Skip to content

LETTER: A message that shouldn’t be lost

logo

Stewart Burnett

Inuvik, NT

Dear Editor,

Thank you to Cece Hodgson McCauley for her fantastic columns over the years. I am sad to hear of her passing but her words will live on.

Her columns were always a breath of fresh air in a land that is so vacuumed of free expression. Her work stands in stark contrast to the looming shadow that haunts so many corners of the North, where people are afraid to speak up about domestic abuse, political improprieties or even share a controversial thought.

Her final column spoke to me and I wanted to address her directly.

Cece, they don’t write like you because they’re scared. We have grown up in a generation of online witch hunts and unspoken threats.

Best hope there’s nothing dark in your past, or even an off-colour joke you made on Twitter 10 years ago, because it could blow up in your face at any moment.

Most would rather hide and play it safe.

I resonate with your columns and the words in your last piece, because of my past growing up with a speech impediment. I used to dream of speaking freely and never thought it would be in reach.

Once I overcame the mental hurdle of my stutter, I was appalled to find a world that didn’t want me to speak simply because they didn’t like my ideas.

The hell with that, man. What I think is going down in history, wherever that ship lands me.

That’s a hill to die on if there ever was one.

Cece, you can’t go down more honourably than telling the truth, or what’s true to you.

God speed, and let that next voice rise above the fog.