A wasted life

Vincent J. Curtis

6 Aug 22

RE: Why I turned down a meeting with the pope  Op-ed by Doug George-Kanentiio, The Hamilton Spectator 6 Aug 22.  The author is an Akwesasne Mohawk and is the vice-president of the Hiawatha Institute for Indigenous Knowledge

Doug George-Kanentiio admitted more than he knew is his reasons for not meeting the pope.  He’s proud of having been among the Mohawk boys who were formally expelled en mass in June, 1968, from day-school.  It only takes one or two disruptive kids to spoil the learning experience for the entire class, so Doug is proud of having ruined a school year for the rest of his classmates.  He lived down to the stereotype of the “wild Indian.”

By the same token, I am a survivor of day grade school also, St. Vincent de Paul in Hamilton.  Luckily, disruptions were few, none were expelled, and all moved on to high school.  We learned something about the wider world, an experience Doug denied his classmates.

Life must have been pretty empty.  Reflecting and ruminating upon how done in he was by the white man.  Bitter that the career he had was dependent entirely upon white largesse, to which he felt entitled.

Doug says he didn’t want to meet the pope because one minute would not have been enough time to pour out the heartbreak of a wasted life.  A life wasted on hatred, anguish, and bitterness.

The pope would have seen the pain in Doug’s eyes and realized the words were disconnected from the real cause.  Perhaps fear of that realization is the truer reason Doug refrained from meeting the pope.

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