Most former prime ministers retire to lives of comfortable obscurity, occasionally catching the public’s attention with a statesmanlike pronouncement. Not John Turner. Before becoming prime minister for 79 days in 1984, Turner was known as the Liberal’s prince in waiting.
The dead man was little-known, the alleged killers were thousands of kilometres from home and the entire incident seemed likely to be forgotten quickly amid the litany of tragedies that have befallen Somalia. But more than four months after the killing of a Somali prisoner in Canadian custody—an event that led to charges against four Canadian peacekeepers, two of whom stand accused of second-degree murder—the case continues to stir controversy.
How would Jonathan Swift or Lewis Carroll have described Canada? We are not so much a country of lilliputians as a nation going sweetly off its rocker. Canadians can’t be blamed for this. When a country is ruled by lunatics and force-fed a menu concocted at the Mad Hatter’s tea party, well, the results are predictable.By BARBARA AMIEL5 min
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