Boundaries in Gender and Race in Canadian Personhood

Abstract

We gather on lands long occupied by Mohawk and other First Nations peoples. In the words of the Trappist monk Thomas Merton, “Neither the ancient wisdoms nor the modern sciences are complete in themselves. They do not stand alone. They call for one another . . . Our task now is to learn that if we can voyage to the ends of the earth and there find ourselves in the aborigine who most differs from ourselves, we will have made a fruitful pilgrimage. Mere sitting at home and meditating on the divine presence is not enough for our time.” I chose the theme for this paper at the Dundas, Ontario public library. Tucked in a book was a card, “New Order: Building a Better World for Future Aryan Generation.” Having a mother with Jewish background, and having recently visited family in Israel, I was alarmed by this expression of hate activity in Canada. I showed it to staff, who later reported having surveyed the area without finding another copy. In terms of the conference theme, “Borders without Boundaries,” the flier spoke to me of issues of exclusion and embrace in Canada. An anthology edited by William Kilbourn, Canada: A Guide to the Peaceable Kingdom, recalls an iconic painting by Edward Hicks, a nineteenth-century American folk painter and itinerant Quaker minister who sought to illustrate the messianic prophecy of Isaiah 11:6-8 (NRSV): “The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze . . . and the weaned child shall put