GENOCIDE COURSE IRKS ETHNIC GROUPS
Daniel Dale

Toronto Star
1
June 13 2008
Canada

Toronto District School Board made only minor changes to a new Grade
11 genocide course at a special meeting last night, sending dozens
of protestors home unhappy.

More than 40 Ukrainian-Canadians and 60 Turkish-Canadians picketed
before the meeting, then packed the board’s gallery seats.

The Ukrainian Canadian Congress wanted the 1932-1933 forced famine
in Soviet Ukraine used as the course’s fourth case study with the
Nazi Holocaust, 1994 Rwanda genocide and 1915 mass murder of Ottoman
Empire Armenians.

The Federation of Canadian Turkish Associations and Council of
Turkish Canadians sought the removal from the curriculum of the
Ottoman killings, which the government of Turkey contends did not
constitute genocide.

The International Association of Genocide Scholars, like the government
of Canada, does deem them genocide. The Ottoman case was not mentioned
at the meeting, and no trustee proposed adding the Ukrainian famine
as a core case.

The board, however, passed two amendments. The first allows teachers
to spend significant time on genocides other than the three core case
studies as they "see fit." The second notes the curriculum’s exclusion
of specific genocides does not imply the board believes those events
are of "lesser significance."

Trustee Mari Rutka said she planned to propose at a regular board
meeting that material on the Ukrainian famine be added to the curricula
of other courses in 2009-10 and proposed a school system-wide famine
remembrance day.

The Muslim Canadian Congress also expressed disappointment over
the board’s decision to include a "one-sided" view of the Armenian
genocide in the curriculum without including pre-WWI "ethnic cleansing
of Muslims from the Balkans and southern Europe."