NEW CANADIANS CENTRE
Tel (705)743-0882 Fax
(705)743-6219
www.nccpeterborough.ca email address info@nccpeterborough.ca
Established 1979
___________________________________________________________________________________________
27 February 2008
Diane
Lloyd
Chair,
Board of Directors
Re: Trustee Gordon
Gilchrist’s Letter to the Editor (Port
Hope Evening Guide, 13 February 2008)
Dear Diane Lloyd and members of the Board:
We are writing on behalf of the New Canadians Centre Peterborough, an organization serving immigrants and refugees in our area. We would like to express our collective indignation over Mr. Gilchrist’s remarks. We are very concerned that this individual, who espouses anti-immigrant beliefs, continues to be in a position of authority where he can inform and influence the Kawartha District Pine Ridge School Board’s (KPR) policies.
We support the motion proposed by Ms. Verna Shackleton for the Board to censure Mr. Gilchrist’s conduct as unbecoming of a trustee in a public education institution.
Following the recent decision of KPR to suspend adult English as a Second Language programs for new Canadians, Mr. Gilchrist’s remarks are especially unfortunate, as they have cast doubt on the Board’s ability to uphold the principles of diversity and equality.
Mr. Gilchrist’s remarks do not only reveal
his deep racial prejudices and xenophobia but they also lay bare a tragic lack
of understanding of the important role of immigrants in the building of
Sincerely,
Kristi Allain Carmela Valles
Chair, Board of Directors Executive Director
cc. Trustee Verna Shackleton
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Northumberland Coalition Against Poverty
Low income People Helping Low Income People
Cobourg,
March
5, 2008
Community
and Race Relations Committee,
City
of
Dear
Committee Members,
The
members of the Northumberland Coalition Against Poverty are proud to stand with
you in your condemnation of the actions of Cobourg area public school board
trustee Gordon Gilchrist.
The
opinions expressed in Mr. Gilchrist’s letters to the Editor of local Cobourg
and Port Hope newspapers, regarding immigrants to
The
members of the Northumberland Coalition Against Poverty, all low income
residents who are working hard to achieve justice at all levels, commend your
Committee for calling Mr. Gilchrist, and the public school board, on to the
carpet to take the consequences for his failure to understand the nature of our
society and the distasteful expression of his outdated and shameful biases.
Our
recommendation for Mr. Gilchrist is that he immediately undertake anti-racism
sensitivity training so he can better understand the nature of the people he
was elected to represent in his role as school board trustee. An apology is not
enough!
Sincerely,
Deborah
O’Connor, Spokesperson,
Northumberland
Coalition Against Poverty
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Kawartha
World Issues Centre Board Press Release
Date: March 5, 2008
Contact: Hermione Rivison - themattressfactory@sympatico.ca
I am here today on behalf of the
Kawartha World Issues Board to reiterate our letter written to KPRDSB trustees
as a response of Trustee Gilchrist's letter of February 12th 2008. As I wrote
in the letter I am here to encourage our community and the KPRDSB to recognise,
name and act on racism, beginning at the board level, thereby setting clear
standards for administrators, directors, principals, classroom teachers and
students for addressing racism at all
levels within our public school system and an example to our community.
We recognise censure is an
unusual and uncomfortable step for a board to take and so we ask Trustee
Gilchrist to consider his stance and the needs of the Board and the school
community he supposedly serves, and to reconsider his resignation.
We ask our entire community to
continue to expose and act on racism and intolerance because it is our belief;
and we think the belief of the majority of Canadians - that multiculturalism is
a strength of
On behalf of the KWIC Board,
Hermione Rivison
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March 4, 2008
To the Chairperson and Trustees of the
The Board of Directors and staff of the Ontario Public Interest
Research Group Peterborough wish to join with the many community members and
community agencies in condemning the letters sent by Trustee Gordon Gilchrist
from his Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board email address to the Port
Hope and Cobourg newspapers.
OPIRG Peterborough is a campus-based organization whose membership
includes the full-time undergraduate students at
It is our position that racism is alive and well in
Trustee Gilchrist, not satisfied with his first attempt of
inciting hatred against racialized New Canadians, decided to use his so-called
“retraction and apology” as space to argue in support of his original letter.
We can assure Trustee Gilchrist that by writing that Indians are people “who
blow up aircraft in order to settle old, foreign scores, and who demand that
Mounties wear turbans and students wear daggers to school” and that Jamaicans
are people who “prefer to settle scores by bullets on the streets rather than
by Canadian law in the courts” he was very clear with his words.
For Trustee Gilchrist to apologize for the clarity of his writing (the only apology he offered in his second letter) and then to assert that he is not racist, using the awards that he has given to “Chinese-Canadians, Indo-Canadians and African-Canadians” as proof, is insulting to the people of this community and proves that Trustee Gilchrist still doesn't understand that he has made a mistake. When he then chose to further justify his words by warning that the Toronto District School Board has to “divert funds from other envelopes just to provide English as a Second Language students with training in the language of their new country” Trustee Gilchrist proves that he is not only completely unrepentant for the damage he has done, but harbours an extremist view from the fringes of Canadian society – a view that he is more than willing to use his position as Trustee to promote.
Trustee Gilchrist's
description of Canadian values and history is also rather mystical.
As an organization predominantly made-up of students, OPIRG wishes
to express its solidarity with the students who attend schools in the Kawartha
Pine Ridge District School Board and the injustice that they face everyday that
the Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board allows Trustee Gilchrist to
remain in a position of authority.
Yours truly,
Brendan Bailey,
OPIRG Board Member. On behalf of the staff and board of OPIRG Peterborough
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Press
Conference
Kawartha Muslim Religious Association
Statement
Re:
Gordon Gilchrist's February 13th letter
March
5, 2008
My
name is Kenzu Abdella and I am the president of the Kawartha Muslim Religious
Association (KMRA). On behalf of the KMRA, I would like to make a brief
statement in response to Trustee Gordon Gilchrist’s public letter of February
13th.
The
KMRA is a registered, non-for-profit, charitable organization serving the needs
of the growing Muslim community in the Kawartha area including the cities of
As
Canadians, and as members of the Kawartha Muslim Religious Association, we seek
to encourage respect for people of all different nationalities, ethnicities and
religions. Several of the most important
principles of Islam are the promotion of justice, equality and tolerance and
therefore we are obliged to speak out against any action or speech which runs
contrary to these principles.
The
letter written by Mr. Gilchrist to the Port Hope and Cobourg newspapers
propagates extraordinarily prejudicial stereotypes of several different
communities in
Not
only are these comments misinformed and inappropriate but they were made by an
elected representative of one of our most important public institutions. They
were also made intentionally and were widely disseminated in a public
forum. As a result, they are
exponentially detrimental to the communities which were maligned.
The
Kawartha Muslim Religious Association believes that Mr. Gilchrist should be
free to express his views in private and as a private citizen. However, we question the wisdom of allowing
him to continue as a school board trustee when it is so apparent that he has no
respect for the values we cherish as members of a multicultural and democratic
society; a society which welcomes and recognizes the contributions made by all
the people who make up our great nation, Canada.
Thank
you.
Professor
Kenzu Abdella, Ph.D.,
President
Kawartha
Muslim Religious Association
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March
5, 2008
To: Community and Race Relations Committee
PARN
supports the call for Mr Gilchrist’s resignation. We are disturbed
not only by the racist remarks made by Mr Gilchrist in his initial letter to
the Port Hope Evening Guide but also by the lack of awareness and remorse
displayed in his ‘apology’ letter.
The
commitment of the Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board to 'support
the advancement of equity, diversity and inclusiveness' through advisory
committees to 'reflect the core value of respect for the dignity of
all humans' in the schools is commendable.
We
look to the School Board to provide strong leadership in within their
governance structure and to ensure that the same commitment and principles are
embraced and supported by the elected Trustees who are in positions of trust,
power and influence.
PARN's
support and prevention programs are rooted in addressing the risks for HIV
transmission through a lens that includes the social determinants of health as
defined by the Public Health Agency of Canada* and the World Health
Organization:
Personal
Health Practices and Coping Skills
We believe that it is critical to the overall health of
all people in our communities to actively engage in ongoing anti-racism/anti-oppression
training; to integrate effective, policy development and service delivery
principles; and to hold accountable the institutions and services in our
communities. The Ontario Human Rights Code website provides guidance and
assistance in interpreting the legislation that applies to all Ontarians.
Addressing
the social inequities that create barriers to full participation in our
communities is a core value central to all who seek to create a ‘just society’.
Kim
Dolan
Executive
Director, PARN
* Social Determinants of
Health
A wealth of evidence from
Canada and other countries supports the notion that the socioeconomic
circumstances of individuals and groups are equally or more important to health
status than medical care and personal health behaviours, such as smoking and
eating patterns (Evans et al., 1994; Frank, 1995;
Federal/Provincial/Territorial Advisory Committee on Population Health, 1999).
The weight of the evidence suggests that the SDOH have a direct impact on the
health of individuals and populations, are the best predictors of individual
and population health, structure lifestyle choices, and interact with each
other to produce health (Raphael, 2003). In terms of the health of populations,
it is well known that disparities-the size of the gap or inequality in social
and economic status between groups within a given population-greatly affect the
health status of the whole. The larger the gap, the lower the health status of
the overall population (Wilkinson, 1996; Wilkinson and Marmot, 1998).
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Community and Race Relations Committee – Statement
As the local agency working directly on race relations within Peterborough, the
Community and Race Relations Committee of Peterborough (CRRC) is asking for the
resignation of Trustee Gordon Gilchrist from the Kawaratha Pine Ridge District
School Board for his anti-immigrant and racist statements publicly conveyed
through letters to the editor of the paper of the Port Hope Evening Guide of
February 12 and his retraction dated February 19th .
There have been numerous public responses to Trustee Gilchrist's initial
statement and the retraction shortly after, however the CRRC feels compelled to
address the School Board (KPRDSB) directly. Like the school board, the CRRC is
committed to and values equity, diversity and inclusiveness; our mandate
explicitly includes a responsibility "to promote increased community
understanding of the benefits of racial diversity and the roots causes &
consequences of racism." While we
applaud the efforts of the school board in their recent decision to censure
Gordon Gilchrist, we encourage the board to ask for his resignation.
Trustee Gilchrist's statements are racist – the anti-immigrant
statements and racial stereotypes that are flagrantly apparent in his letter
are not to be tolerated. Trustee Gilchrist's claims regarding the
"allegiances" of newcomers and their supposed draining of public systems
are so clearly unfounded that we question his ability to represent public
interests on a school board, in an elected capacity. Much statistical and
analytical data exists to disprove Trustee Gilchrist's statements, and it seems
appropriate to assume that an educational institution such as the school board
would have easy access to such information.
Immigration and settlement/integration are priorities, not only locally, but
across
With so many organizations and individuals working towards a more inclusive
society, there remains no space for those with racist ideals - there should be
no space within a public body for someone like Gordon Gilchrist. Although we
applaud the board's decision to censure Trustee Gilchrist, we believe his presence
on the board continues to taint the board. His continued presence also taints
any future decisions the board makes on behalf of the community.
Given the seriousness of the situation, Gordon Gilchrist must resign. And the
community at large would gladly accept his resignation. We stand in solidarity
with Trustee Brian Cowie, who personally asked for Gilchrist's resignation. And
we encourage the school board-at-large to make a public statement condemning
Trustee Gilchrist's remarks and to publicly request his resignation.
Over 100 schools, thousands of students and their families, deserve to have an
educational institute that stands against racism, and against those who
perpetuate it. Gordon Gilchrist must resign.
By
The Community and Race Relations Committee