TEACAPAN, SINALQA, Mexico — Every now and then
4 government commits an act of such simple, ordinary
common sense that we wonder where on earth it ever got

the idea.

Ottawa has accomplished this
miracle by ignoring the Columbus
500th anniversary celebrations.
Our government will not, repeat,
not, spend nine million of our
dollars to mark the cinquentennial
of the so-called discovery of the
New World.

“We don’t see anything to
celebrate,’’ says a spokesman.

Here in distant Mexico, a Ca-
nadian’s bosom swells with pride.
At least this one time, his gov-
ernment is going to refrain from
pouring his tax dollars down a rat
hole.

We have been even more sensi-
ble than the Mexican government.
Mexico’s celebration of the Col-
umbus trip has been so subdued
as to be almost indetectable, but
the national government was in-
duced to build a pavilion at
Seville, Spain, for the occasion.

Americans must wish they had
been so lucky, but their govern-
ment seems to have enjoyed no
such flash of sanity.

As Voltaire said, history is a set
of commonly accepted fables.
~ The fable that Columbus
discovered the American continent
while proving that the earth was
round is too god for the Ameri-
cans to let go. They are spending
and shouting.

Columbus arrived on this con-
tinent at least 30,000 years after
the first immigrants. It may have
been as much as 50,000 or 200,000
years,

Of course if only Caucasian ex-
plorers count, he was an early ar-
rival, but 500 years too late to

st, JANUARY

*

Paul |
St. Pierre

PAULITICS & PERSPECTIVES

claim first prize.

The Vikings sighted America in
AD 986. Shortly after AD 1000
Leif Ericson founded a colony at
Lansey Meadows, Newfoundland,
which survived for at least three
years. The site has been excavated
and well identified.

Newsweek Magazine has sug-
gested that carly explorations
don’t count because they were
unplanned. Oniy Columbus, say
their editors, came with a plan to
explore and claim lands. That is
humbug.

The reverse is true. Columbus
came across with a crew of
mutinous men.

Whatever acts they might com-
mit upon one another, as bawdy
songs suggest, the thing they could

y

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not do was to raise children in a
permanent settlement.

There were no women aboard.
Plunder was the objective. Ericson
took families to settle in North
America.

It is a reminder that Americans
are often sadly ignorant. They
boast so much that they start
believing themselves.

They have a passionate, almost
frantic belief that the United
States never lost a war and are
truly hurt by mention of the Viet-
nam war or the War of 1812.

Their faith in the Columbus
legend is part of the same grand
-— some would call it magnificent
— delusion.

Christopher Columbus was an
estimable man. So were many
other Italian, Spanish, Portuguese
and British navigators of that age.

But it is absurd to suggest that
he sailed west from Spain to prove
that the world was round.

By 1492 only the dumbest of
the Christians still believed that
Earth was flat, a belief a few of
them still hold to this day.

Ordinary men knew that the
world was a sphere and that it was
only a matter of time before some
pope admitted it publicly and
stopped brrsine people who knew
it at the stake.

Rather than a great geographer,
Columbus may have been a
master of the art of promotion.
He would prove the world to be
round and the Queen of Spain
would pawn her jewels to help
him do it. More salable stuff than
dull truth, surely.

Dull truth may well be chat
Columbus knew what he was go-
ing to find in 1492 for the good
reason that he had been here be-
fore.

STRASS CRYSTAL

CHANDELIER

* 20° diameter

Friday, January 17, 1992 - North Shore News - 9

Good-bye Columbus and good riddance

Although we know little about
the man, not even what he looked
liked because no picture of him
from life was ever painted, the
history books suggest he sailed the
North Atlantic with the Basque
fishing fleet before the 1492
voyage.

The Basques were in New-
foundland within a short time of
Columbus’ landing on whatever
West Indies island he hit.

Whether they arrived a couple
of decades before 1492 or a de-
cade or two afterward can never
be ascertained, but circumstantial
evidence suggests Columbus’ first
voyage wasn’t really his first. It
was first for publicity purposes.

First, second or whatever, it
was pure disaster for the people
whose lands these were. Euro-

peans butchered natives with a
savagery that was only duplicated
in this century by the Germans
and the Japanese.

The Indians were lied to,
cheated, betrayed and slaughtered
like passenger pigeons.

On the great weigh scale of
cruelty (the Christians hope God
has lost the records), the sin of
Spaniards, Columbus’ sponsors, is
even heavier than that of the
French and the British.

Indians will not be celebrating
the arrival of this early bandit
from Europe.

Neither will I.

Neither, I am surprised, grati-
fied, delighted to say, will my own
Canadian government.

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