Facing sexist, racist abuse, Canada leader seeks to spark reckoning

Faced with a stream of vicious insults on social media, Canada’s first Indigenous governor general Mary Simon has decided to turn her pain into a learning moment for her country and launch a fight against racism and misogyny online.

“For me, it’s important to call it out and bring it out and address these threats every day,” Simon told AFP in a recent phone interview.

She added: “I felt that because the comments directed at me became personal and attacked my identity that it was enough to open up the conversation in Canada.”

Simon, a former diplomat and native rights activist, is the first member of the country’s Indigenous community to serve as the representative of the British crown and the official head of state.

Simon’s duties as governor general are largely ceremonial, but she also has an important symbolic role as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces as well as summoning and dissolving parliament.

Her appointment in 2021 marked a symbolic step as Canada grapples with a dark history of systematic mistreatment of its native peoples -- and she addressed the public in Inuktitut, one of Canada’s main Inuit languages, alongside English when she was named.

Trash

Several weeks ago Simon chose to publish some of the violent messages she has received online. She was called a “treacherous bitch,” “a worthless piece of meat” and “trash,” among other things.

“Every day, we were bombarded with harmful words, attacks against my identity as a woman, as a woman of a certain age, and as an Inuk,” said Simon, who is 75. “Unfortunately, I know very well I am not alone.”

Simon says she is encouraged by how Canadian society has responded to her campaign.

“There’s been a big reaction to the fact that I opened this up in a public way. And a lot of people are responding and saying, ‘Enough is enough,’ you know, so hopefully we can move this forward.”

Last month, on International Women’s Day, Simon hosted a roundtable with women from across the globe to discuss ways of combating online harassment.

In the interview, Simon stressed that while the government has a role to play so do big tech and civil society.