Today is Earth Day…first envisioned in San Francisco in 1969 bringing together the peace movement against American aggression in South-East Asia, specifically Vietnam and to demonstrate support for environmental protection, the first Earth Day was held on April 22, 1970. That same year, Greenpeace was founded in Vancouver with a concert featuring Joni Mitchell, James Taylor and Phil Ochs, the proceeds which helped fund Greenpeace's protests of 1971 nuclear weapons tests by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission at Amchitka, Alaska.
In our northern climate, Earth Day arrives when we are shaking off the last vestiges of what always seems to be a long winter. It is a time of renewal…and as Terry Peternell said about Earth Day, “It’s a day to reflect on the kind of future we are shaping and the care we extend to the natural world around us”...to reflect on how we can better respect the earth and better respect each other. Everyone deserves to experience a life of peace and hope without external threats to their safety and well-being.
The following story is to be understood as it relates to a belief we have at Canoe Foundation in terms of the land, and how we all should be custodians of the land for future generations. The history of land and who controls it, is very complicated in this country of Canada, but becomes even more so when we look to the Middle East and how one country continues to force the Indigenous Peoples off their land to ensure that going forward there will never be a chance for a two-state solution between the Arabs and the Israelis in what was once known as Palestine.
It`s a brief type of travel log, but bear with me. On Wednesday last week, we headed into Toronto for a short film excursion.
After an uneventful GO Train from Burlington to Union Station, we jumped on the Yonge subway up to Queen St. for a mid-day meal at the restaurant Fran’s, a Toronto tradition since 1940…comfort food that never disappoints.
One of the most interesting aspects of our visits into downtown Toronto is walking along so many streets that still have some amazing architectural wonders. From our window seat at Fran’s looking south across Shuter St, you see one of Toronto’s great structures…Massey Hall, which opened in 1894, where we have been in attendance for many fine musical performances over many decades…still some of the best acoustics anywhere.
We had booked our night stay at #1 King West Hotel, which is located at the south-west corner of Yonge and King Sts, so after lunch we had a short walk to where we had an early check-in. The hotel is located within the original Dominion Bank building, to which they have added the 51 story ‘Sliver’ condo/hotel. My Dad was the assistant to the President of the bank back in the early 1950’s and we have visited his office located on the 12th floor on each of our stays. We have always had a suite in the original bank building, but this time we were given a suite on the 32nd. floor of the new tower, with views both south and west.
While Toronto has maintained some of its historical buildings, they live side by side with some newer skyscrapers that must challenge the engineering expertise of the builders. Looking south from our suite, we see a skyline with one building still under construction that appears to have reached at least 70 stories…brings to mind Hendrix’s lyrics to Purple Haze about ‘kissing the sky’…
Looking out our window to the west is the historical Canadian Bank of Commerce (now CIBC after its merger with the Imperial Bank of Canada in 1961), which upon its completion in 1931 was the tallest building in the British Empire until the early-1960’s. We have certainly looked at that building hundreds of times over the years, but never from this height. What we saw near the top were four giant head sculptures with flowing beards (there are in fact four on each side of the building). The photo accompanying this blog, is one we took looking west from our hotel room. We online searched their meaning and discovered that they are referred to as the Giants of Jordan, which we thought was timely as we were about to travel over to the Lightbox Theatre to watch a film that took place in parts of the Transjordan (now Jordan). These sculptures are said to represent, Courage, Observation, Foresight and Enterprise, (perhaps the philosophies that have kept Canadian banks solid through many tumultuous times), however they are so named, not for a Middle East country as we surmised, but in fact for the very short street (Jordan St.) that runs between the Dominion Bank building and the CIBC building itself.
A gentle walk westward along King St. through the heart of the financial district brought us to the Lightbox Theatre where we were anticipating watching a film titled Palestine 36.
Still trying to get a wider perspective of why the Middle East is always in such a turmoil…I wrote in a previous Canoe Foundation blog titled NEW EYES ON THE DEVIL`S EXCREMENT about the book ALL THE SHAH`S MEN, about the CIA led overthrow of the democratically elected Iranian government in 1953, putting the Shah in charge…and leading to what is currently unfolding.
Perhaps the more complicated situation is the one in Palestine/Israel/Gaza/West Bank/Lebanon…which is what brought us to the Lightbox Theatre to watch a film we did not get to see at TIFF last September…‘Palestine 36’, takes place during the Arab revolt between 1936 and 1939 during the British Mandate for Palestine (1920-1948) when Jewish immigration was ramping up with what was going on at that time specifically in Germany…the Palestinian Arabs sensed what was about to happen to them and their land and reacted to protect what they had.
The film had its world premiere in the Gala Presentations section of the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival on the 5th. of September, to a 20 minute standing ovation. It was selected as the Palestinian entry for the Best International Feature Film at the 98th. Academy Awards, making the December shortlist. The film has been banned in Jerusalem, following Israeli authorities detaining the projectionist involved in one of the screenings for interrogation.
Here is the write-up about the film from the TIFF web site…
Palestine '36
فلسطين ٣٦
Annemarie Jacir
Palestine, United Kingdom, France, Denmark, Norway, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan | 2025 | 119m | Arabic, English
Film Description
Festival favourite Annemarie Jacir takes us back to Palestine in the 1930s, charting the lives and ambitions of those living under British rule. Jeremy Irons and Hiam Abbass round out a tremendously strong international cast.
For her latest project, Annemarie Jacir faced a towering challenge. She had a bigger budget and the chance to work on a far larger scale than her earlier features, Wajib, When I Saw You, and Salt of This Sea. A period film funded across continents but shot entirely in the region, it came with the inherent technical and logistical hurdles. And the subject? The Palestinian people, at a critical turning point in their history.
Palestine 36 is the remarkable result. Jacir’s film enlists both talented newcomers and stars such as Jeremy Irons and Hiam Abbass to tell a story of individual actions against the roiling history of 1936 during the British Mandate for Palestine.
Rare archival footage sets the stage, providing a potent counterpoint to the dramatic action: Jerusalem’s bustling mix of peoples in the wake of the Ottoman Empire’s dissolution, the migration of European Jews fleeing the Nazis, and British attempts to impose colonial rule.
In the midst of this, Yusuf (Karim Daoud Anaya) shunts between his traditional village and the rapidly changing city. Young Afra (Wardi Eilabouni) tries to navigate change all around her with the aid of her grandmother (Abbass). A dissatisfied port worker (Jacir regular Saleh Bakri) finds the pressures of earning a living and supporting his family drawing him into a rebel movement. Can British officialdom, represented powerfully by Irons, even keep up?
Jacir moves her story forward at pace, balancing plot lines, tones, and character motivations against a strong grasp of the complex history. The cinematography is precise and beautiful but never showy. The score is haunting.
In delivering a period film that foregrounds character development against shaping forces of economics, politics, and identity, Jacir more than meets the challenge.
Official Selection, TIFF 50
The film posed more questions than it answered, and will lead to further research to better understand the human psychology behind why many in the Zionist movement had no intention of sharing Palestine with the Palestinian Arabs. When Israel was declared in 1948 by the United Nations Partition Plan, the minority Jewish population was given the majority of the land, which the Arabs found completely unfair, which led to what was called the 1948 Palestine War. The Arabs were primarily subsistence farmers working lands that their ancestors had also worked going back 2 centuries, while the Jewish settlers were supported by paramilitary groups that had financial and equipment support from European countries as well as the United States, who had learned their craft fighting the Nazis before and during WW2. There was a significant military power discrepancy, with more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs – about half of Mandatory Palestine's predominantly Arab population – expelled or fled from their homes. Expulsions and attacks against Palestinians were carried out by the Zionist paramilitaries Haganah, Irgun and Lehi, which merged to become the Israel Defence Forces after the establishment of Israel part way through the war. The expulsion and flight was a central component of the fracturing, dispossession, and displacement of Palestinian society, known as the Nakba (the term given to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs by Israel through their violent displacement and dispossession of land, property, and belongings, along with the destruction of their society and the suppression of their culture, identity, political rights, and national asperations, as well as Israel's ongoing persecution and displacement of Palestinians. As a whole, it covers the fracturing of Palestinian society and the longstanding rejection of the right of return for Palestinian refugees and their descendants). Dozens of massacres targeting Arabs were conducted by Israeli military forces and between 400 and 600 Palestinian villages were destroyed. Village wells were poisoned in a biological warfare programme, properties were looted to prevent Palestinian refugees from returning, and some sites were renamed.
The decimation that we have witnessed in Gaza, the continuing Jewish settler attacks on Arabs in the West Bank and the demolition of Arab villages in southern Lebanon are the continuation of the long line of Israeli actions that were never envisioned with the Balfour Declaration…Palestine was to be a salvation for the Jewish peoples of the world who had endured persecution for centuries and the European powers as well as the United Nations were intent on providing them a safe haven. What was once a seemingly honourable and compassionate dream of a Jewish homeland in the Middle East, has been hijacked by a militant, greedy, entitled and arrogant minority. It just seems that sharing the land wasn’t enough…they wanted it all.
Israel held such promise, and while the modern country has much that can be admired, its treatment of the Palestinians overshadows it all. We can only hope that more sensible, reasonable and compassionate voices with a better understanding and appreciation of human rights will prevail.
The colonialist treatment of the Palestinian Arabs (Indigenous in their own right) is not so different from what we have witnessed in other parts of the world, most notably in North America and specifically in the United States where Manifest Destiny was the plan to eradicate those Indigenous Peoples living on land that US settlers coveted. The relationship to the land in Indigenous cultures, which in many cases is not about owning (in fact that is a concept that is completely alien to many Indigenous cultures), but sharing the land, is in stark contrast to the private property concept so prevalent in most non-Indigenous cultures.
Palestine 36 was a film that has brought some better perspective to what is transpiring in parts of the Middle East…a better understanding of why there are such strong feelings at play, and the absolute necessity for those who can, to rein in the seemingly unrestrained military actions of both the Netanyahu and Trump governments.
The final scene of the film caught us completely off guard (see below)…one that was both surprising and impactful…of an Arab Palestinian playing a haunting lament on the bagpipes (full disclosure, I am also a piper)…standing on a high hill overlooking Palestinian Arab land…back to the camera…what was the symbolism of this we asked? It seems that it serves as a complex symbol representing the internalization and appropriation of British colonial culture by Palestinians, turning a symbol of occupation into one of resistance…it also signified the enduring spirit of, and the continuation of the "Revolution". It shows that the resistance, and the cultural response to that resistance, continued despite the severe suppression by British forces. Much food for thought.
Which brings us full circle, back to today being Earth Day, and how critical it seems that without peace, it is increasingly difficult for us to focus our attention on what most of us understand to be the existential threat all of us face, which is the climate crisis. Just imagine what 8 billion humans could accomplish if we all worked together and respected each other.
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