Beyond The Commons

 Beyond The Commons

Aaron Wherry covers all the goings-on in and around Parliament Hill. Follow Aaron on Twitter: @aaronwherry

Categories: Beyond The Commons, Capital Read

International recognition

by Aaron Wherry on Friday, September 4, 2009 6:47pm - 11 Comments

Sports Illustrated’s Sign of the Apocalypse for this week.

Former NHL coach Jacques Demers, who admitted in 2005 that he was functionally illiterate, was appointed to Canada’s Senate by Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

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  • http://intensedebate.com/people/Crit_Reasoning Crit_Reasoning

    Classy.

  • chr

    A little balance never hurt anyone….or… of the people, literally.

  • Richard

    Sports Illustrated…good thing it's illustrated.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/WDM WDM

    I'll take illiterate over some of the folks they have in the Senate down south.

    • http://snodsbury.blogspot.com/ Thomas

      Where the senate is elected, but the voters are illiterate…

  • Terren

    Never thought I would agree with Sports illustrated, but they hit the mark.
    How can this man not read? What is this, the 1930s'?

    • Greg

      You need to spend some time thinking of where people have come from, especially anyone over the age of 40, and from rural backgrounds. My own parents did not have the luxury of a high school in their norhtern Ontario villages, or indeed roads to access the home where they lived until they were adults. What little schooling they had access to was interupted by rural chores. How old is Demers? You rcomment about the '30's may not be that far off. Sure, he could have taken courses as an adult, but the stigma with the problem (partially your fault), may have prevented that.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/Gaunilon Gaunilon

    Most of the sitting Senators seem to be functionally infantile, so literacy fades into insignificance for that chamber at present anyway.

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/SisyphusThis SisyphusThis

    Over my years at university – many years ago – I shared lodgings with maybe 10 people off and on.

    About 8 of them could read. But they didn't.

    6 of them graduated to become teachers.

    I don't know what to make of that.

    My father was illiterate. But the man could think.

    • tobyornottoby

      I agree, Senator Demers will have some struggles to participate fully, but they are struggles he has overcome before and that he can get help with.

      On the other hand, what' s Finley's plan for overcoming his reflexive partisan divisiveness?

  • http://intensedebate.com/people/DeliciousLattes DeliciousLattes

    I have way less of a problem with Senator Demers' illiteracy than I do with the fact that Senator Demers is a hockey coach.

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