/opinion/values-our-essential-pathfinders/228613.

[6] S. Kang, "For the Love of Work," 14 12 2020. [Online]. Available: https://about.rogers.com/stories/episode-7-creating-meaning-at-work/

Footnote

[1] The Post retracted Rex Murphy’s article due to the “strong reaction it provoked from readers” and “a failure in the normal editing oversight”.