
In the early 1690′s in the colony of Massachusetts in what would become the United States of America a witch hunt broke out. Led by the Puritans, a movement within the Church of England who were both extremely religious, in their own right, and rather political, they sought to track down and bring to trial anyone who they thought might be a witch. The indications that witchcraft were taking place in the colony were obvious: families would often find their crops or livestock devastated by bad weather, blight, or even earthquakes. The only explanation for such devastation was evil magic. The indications that one was a witch were pretty obvious as well: any woman who was single or recently widowed.
The truth behind the Salem Witch Hunt is that there were a number of pretty simple social and economic factors at work behind the scenes.
Socially, the Puritan community was very tight-knit and very religious. The rules by which they lived their lives and operated their societies were strict and unforgiving. What’s more, these were politically-minded people; people who had chosen to leave England and make a new way for themselves in the colonies—opposing opinions abounded. And these were hard economic times. Growing families were encroaching on one another’s farm lands, crops and livestock (due to completely natural reasons) were susceptible to the weather and to disease, and it was increasingly difficult to make ends meet. Mass panic over the possible presence of witchcraft in the colony would find fertile ground to grow in and when it began to spread it probably felt natural and right. Witchcraft, the thing that the Puritans feared the most, explained everything that was going wrong; it was the answer to everything.
Enter Stockwell Day, former Minister of International Trade, presently the head of the Treasury Board and our government’s Chief Witch Hunter.
On July 23, 2010 Day spoke about the long-form census on Edmonton-based radio station CHED 630AM explaining that why it was, ultimately, unnecessary:
We live in an information age where any 12-year-old kid can push any button on the Internet and find out any information he or she wants without threatening a citizen that they’re going to go to jail.
In this witch hunt, my friends, facts and statistics are our evil magic.
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