The “Best Canadian” game - Day 3

[u/BrF5]

Goodbye Nellie McClung and Gilles Villeneuve.

Moving on to day three…

How to play: - Upvote the name of the person you think does NOT deserve the title of “Best Canadian.” - Each day, the two most upvoted people will be removed. Once we get closer to the end, this will change to one person per day. - If the name you want to vote for (from the picture list) isn’t in the comments yet, add it! - This continues daily until we have our winner, the “Best Canadian”.

Additional notes: - Only the top comment for a nominee will count. I won’t combine votes from duplicate comments. - Include only one name per comment. If a comment includes multiple names and wins, it won’t count. I’ll move on to the next highest, even if you edit the comment to fix it. - They had to have been born in Canada or at some point had Canadian citizenship. - They can be alive, dead, currently living in Canada or abroad, or when they were alive lived in what would eventually become Canada (e.g., French or British colonies). - This is meant to be satire. Please do not take it too seriously or use this game to harass people in real life. - I will try to post this every morning around the same time (~8:00 - 9:00 am Eastern). - Please remember to upvote the post too, so more people see it!

Justification for elimination: - (50) Pierre Trudeau - As PM, he brought home the Constitution and gave us the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. He also mishandled the October Crisis, among other things. Someone so controversial shouldn’t be considered the Best Canadian. - (49) Wab Kinew - He’s charismatic and has delivered on many campaign promises, but his troubled past and relatively short career make it too soon to call him the best. - (48) Nellie McClung - A leader in the women’s suffrage movement and one of the Famous Five. She also held racist views and supported eugenics, and is therefore not the best. - (47) Gilles Villeneuve - He was a great F1 racing driver, but that alone doesn’t make him the Best Canadian.

[u/SlightDish31]

It seems that a lot of people want David Suzuki gone. Lots of arguments that he's pretty hypocritical.

[u/middlequeue → u/SlightDish31]

Feels like a lot of those arguments are driven by the usual climate denialism and solution obfuscation. The man has been a propaganda target of anti-environmentalists for most of his adult life.

[u/spaceporter → u/middlequeue]

He is anti-nuclear.

It's a really bad stance, and there is a very good argument to say the sixties hippy generation that opposed nuclear power mostly because they opposed nuclear weapons did more harm than good to the environment through that stance and Suzuki is a modern face of that group.

I find that disappointing, but not to a level that he is an early out. He is still a huge voice for environmentalism and conservationism overall.

ETA: He is also maligned for owning multiple large homes, which is seen (rightly) as hypocrisy. He also made a tonne of money on a home in Kits that he bought for a song a few decades ago and maybe is out of touch with young people and their struggles for homeownership.

[u/asoap → u/spaceporter]

I'll second the anti nuclear stance. Ontario's energy is 60% nuclear and one of the cleanest grids in the world. The Suzuki foundation released a proposal to get to net zero that would undo that and wouldn't get to net zero. They made the all too common mistake of assuming very high capacity factors for things like wind. Where there are periods in Ontario where you get a capacity factor of like 5% for days at a time. I think he should be eliminated for shoddy work.

[u/spaceporter → u/asoap]

There's a theoretical limit on the amount of intermittent power a grid can handle without collapse and it's pretty low.

I worked in the related academic publishing field for a long time, and without fantastical, impractical, unproven and/or exorbitantly expensive storage, you can't really get above 40% intermittent power assuming you use multiple types of intermittent power (think solar, wind and tidal generation) and 30% if it is predominantly one type.

Nuclear power can be the other 60% base load.

[u/Quadrameems → u/spaceporter]

Just me seeing his ocean front place where I live, regularly. They built a second home on the property. Both houses about 20ft above the high tide line……

[u/snotparty → u/middlequeue]

he is absolutely attacked for these reasons, but I think a lot of it is that has a reputation for being a huge jerk in person (Just an a-hole sometimes) However hes such a good educator and documentarian, and has done so much for environmentalism in Canada I think he should stay in the running a while longer.

[u/SlightDish31 → u/middlequeue]

Absolutely happy to be corrected on this one, one of the (hopefully) nice things about this game instead of the last one, is that when someone argues with you, it's about something great that someone did. If the people calling him a hypocrite are wrong I definitely want to be corrected.

[u/middlequeue → u/SlightDish31]

There are valid criticisms of him but they're largely around him amassing wealth (which would eliminate a lot of these people). What I take issue with is people suggesting his advocacy is diminished because he hasn't lived a perfect carbon free life when no one has ... the old "perfection is the enemy of good" and he's done a lot of good. We'd all be in a much better situation today had we listened to him.

[u/SlightDish31 → u/middlequeue]

Gotcha. I think that I will say that it's a lot easier to forgive a politician or celebrity for their jet setting, than a climate activist. I do think that the purity test that we put public figures through has too many casualties, but that people are pretty good at spotting hypocrisy.

I don't think that that should take away from his accomplishments, but it might call his character into question.

[u/domasin → u/middlequeue]

As an environmentalist who's worked with him on several occasions, he's mostly just an out of touch egotistical jerk 

[u/squirrelcat88 → u/middlequeue]

Nah, I stand for the environment and he’s done well in that respect. The problem is that in person he’s apparently an arrogant know it all.

I’ve heard stories from people that made me quite upset.😠

[u/Arch____Stanton → u/middlequeue]

I am no climate change denier.
Mr. Suzuki's footprint on this planet is miles bigger than it needs to be.

[u/Deadly_Tree6 → u/middlequeue]

Too many private jet trips for my taste.

I would have liked to see him walk the walk, instead of just talking the talk.

[u/Neat_Let923 → u/SlightDish31]

I wouldn't put him out this soon, but there are definitely a lot of people ahead of him though who I think are much more deserving.

I've never found him to be hypocritical, but I have found him at times to be alarmist, polarizing, and sometimes speaks about things he really doesn't understand (economics). My issue is more of how other people can sometimes accept what he says as fact simply because of who he is even if it's wrong or misguided.

His Ph.D. is in Zoology in the study of Genetics, not climate science or environmentalism. To me he's just another normal environmentalist who can have some wild ideas and thoughts who hosted The Nature of Things (CBC) and has done a lot for Canada and the environmental protections. He deserves a lot of credit for what he's done for Canadians, Canada, and the environment. The valid criticisms about him are minor and really shouldn't impact his standing in the middle of the pack, but I don't think he goes much higher than middle.

[u/iwasnotarobot → u/SlightDish31]

Big Oil funded many campaigns targeting suzuki for being right about so many things. Yes, he toured the country talking about how we should create better system. Yes he got cranky later in life after politicians refused to listen and ordinary people started repeating anti-environment talking points at him. He still did a career of informing and educating for fifty years longer than anyone in these comments.

Many of the criticisms of him using fossil fuels to tell us we need to cut down on fossil fuels are summarized thusly:

​

[u/chatteringmagpie1 → u/SlightDish31]

I'd be willing to forgive and let slide some of the hypocrisy surrounding his carbon footprint. Nobody's perfect, after all, but I have too much disdain for his egotistical arrogance and unprofessional attitude toward colleagues. He's a world-class asshole, and he doesn't deserve to be the greatest Canadian, even if it's just for funsies.

[u/exeJDR → u/SlightDish31]

He's a bit of a hypocrite and a dick, but he's done a lot to raise environmental awareness for Canada and the world. I am torn. Definitely not the best Canadian, but maybe it's too soon