" Voting is the foundation stone of political action"- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ---- Very wise words, but who gets to vote? Has it always been this way? :Thoughts on the era that shaped the American founding fathers

During this current time of international partisan politics and whispers of WW3, it’s easy to view such conditions as a regression to past, less civilized ways. Although it is fair to assume societies and technological advances can and should continually progress, people are more or less the same as they’ve been for the past several millennia. As a consequence, one’s and by extension humanity’s ability to progress is determined by the ability to preserve and choice to acknowledge and understand the past. 

The beginnings of what are now the sovereign nations of Canada and the United States of America started out as a collection of settlements and colonies eventually called British America. One of the first and longest lasting interests was the business of fur trade. But along with this was an economy that survived off of labour (paid and unpaid) from farming and natural resource extraction. When the American war of independence began, the agitators had had enough of their seemingly lopsided economic relationship with Britain. The founding fathers signed the constitution for a collection of former colonies that were founded around business and enterprise and united by a fervent belief in the potential for a ‘more perfect union’. A belief that they believed was no longer viable under British rule. 

This knowledge lends itself to a view of voting rights very different to the ones we’ve come to accept and expect today. One thing that has held true from this earlier time till today is that corporations favour or outright limit voting rights to shareholders. Meaning individuals and groups with direct stakes in companies are trusted to vote for decision makers of businesses. What is also of significant importance is the idea of a union that could be perfected over time. We may never know how the founding fathers believed this would be achieved if they believed they knew at all. What was clear was a belief that expanding the proportion of property ownership was paramount to a long standing society in which the average man felt his freedom and autonomy was respected. 

During this time British North America (now Canada) continued to centre much of its economy around the fur trade via The Hudson's Bay Company. Its population also received a wave of immigrants who settled there precisely because they wanted to remain a part of the British colonial dynamic in North America.

So how did we get to today’s concept of voting rights and does the order in which this process unfolded matter?

To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that enhances the freedoms of others.

• Nelson Mandela

Stay tuned for more of my thoughts

Canada-US Tensions: Exploring history to face the debacle that is Trump

To many the recent antagonistic threats made by the US president have been a joke at best and shocking at worst. But any history buff would betray their profession if they didn’t admit that the common, modern tendency to tout that these two countries share the longest undefended border in the world is…well…modern. The sentiment that one often fights hardest with those they’re closest to has held true in many instances for the history of the peoples occupying this territory over the past 500 years. If the average person was more privy to the knowledge that much of Canadian history and identity was born out of NOT being American, like border issues around the war of 1812 or the 1867 US purchase of Alaska from Russia, what may initially produce confusion and fear may alternatively bring calm in the midst of chaos and clarity in the midst of confusion.

There are many time periods, political reactions and segments of society that are involved when talking about social change. In this series of examinations, I will begin with 7th  American president Andrew Jackson and eventually expand to events before and after his terms.

The choice to focus on this man is unequivocally because he is the closest former US president to whom modern president Donald Trump can be compared. Jackson to some was seen as a quintessential, American rags to riches story. He also grew up during an era when the right to vote, arguably the barrier between first and second class citizenship, was primarily born out of one’s ability to acquire and/or maintain a considerable amount of wealth. It is important to note that this means that there were women and African-Americans (however small a proportion) who could legally vote before many white men across America. By the end of his presidency, the latter had gained voting rights at the direct price of the disenfranchisement of the former. For the mayhem-driven, allegiance-demanding, partisan president, this was no coincidence.