The Dick Pound Case

Posted on Canada Day 2009

Controversy swirled around Canadian Olympic official Dick Pound during the second half of October 2008. His convoluted story needs to be exhumed from news archives as an object lesson in how little prepared the elite are to discipline one of their own – and how hollow “sorry” sounds when mouthed along with an appeal to good intention and historical explanation.

What follows is a documented chronological blow-by-blow account of the Dick Pound affair.

During a Beijing interview with La Presse reporter Agnès Gruda on August 9, 2008, Dick Pound wandered along a strange path of illogic about human rights in China. [For an English version, see the translation provided as appendix.]

Pound: Je pense que les Jeux 2008 aideront la Chine à faire des progrès, que le pays sera transformé par les Jeux.

Gruda: Pourtant, depuis que Pékin a été choisie comme ville-hôtesse des Jeux, il y a eu la répression de la révolte tibétaine, le soutien chinois au gouvernement soudanais face au Darfour, l’emprisonnement de nombreux dissidents. Ne trouvez-vous pas que c’est gênant?

Pound: Il ne faut pas oublier qu’il y a 400 ans, le Canada était un pays de sauvages, avec à peine 10,000 habitants d’ascendance européenne, alors qu’en Chine, on parle d’une civilisation de 5000 ans. Il faut être prudent avec notre grande expérience de trois ou quatre siècles avant de dire aux Chinois comment gérer la Chine. Le président de la Chine doit permettre à 1,3 milliard de personnes de manger deux repas par jour. Leur situation n’est pas comparable à la nôtre. Et puis, quand le vote sur Pékin a eu lieu, les représentants chinois ont été très habiles. Ils nous ont dit que si on leur accordait les Jeux, cela accélérerait les progrès en Chine. On était piégés.

Gruda: Mais justement, d’après les défenseurs des droits de l’homme, la situation s’est plutôt détériorée. Vous croyez qu’ils se trompent?

Pound: Oui. Pour Amnistie internationale et Human Rights Watch, il n’y a jamais assez de progrès.

It took over two months for Pound’s comment about un pays de sauvages to attract media attention. (Forget all about his comments on China and Chinese [habiles = wily?] and human rights.) This brief report in the National Post on October 17 set off the fireworks.

On Aug. 9, Mr. Pound was quoted in Montreal’s La Presse as saying, in French, “We must not forget that 400 years ago, Canada was a land of savages, with scarcely 10,000 inhabitants of European origin, while in China, we’re talking about a 5,000-year-old civilization.”

Two days later Montreal’s Gazette headlined a story about a call for Pound’s resignation – whether as chancellor of McGill, whether as member since 1978 of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The day following, the newspaper regretted its headline error (“First Nation ex-Olympian calls for Pound to resign over ‘savages’ remark”), noting that the story itself made it clear that the Mohawk McGill employee had not gone beyond being “disturbed” and “disappointed.”

On October 22, Rod Mickleburgh of the Globe & Mail reported strong criticism from B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell, as well as from Stewart Phillip of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, who said “the remarks should disqualify Mr. Pound from remaining as a member of VANOC’s board of directors.”

October 23 saw publication of three stories about Pound’s response. The National Post simply reported that Pound would not step down from either of his positions, with no mention of apology. The Globe & Mail linked an apology (in essence: he may have been clumsy, but no malice was intended) with an assertion that the IOC ethics commission could determine no bad intention. (The key element in this account is intention.) The Edmonton Journal laid out Pound’s appeal to mistranslation of the word ‘sauvages’ (“basically living free in what was to the Europeans a sort of large, unknown territory”). Here the apology amounted to “being sorry for causing offence.” None of these accounts show any remorse whatsoever for the thought expressed – only for how the thought caused offense.

On October 24 the Globe & Mail reported at length on the IOC’s exoneration of Pound. His remark amounted to a “misunderstanding” because he had “absolutely no intention of hurting anyone.” Pound said this to the Globe & Mail:

I thought that in doing a 400-year-old picture, you use 400-year-old words. If that hurts somebody today, I had no intention of doing that.

By the same logic, Pound would use the N-word to describe African-Americans in an 1880s picture of the United States. After all, that word is found in Huckleberry Finn, one of the great American novels. Presumably Pound could do this with absolutely no intention of hurting anyone simply because he was inept or clumsy or wrong.

On that same day, October 24, Assembly of First Nations National Chief Phil Fontaine published letters of response to the October 23 articles in the National Post and Edmonton Journal. In both letters Fontaine called for apology. It appears that what had sometimes been reported as apology was not yet viewed as such by Fontaine.

The next day, October 25, Globe & Mail columnist Gary Mason went to great lengths to describe how Pound “spent the entire week apologizing and explaining himself … shaken by an experience he simply didn’t see coming.” Mason added nothing to previous news stories, his main points being that Pound did not intend to cause offense and could appeal to historical usage as explanation. Then came the 180-degree turn. Pound’s own “pain and grief” in the affair made him a victim of “lynch mob mentality” that unjustly sought redress for “an unintentional mistake that speaks in no way to his core belief or values.” Mason then declared that the matter should be laid to rest.

Four days later, on October 29, Stephen Hume aimed at a similar end result in the Vancouver Sun, where he engaged in multiple odd contortions to exonerate Pound. Along the way Hume attacked “first nations leaders” for “similarly intemperate and ill-informed rhetoric” about Europeans. Hume’s piece ended in a strange welter of “we are all sinners” and “the price of free speech in a democracy” is “the right to blunder” and also “the right to apologize and move on.” Presumably sin and democracy mean that anything can be said without consequence.

While Mason (followed by Hume) set out to lower the curtain on the show, Margaret Wente in the Globe & Mail tried to make a case for a “vast gulf between a relatively simple neolithic kinship-based culture and a vastly complex late-industrial capitalist culture.” This followed her observation that Pound’s remark was both stupid and true. Toward the the end of her article, Wente made issues out of romanticization of indigenous culture and settler guilt over historical mistreatment. This tangent provoked two further responses.

First, Janet Conway (Canada Research Chair in Social Justice, Brock University) criticized Wente’s reliance on “long-discredited theory” derived from the questionable work of Frances Widdowson. Then Widdowson herself dissociated her work from the use that Wente made of it.

The last substantial journalistic word on the Pound affair and its spinoffs seems to have come from Naomi Lakritz on October 31 in the Calgary Herald. After dismissing the notion that material progress indicates superiority of culture, Lakritz proceeded to compare aboriginal assistance to explorers and settlers with “what the materially superior, progressive European-settler culture perpetrated on Canada’s aboriginals.” Out of that comparison Lakritz arrived at this: “Savagery is about the ways people treat each other.”

In a different context, Dick Pound becomes an ironic object of sympathy for his own victimization by European colonialism. Selling the Five Rings (2002) details Pound’s lack of success in seeking the presidency of the IOC, and notes

2009 will mark 95 years of European presidential leadership in the IOC’s 115-year history. … Europeans hold approximately 45% of all seats on the IOC. Two-thirds of the members of the IOC’s powerful Executive Board are European (p. 286).

[See also the blog intro to this investigation.]

In chronological order:

Agnès Gruda. “Entrevue avec Richard Pound: ‘Harper a fait une erreur’,” La Presse (Aug 9, 2008)

“Aboriginal group demands IOC suspend Pound for ‘savages’ remarks”, National Post (Oct 17, 2008) A6

Jorge Barrera. “First Nation ex-Olympian calls for Pound to resign over ‘savages’ remark,” The Gazette (Oct. 19, 2008) A4

Rod Mickleburgh. “B.C. Premier slams Pound’s ‘savages’ remark,” Globe & Mail (Oct. 22, 2008) A8

“McGill chancellor won’t resign over reference to ‘un pays de sauvages’,” National Post (Oct. 23, 2008) A6

“VANOC member sorry for ‘savage’ remark,” Globe and Mail (Oct. 23, 2008) A6

Jorge Barrera. ” ‘I can be inept, clumsy or wrong, but I am not a racist’: Pound defends himself in use of word ‘sauvages’,” Edmonton Journal (Oct. 23, 2008) A5

Rod Mickleburgh, Ingrid Peritz. “IOC rules out inquiry into Pound’s remarks,” Globe & Mail (Oct. 24, 2008) A4

Phil Fontaine. “Offensive to all Canadians” National Post (Oct. 24, 2008) A17

Phil Fontaine. “Olympic official must apologize for remarks,” Edmonton Journal (Oct. 24, 2008) A17

Gary Mason. “After the apology, time to move on,” Globe & Mail (Oct. 25, 2008) A7

Margaret Wente. “What Dick Pound said was really dumb – and also true,” Globe & Mail (Oct. 25, 2008) A21

Janet Conway. “Colonialism at its worst,” Globe & Mail (Oct. 27, 2008) A14

Stephen Hume. “In defence of Dick Pound: one clumsy analogy that gave unintended offence, promptly apologized for, does not merit a resignation,” Vancouver Sun (Oct. 29, 2008) A17

Frances Widdowson / Albert Howard. ” ‘Savage’: what was written,” Globe & Mail (Nov. 1, 2008) A22

Naomi Lakritz. “History has recorded who the real savages were: savagery is about the ways people treat each other,” Calgary Herald (Oct. 31, 2008) A24

*     *     *

Appended translation:

Pound: I think that the 2008 Games will help China to make progress, that the country will be transformed by the Games.

Gruda: Nevertheless, since Beijing was chosen as host city for the Games, there has been repression of the Tibetan revolt, Chinese support for the Sudanese government against Darfur, the imprisonment of numerous dissidents. Don’t you find that disturbing?

Pound: We must not forget that 400 years ago, Canada was a land of savages, with scarcely 10,000 inhabitants of European origin, while in China, we’re talking about a 5,000-year-old civilization. We must be careful with our great experience of three or four centuries before telling the Chinese how to run China. The president of China has to make it possible for 1.3 million people to eat two meals a day. Their situation is not comparable to ours. And besides, when the vote on Beijing took place, the Chinese representatives were very clever. They told us that if we gave them the Games, that would accelerate progress in China. We were trapped.

Gruda: Exactly. According to human rights defenders, the situation has deteriorated instead. Do you believe that they have it wrong?

Pound: Yes. For Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, there is never enough progress.