On January 17, Colonial Provincial District Medical Health Officer Dr. John Harding arrived in Bella Coola with COVID-19 vaccine for the Nuxalk First Nation. At a welcoming ceremony Dr. Harding announced he had brought additional doses … enough to vaccinate the whole community.
Two days later vaccinations began with the most vulnerable elders. However, there were problems with inconsistent wi-fi which was apparently a personal slight to Dr. Harding. He decreed that no more vaccinations were possible without information being uploaded to the Colonial Provincial Capital … it being a well-known historical fact that there were no vaccinations prior to the internet. If the issue were not rectified immediately, he, and the vaccines were leaving!
Still, with the condescension and noblesse-oblige that exemplify his type, Dr. Harding offered to stay his wrath if the Nuxalk could give him an alternative plan by 10:00 am the next day. The plan came at 10:02, two minutes past deadline! Dr. Harding decided a lesson in punctuality was in order and announced the plan was too late! He was leaving! Upset community leaders demanded that Dr. Harding at least leave the doses originally promised, to no avail. “Demanding” their legal right to health care is ok for residents of, say, West Vancouver, but the same language from a First Nations community is somehow akin to going on the warpath. Fearing, in the words of Dr. Jeffrey Peimer, a director with Vancouver Coastal Health, that the Nuxalk were going to “stick him up,” Dr. Harding called the RCMP to rescue him. As he was being escorted out of the community Dr. Harding sent a parting missive claiming the Nuxalk had gotten the “gift” of 110 vaccines and that was that.
Before noting the scramble by government to apologise for Dr. Harding, it should be clearly understood that crappy rural internet isn’t a secret and more importantly that systemic racism in health care has not just been in the news but the subject of a major investigation by Dr. Harding’s own government whose damning report came out only two months before. Possibly Dr. Harding missed all of this information, being too busy down at the club with cricket and gin-fizz … or, perhaps there is another explanation for attitudes about 100 years out of date.
Whatever is up with Dr. Harding, the government and health ministry were falling all over themselves apologizing for his antics in Bella Coola. Unfortunately, some Nuxalk administrators were still thinking how they might have placated Doctor Sahib so he might have actually, you know, done the job taxpayers pay him to do, which is one of the saddest legacies of abusive colonialism … forcing the victims to humiliate and abase themselves in order to get the basics of life from the entitled pissants who have been given power over them.
Apologies are deserved and appropriate, but the government’s was announced to the media prior to being sent to the community, a sure sign that the apology is not for what happened, but for getting caught. Systemic racism in health care and everywhere else in Canadian society is an ongoing problem: theoretically recognized broadly in Canada but good intentions and taking vows not to be racist are never going to solve the problem as long as the capitalist system makes extra money marginalizing and exploiting disadvantaged people.
