London Mayhem
It was a great night in London as 600 people absolutly filled the London City Music Theatre to the rafters to hear Five Feet of Fury’s Kathy Shaidle, Salim Mansur and Ezra Levant speak on free speech and human rights commisions in Canada.
Got the chance to meet Right Girl’s Wendy, Dr. Roy and Wonder Woman with her hubby Mike, and it was a pleasure to meet you all. Kathy was also on the meet list, but she was more than a little whelmed and wasn’t picking up who I was – I should have led with my twittername iambriandammit.
Kathy was, in fact, the surprise of the evening for me. I know her as one of us, a blogger. But her resume really is far more than that, and she is an excellent public speaker. Her speech was funny and informative, possibly highlight of the evening.
Salim Mansur was the dignified gentleman in black suit and tie. He looked elegant and (according to Wendy), handsome. His speech was very well thought out, you could tell he’s put a lot of time in considering these issues over his life, and highly passionate.
Of course, everyone came to hear Ezra Levant speaking. his book is a bestseller, about to enter a third printing, in the top five at Chapters and Amazon. In short, Ezra is hot at the moment. He didn’t have a prepared speech, instead grabbed a point Kathy Shaidle made, that human rights commissions are highly Canadian institutions, and rebutted it arguing that they are, in fact, un-Canadian. His main point was that something human rights commissions do is attempt to brand people who come before them as un-Canadian. He didn’t seem to like giving up the idea that they were inherently Canadian, thus making those who oppose them un-Canadian.
All in all it was a good night. I picked up Kathy’s The Tyranny of Nice and got it signed, and got my copy of Shake Down signed and I met a couple of fellow bloggers, finally. Yea, it was a good night.
I have pictures, but have to get to work now. I’ll post them tonight.
free speech, Go Ezra Go, human rights, pimply minions of bureaucracy
It was great to meet you last night. I’m glad I made the trip out there – totally worth it!
RG
Nice to finally meet you as well. Definitely a good night.
Now I find out that someone from Hespeler was there! Darnit!
I’m a Hespeler girl, transplanted to Toronto. My mother and her mother were born and raised there.