Canadian environmental organizations play a wide range of roles in combating climate change. Some analyze and popularize the science and impacts of climate change, some challenge industry and many target governments. Others are focused on long-term public education campaigns, grassroots initiatives and building the movement.

As part of our plans to celebrate CD’s 40 years of publication, our Editorial Collective asked certain writers to reflect on racism in Canada and consider whether or not it has diminished over this forty-year time span. Their excellent contributions appear in this issue of Dimension.

By the time this commentary appears, another mawkish, duplicitous Remembrance Day will be history. Editors, writers, producers and photographers will have looked for new ways to honor Canada’s War Dead – though not very hard – and will likely have settled for yet another shot of the dwindling parade of fragile veterans who appear faithfully every year to fill what’s known among journalists as “the November Hole.”

What can those of us committed to the socialist project, to laying the groundwork for a viable mass, democratic, but revolutionary party learn from what our fathers and forefathers did? Serious inquiry into the history of the Canadian socialist movement will help us not only to learn from the mistakes of the past, but also to reclaim what is valuable from this history.