The more things change...

A memorial is erected to one of the most shameful moments in Canadian history:

George Orwell described in his novel 1984 a bleak vision of the future as “a boot stamping on a human face – forever.” The author had been left shaken by totalitarian violence made possible by bland bureaucrats and fanned by hateful ideologies.

It’s those underlying factors that Daniel Libeskind says he was seeking to highlight as he designed a memorial to the St. Louis that is to be unveiled on Thursday in Halifax. The ship carrying nearly 1,000 refugees, mostly German Jews, was turned away from Cuba, the United States and Canada before returning to Europe in 1939.

Mackenzie King, Canada’s prime minister at the time, was urged by government bureaucrats not to accept the refugees. The rejection forced the ship to return to Europe and condemned hundreds of passengers to death.

It would be nice to think that things have changed and 'Never Again' is something more than just empty words, but consider the Toronto Sun Editorial of Aug 18 2010 in reference to a boatload of Tamil refugees:

If the MV Sun Sea were carrying 500 "migrants" from Afghanistan, home base for the Taliban and al-Qaeda, would we be allowing it to enter Canadian waters, or would we put firing a shot over the bow with a message that the next would be midships?

Lock and load would be our approach.

And this case is no exception.

A mainstream Canadian newspaper calling for the mass murder of a boatload full of traumatized refugees. 

The more things change...