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White men cheer for Mark Steyn at Bay and Bloor

By Douglas Bell
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You can’t swing a cat in this town without hitting Heather Reisman interviewing some author. Such events usually go down at Indigo Books (where lately it seems she’s the CEO, picks the books, arranges the floor displays, sweeps the floor, changes the light bulbs and sews the employee smocks), and last night, at the Bay and Bloor location, the author in question was the ubiquitous Mark Steyn. He was there to plug his much discussed book America Alone, and held forth in front of a jam-packed audience of mostly white men on his general discomfort with and disdain for the Muslim world and multiculturalism. He espoused what he called a “natalist” policy for Canada—i.e. Canadians should produce more babies, thereby vitiating the need for immigration—and something about “telescoping” our educable years, presumably so as to free up time for more babymaking.

The audience cheered and laughed as though they were at an evening of old-timey vaudeville. Which, in a sense, they were. Steyn is an accomplished polemicist-comedian and easily batted away Reisman’s milquetoast efforts at rejoinder—“Isn’t there possibly some middle ground between multiculturalism and what you’re talking about that we could maybe agree on, maybe?”—while rousing his fans into a frenzy of concurrence.

In the end, Reisman surrendered to her sales persona, going on about what a wonderful and passionate writer Steyn was. “Isn’t someone as passionate and wonderful as you so clearly are optimistic about the future.”

“Yes, Heather,” Steyn was forced to agree. “I am, at the end of the day, a happy warrior.”

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