“Melanie Woods is an associate editor for HuffPost Canada, focused on viral/trending stories. Before joining HuffPost, her print, digital and audio work appeared in Vice, the CBC, the Globe and Mail, Slate, This Magazine, Xtra and the Gauntlet. She has a master of journalism from the University of British Columbia. She is the winner of the 2019 Hal Straight Gold Medal in Journalism, and was named the Canadian University Press “Student Editor of the Year” in 2017. She is based in Vancouver”
An article entitled “My Hometown Is The Epicentre Of Wexit. I Went Back To Find Out Why Alberta’s problematic past and separatist movement collide in Red Deer.” was published on the HuffingtonPost.ca
Ms Woods illustrates clearly just how incredibly problematic her rampantly racist hometown is. She ominously explains to her audience how Wexit is simply an outgrowth of the colonialist racist, and yes dear reader, fascist leanings that define Alberta as a
whole. She repeatedly cites the work of Dr. Darren E. Lund Professor in the Werklund School of Education to lend academic weight to her argument. This man is responsible for educating Alberta’s future Teachers, surely an impressive unimpeachable source.
Ms Woods article breathlessly outlines a number of incidents in the area over the last 40 years, featuring her own horrifying encounter with a huge Swastika being literally burned into the paving stones of her High School and forever into our intrepid reporters memory.
There is alas one small issue that neither the HuffingtonPost.ca’s readers nor apparently its editors are aware of. Every word of Ms Woods article, including Dr. Darren E. Lund’s purported academic weight, is either exaggeration, mischaracterization, or an outright fabrication.
So lets begin with the horrifying image she paints of huge Swastikas flaming in the night.
Ms Woods Flaming Swastikas take one;
“One thing I’ll never forget, though, is when someone burned a huge swastika into the courtyard of our school, with the gas seeping so deeply into the bricks that each one had to be replaced.
It happened overnight, while I was in high school, and they never caught the guy, though the principal at the time told our parents security footage showed an older white guy in dark clothes. For a long time I thought I’d made up the memory, until I reunited with a high school best friend last summer and she brought it up.
“Remember that giant burning swastika?” she said.
“Yes! I thought I’d made it up.”
“No, it definitely happened.”
The Red Deer Public School District did not respond to my request for confirmation of the event, but other friends recall it, too.”
“One thing I’ll never forget, though, is when someone burned a huge swastika into the courtyard of our school, with the gas seeping so deeply into the bricks that each one had to be replaced.
It happened overnight, while I was in high school, and they never caught the guy, though the principal at the time told our parents security footage showed an older white guy in dark clothes. For a long time I thought I’d made up the memory, until I reunited with a high school best friend last summer and she brought it up.
“Remember that giant burning swastika?” she said.
“Yes! I thought I’d made it up.”
“No, it definitely happened.”
In a phone call, a representative from the Red Deer Public School District confirmed that the event occurred “roughly how I recalled it,“with maintenance crews remembering the incident at the school, and how each brick had to be sand-blasted to remove the graffiti.”
Here’s the problem with Ms Woods tale of Teutonic terror. It absolutely did not happen even remotely as described. The fact Ms Woods asserts that the incident occurred, “roughly how I recalled it”, is an outright lie. Here is the response of the Red Deer School district media person. To be clear I regard neither the School Boards rep nor the highly ideological and politicized educators and administrators that make it up as an unbiased source.
This was made clear to me when I first contacted Mr Burima, he seemed far more interested in Whom I was writing for than whether this terrifying incident took place in his district. In fact during the recorded call he seemed to be trying to indicate to me that whether he “could answer me” or not depended on where the story would be published. He aparently responded first to his fellow traveler Ms Woods allowing her to update her article with “confirmation. He only responded to me at all after I sent him this
His response;
The school board Mr Buruma represents is currently wasting tax payer money on a law suit against the government Alberta. The Basis of the suit is the fact that for administrative reasons the province decided to standardize the namimg of school boards and dropped the designation public. According to Alberta education minister
“Education Minister Adriana LaGrange says there were technical reasons why changes were made to standardize school division names, adding the previous system under the old School Act allowed for unequal treatment of school divisions……….Previously there was a patchwork of different types of school divisions with different powers,” she explains. “With the Education Act, we are creating a level playing field. Before the new Education Act, regional divisions required ward and trustee representation from each of the initial entities that formed the regional division when regionalization occurred 25 years ago…“There’s nothing preventing school divisions from branding themselves as they like in common usage,” the statement reads. “What’s more, the changes made only affect eight of 41 public school divisions. The vast majority of public school divisions never included ‘public’ in their title in the first place – yet they were very much public school divisions. This was the case under the NDP, just as it is now.”
Red Deer School Board Chair makes the ridicules and unfounded inference that the word “public” is the only thing keeping segregation at bay
“It’s important for Red Deer Public to keep the word ‘public’ in our name because the word ‘public’ in our name is just as important to us as ‘Catholic’ is to separate schools. The word ‘public’ makes it clear that we are an inclusive system that welcomes each and every student.”
I think that makes my case that this organizations objectivity is to be questioned.
Even with the assertion from the School Board media rep that apparently at some unspecified time in the past a “graffiti swastika was painted on paving bricks in the school courtyard at Hunting Hills”. This fact apparently being attested to by an anonymous, ” former administrator at Hunting Hills High School who knew the situation”. This in no way, even “roughly” describes the same incident Ms Woods does.
I am pursuing Freedom of Information requests for the Schools maintenance records for the period Ms Woods attended.I believe they simply fished until they found someone who vaguely remembered something about a swastika. Mr Buruma has not responded to repeated requests for the individuals name or a specific date for this “incident”.
Not having the advantage of Ms Woods fancy education and being a lowly self taught citizen Journalist I have to rely on old school multiple sourcing. So lets see if literally anyone else on planet earth could confirm any part of this
In the course of 6 hours I spoke to staff from all three High Schools in Red Deer. They all emphatically, without any hesitation denied that any burning Swastika’s ever lit the night at their school. No one mentioned even the painted version at Hunting Hills. It is the sort of workplace incident that would stick with you. I also spoke to the R.C.M.P.’s media rep for central Alberta who could find no record of the incident or any direct memory of it, even when she spoke directly to the Red Deer detachment. She was at pains to say this did not constitute a denial of the occurrence. I spoke to several long term residents who would have had school age children at that time, no memory of any event like it. The President of Red Deer’s longstanding branch of the Royal Canadian Legion had no memory of any such event. I spoke to Journalists from both of Red Deer’s local media outlets, I was greeted with laughter and utter disbelief that anything remotely like this could have happened without their knowledge.
I also had the absolute pleasure of speaking with B’nai B’rith Alberta’s director of communications Mr Abraham Silverman. Mr Silverman is a delightful octogenarian who has dedicated a large part of his life to documenting any act of antisemitism, no matter how small. Abraham thinks this is important work because he bears the tattooed mark of of a survivor of the Nazi death camps. Neither he nor any of his affiliated organizations have any record or institutional memory of this event. He was greatly disturbed that anyone would create an event like this for ideological reasons feeling that it cheapens and insults the memory of the millions.
If anything at all happened it was in the nature of routine removal of the voluminous graffiti that appears with regularity on school walls. From a quick phone survey of Alberta schools the use of repetitive symbology involved includes, but is not limited to:
Penises
Large penises
Boobies
Large Boobies
Heavy Metal band logos
Commercial Logos
Swastikas
Communist Hammer and Sickle
Antifa
Gang Logos
Asses
large asses ect ect
So let us move beyond the Swastikas dancing in Ms Woods head, perhaps the rest of her article is persuasive even without the Third Reich light show.
Ms Woods describes attending a Wexit rally in Red Deer. In the opening few paragraphs the elitist contempt and virtue signaling that have come to comprise 90% of “Journalism ” today is in full bloom. We are dipped in her righteous moral outrage.
“I’m there, watching, back in my hometown for the first time in half a decade. It’s chilling to watch high school friends’ parents and old co-workers applaud so enthusiastically to homophobia.”
She is in this case triggered by a portion of a speech given by Sam Bell at the event. Bell the founder of a Facebook page called Make Alberta Great Again and a Wexit supporter.
“They are introducing motions and legislation to curb free speech. They are increasingly anti-Christian, promoting drag queens to kids as well as telling kids there is no such thing as being a boy or a girl. And they are promoting a forced in-your-face LGBT agenda.”
If we go line by line we find Mr Bell is actually making pretty reasonable assertions.
The Canadian government has introduced compelled speech in the form of its gender recognition actC-16. This legislation does indeed mandate speech. It is very true that many of Ms Woods “woke” allies are pushing hard to push against things like Christmas in favor of promoting hijab wearing for Canadian girls. Any critique of Islam has been made virtually illegal.
“A woman has filed a human rights complaint against a Toronto shelter for female recovering addicts, claiming staff forced her to share a small double room with a pre-operative male-to-female transgender person….The formal complaint against the Jean Tweed Centre, which runs Palmerston House, followed Kristi Hanna’s efforts to inquire about her own legal rights in this unusual situation, only to be told by Ontario’s Human Rights Legal Support Centre that, by describing her new roommate as a “man,” Hanna was the one engaged in illegal discrimination.”
By signing the migrant pact Canada has agreed to adhere to article 17 which requires that all signatories actively suppress freedom of speech and opinion,
“promote independent, objective and quality reporting of media outlets, including internet-based information, including by sensitizing and educating media professionals on migration-related issues and terminology, investing in ethical reporting standards and advertising, and stopping allocation of public funding or material support to media outlets that systematically promote intolerance, xenophobia, racism and other forms of discrimination towards migrants….eliminate all forms of discrimination, condemn and counter expressions, acts and manifestations of racism, racial discrimination, violence, xenophobia and related intolerance against all migrants in conformity with international human rights law. ”
Schools are indeed, against the objections of parents, having highly sexulaized cross dressing men deliver “story time” and teach things like masturbation and anal sex to 7 
year olds and younger. The Alberta Teachers Union and the Notley government fought the parents of minor children in court for the right to expose children to sexually explicit materiel and have un vetted persons take them off school property to sexuality conferences. Children at increasingly younger ages are being indoctrinated with Judith Butlers Neo Marxist Gender theory. And no calling it Neo Marxist is in no way hyperbole, in Judith Butlers own words,
“as an effort to think through the possibility of subverting and dis-.
placing those naturalized and reified notions of gender that support
masculine hegemony and heterosexist power, to make gender trouble,
not through the strategies that figure a Utopian beyond, but through the
mobilization, subversive confusion, and proliferation of precisely those
constitutive categories that seek to keep gender in its place by posturing
as the foundational illusions of identity.”
Judith Butler , Gender Troubles , UC Berkley 1989
So a quick translation is in order as even in academic circles Butler’s writing is considered linguistically dense reading. At base what Ms Butler asserts is that by attacking the social conventions surrounding sex our fervent anti capitalist warriors can end male domination of society and “hetrosexist power”. So for those of us on planet earth hetrosexism is defined as,
“a system of attitudes, bias, and discrimination in favor of opposite-sex sexuality and relationships “.
Jung, Patricia Beattie; Smith, Ralph F. (1993). Heterosexism: An Ethical Challenge. State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-7914-1696-8.
So this is literally a deliberative demonizing of the natural biological urge to pair bond, produce offspring and raise them, fulfilling a biological imperative billions of years older than Ms Butler’s overreaching prose. And literally the only reason humans exist and flourished.
Ms Woods offers proof of Wexits dark connections to white supremacy by siting the Aryan Nations.
“Central Alberta was also home to strong chapters of hate groups like the Aryan Nation,”
I was raised in Alberta and remember Terry Long and his nutjobs. I confirmed my memory of event with the effervescent Mr Silverman who documented the entire incident incredibly closely. Ms Woods “strong chapter” had no more than a dozen acolytes at any given time. I had friends in red Deer at the time who told me part of the reason their operation shut down was the fact they had to go into town for supplies in groups because the local boys would lay the boots to them on sight
Even Ms Woods academic backer Lund describes the revulsion felt by town residents, even school children to the presence of this cancer in their area when he taught school there in the 80’s
When an Aryan Nation group decided to set up a camp on the outskirts of town, his students(LUND) wanted to take action. They reached out to the local radio station, introducing themselves as a new antiracist group, with Lund as its leader…“The kids were making speeches and asking for help writing letters to the mayor,” said Lund. “Then it dawned on me: Public speaking, writing, these are all part of the language arts curriculum.”
All of the students and towns people described as fighting hard to eject the Aryan Nations are the unworthy “white” people Woods decries.
Of course the larger issue here is despite her impressive education and credentials Ms Woods is, like probably 80% of the folks working in Canada’s openly corrupt MSM, is not a Journalist. Melanie Woods is a highly motivated ideologue and propagandist. This is not by chance this is the calculated product of Journalism schools that have become indoctrination centers in the dark themes of Identity Politics and corporate driven Neo Marxism. This is the same for all of Canada’s major media.That should terrify everyone no matter what your political leanings.
As we continue to move giddily along through the verdant forest of Ms Woods Alberta acumen she proudly and repeatedly cites Adjunct Professor of Education at the University of Calgary Darren E. Lund. He was a High Schools teacher in Red Deer in the 1980’s and now oversees the formation of the ideologues indoctrinating our children. He opines,
“From the settler colonizing of the West through its history of racist extremism in both fringe and mainstream political movements, Alberta has long been a comfortable place for many who hold negative views on its ever-increasing diversity,” University of Calgary professor Darren Lund, who worked as a high school teacher in Red Deer for 16 years, wrote in 2004.”
Professor Darren Lund represents the same syphilitic intellectual degradation of Canada’s academic environment, as Ms Woods does in Journalism. Mr Lund produces the “academic” work which is then endlessly cited by people like Ms Woods in the main stream media. This gives the whole propaganda operation the sheen of legitimacy. This method was used by the exact same group through some of the same foundations to make Eugenics a thing at the beginning of the 20th century. I refer to Identity Politics as intellectual syphilis because it is spread by close ideological contact and it results first in insanity, or the complete detachment of the victim from any objective reality, and eventually the victims moral death.
In march 2017 Darren Lund made the following statements to the 2017 ACRL conference held for educators and and academic librarians in Baltimore. This is one of hundreds of conferences paid for by oligarchical foundations that work to insert their racist ideology into every level of society, law and education. In addressing the conference our hyper woke intellectual warrior Lund makes the following assertions
“Did you know that we had slaves here?” Lund asked the audience. He also cited black and Asian segregation in Canadian communities, internment of Japanese-Canadians during World War II, and the abuse and attempted cultural genocide of Canadian First Nations in government-sponsored residential schools that existed before confederation and lasted until 1996……..We don’t really speak about whiteness in Canada,” Lund said, before showing slides of police and fire recruits and city councilors—all white
https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/blogs/the-scoop/equity-diversity-inclusion-dispatches-acrl/
Without exception his statements are false or misleading. Let us address them one by one.
While there washostile reaction to Asian immigration at the end of the 19th century it mostly came from labor leaders on the left, it was based primarily on protecting hard one labor rights in Canada not on racism. These policies did include lack of voting rights and labor rights and even the odious head tax. Again most of this was not promted primarily by racial hatred but by concern for the political and labor rights of the rather sparse existing population. Mr Lund decries as racist the internment of Japanese Canadians during world war 2. He fails to mention we also detained thousands of “white”German and Italian citizens.
Black segregation is often sited in Canada to prove our innate racism. The trick for them is to never provide context. The first large scale Black migration to Canada was a result of Blacks fleeing slavery in the US ,some through Tubman’s famous underground railway. Canada was so viciously racist that welcomed them even dispatching troops to help them ford rivers.Ontario having outlawed slavery in 1789 far ahead of the generalized British Empire ban.
Much is made in Nova Scotia and Ontario by disciples of privilege theory of the fact segregated schools were set up. Again what is missing is context. The people we welcomed had been generational slaves. It was illegal in the US to educate a slave in any way. Slaves were themselves open to punishment if they learned to read and write. Not only had the children Canada helped rescue from slavery never had formal education, neither had their parents or grandparents. To believe we could have, or should have, integrated them into the existing school system shows immediately shows a complete ignorance of the realities of education that I am sure Mr Lund brings to his lectures to young teachers every day.
Lund opens his “blame Canada” tirade with the rhetorical version of Ms Woods burning Swastika. “Did you know that we had slaves here?” he brazenly asserts. Hers the problem for our teachers teacher. Slavery was outlawed in all British Territories in 1840. Canada did not exist until 1871. So no slave has ever legally entered Canada. Much is made of the fact chattel type slaves were kept by the British and French in the colonial days. But that Mr Lund is not “us”.
Due to a provision in the 1793 Act to Limit Slavery, which stated that any enslaved person who reached Upper Canada became free upon arrival, a small number of enslaved African Americans in search of freedom began to enter Canada, primarily unassisted. Word that freedom could be had in Canada spread further following the War of 1812 when the enslaved servants of US military officers from the South brought back word that there were free “Black men in red coats” in British North America.
Canadian Encyclopedia
None of this in any way dilutes or is meant to deny any real racism experienced by any 
Canadian. Racism is wrong at all times directed toward anyone. But whatever the faults of our past we ended up building what the rest of the planet considers the most vibrant multi cultural communities on earth. Strangely for such a racist place Canada is still considered one of the best most inclusive destinations for refugees on earth.
Finally there is this gem where he actually almost states a fact, almost. “the abuse and attempted cultural genocide of Canadian First Nations in government-sponsored residential schools that existed before confederation and lasted until 1996.”
So on its face he ridiculously asserts that a government that didn’t exist of a nation that didn’t exist started out the residential school program before confederation. While there was talk of the system before 1871 it was not put into practice. In fact Sir John A. Macdonald authorized the creation of residential schools in the West based on the recommendations of the 1879 Davin Report. This would not occur until January 01, 1883. For anyone keeping score that’s 12 years after confederation. I would state here unequivocally and without reservation that none of this in any way diminishes Canada’s actual role in what Lund describes, with uncharacteristic accuracy, as an intentional attempt to wipe out their culture nor any of the wrongs we heaped unnecessarily upon the Indigenous peoples of this Land.
None of this is in any way surprising coming from Mr Lund. Lund despite impressive sounding credentials and titles is an educator only in the sense that his stated mission is to insert his worthless doctrines into every level of education K-Masters Degree. His mission is to ensure that no “white” child ever spends more than a second not feeling the cruising burden of their collective race guilt as specified by the debunked “privilege” theory first opined by Harvard professor Peggy McIntosh. He published a paper in the The Alberta Journal of Educational Research entitled “Social Justice Activism in the Heartland of Hate:Countering Extremism in Alberta” . The opening tells you everything you need to know about his academic objectivity
“This article addresses Alberta’s conservative political and social milieu with attention to teachers engaged with their students in school activism on social justice issues. Its purpose is to shed light on the experiences of teachers who address extremism through school-based activism with young people. A brief historical overview of Canada’s racist past “…
In closing. My Father and Uncle both born in Alberta joined the Canadian expeditionary forces on October 30 1939. Grandad Ray wouldn’t let them go till the crops were in. My Uncle William, who’s name I bear, fought for the Royal Canadian Air Force my father the Artillery. William helped win the Battle of Britain. He also provided air cover for my father Larry and his brothers as their flimsy landing crafts made their runs toward the beaches of Normandy to smash the Nazi machine and open the gates of the death camps so Abraham and his people could walk through them. I joined the same regiment my father did the 20th Feild in Edmonton as a reservist in high school. Eventually I would be involved in the engagement at the the Medak Pocket in Croatia. We defeated Croatian forces, that included the openly fascist Ustasha, halted their ethnic cleansing and pushed them out of the United Nations Protected Area. I hold the Governor General of Canada’s commendation for this action. I take the revival of any Nazi/ fascist ideology or symbols very seriously.
The people of Red Deer also take their Legion and their veterans very seriously. Red Deer and Alberta in general has punched far above its weight in both world wars.The members of the towns proud 78th battery, 20th Field Artillery reserve unit sent many members to Canada’s hard fight in Afghanistan. The largest part of Red Deer and its surrounding communities youth went off in 1939 to burn the Swastika and everything represented to the ground. A huge swath of their sons and their daughters never returned to their farms. The people of these small farming hamlets Ms Woods describes as debased racists are proud of the sacrifices their family member’s made. They keep aloft the torch they threw from failing hands in distant lands.
I suggest Ms Woods and Mr Lund avail themselves of the opportunity, next time they are in their hometown, to gaze upon the long list of names engraved on Red Deer’s cenotaph. And as you read every last name you should both pause to offer your abject apologies you witless, worthless sacks of quivering hate.
Stormhaven Media 
Did Mr. Lund know that some 10,000 Nazis were brought to Canada by Operation PaperClip? And so today we suffer the result of their infiltration into most of our most important institutions and Nazi history is repeating itself. No wonder it has been made politically incorrect to compare what is happening in Canada to what happened in Germany…we might just come to ‘see’ what is really planned for us.
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You’re article is bad and you’re dreadlocks look stupid.
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With adversaries as intellectually gifted as you, its hard to see how any of this garbage got so far. But nice that you went to the trouble of opening a Wp account just for little ol me.
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