Canadian Store (CAD)
You are currently shopping in our Canadian store. For orders outside of Canada, please switch to our international store. International and US orders are billed in US dollars.
In 2002 a fifteen-year-old Canadian citizen was captured in Afghanistan for allegedly killing an American soldier. A badly wounded Omar Khadr was transferred to the US Bagram Air Force base and then Guantánamo Bay detention camp. He would remain there without trial until October 2010. In Omar Khadr, Oh Canada, over thirty contributors analyze Khadr's background, his incarceration, the actions of Canadian authorities, and the implications raised by his legal case.
The following is excerpted from the Prism book review of Janice Williamson's Omar Khard, Oh Canada:
But an altogether different legacy is on show in Ms. Williamson’s tome, as interpreted by an equally eclectic set including legal jurists, human rights activists, journalists, filmmakers, poets and playwrights. Each of the prominent contributors here illustrate the slow decay of Canada’s democratic ideals, tied up as they have been to America’s constitutionally bankrupt detention of Canadian Omar Khadr (the Supreme Court of Canada’s sentiments, not mine).
Which narrative will attract the most attention? No one can deny that the “Khadr effect” has made Omar’s tale unpalatable for many Canadians.
“For years, as though exiled, Omar Khadr disappeared below the radar of what matters,” writes Professor Williamson in the introduction. “Why?”
Referencing Philosopher Simone Weil, she argues that people have a tendency to look away from those who need help. Her hope is that the anthology “reminds us of our responsibility to not look away.”
Indeed Canadians have looked away for too long from the emotionally challenging story of a child who “was dealt a sentence through his family name,” as activist Craig Kielburger notes in the book. “It’s unfair for any kids to have to live up to their parents,” he writes, reflecting on his brief encounter with Omar years ago in Pakistan. “It’s especially so when you’re a Khadr.”
(…)
As in an artful kaleidoscope, Ms. Williamson has brought together the voices and sentiments of those who refuse to look away from Omar despite his desperate need and the clinging albatross of his family name. Like the art exhibit in Massachusetts, this collection deserves to be widely acknowledged, too, for what it says about Canada, and about all of us.
Omar Khadr, Oh Canada Book Launch
May 30 2012 – 7:00pm
Octopus Books Centretown at Under One Roof
251 Bank Street, 2nd Floor, Ottawa
To learn more about Omar Khard, Oh Canada or to order online, click here.
For media inquiries, contact MQUP Publicist Jacqui Davis.
No comments yet.