Modern language is tricky. What words one uses these days seems to carry more weight than the topic being discussed. No topic is safe from the language police when it comes to being politically correct.
All the fuss on the use of correct pronouns will attest to the fact that the English language, as used here in Canada, is evolving into something that the average person has a great deal of trouble understanding. A hammer is a hammer, unless you are dumber than a bag of them.
I read a prime example of this phenomenon in the Toronto Sun article by Cynthia McLeod on 22 October, 2025 reporting on the shooting death of a homicide suspect by police which contained the following statement:
“A man wanted for the shooting death of a woman in Brampton and an Amber Alert is now dead after an interaction with cops in Niagara Falls”.
On reading this statement I asked myself; “what the hell does this mean, interaction”? So, being your ordinary high school graduate in Ontario I looked up the meaning on Google’s fountain of knowledge.
Somewhere between shit and syphilis, the Oxford dictionary contained the following profound statement; “interaction: communication or direct involvement with someone or something”.
Holly crap, Bat Man, this gets complicated! Communication? Direct involvement? Sounds like a dating app. Hell, the police shot and killed the guy! Were does that explanation come in? It seems that mainstream media does everything it it’s power to soften and avoid language that actually tells the reader what happened.
Why not just tell the public that the police found the killer, got into a gun fight with him and killed him? Easy to understand, no?
Ms. McLeod goes on to state that the SIU has exercised its mandate. Of course they are only interested in determining whether or not the shooting was righteous or not and who to charge if it wasn’t. You certainly won’t hear much about the support provided to the officer that had to shoot the man I suspect. Time will tell.
This type of circular language turns up in other areas of public interest. Take for example, the golf commentators on television. Back in the day, a golfer would hook one into the woods and that is what they said happened. Not today. The golfer moved the ball from left to right on that shot. What?
One used to hook or slice a ball into the water and it cost you a stroke to take another shot. Now, the golfer hits the ball into the penalty area. What happened to the water?
The shooting sports seem to have lapsed over time into this woke type language as well. My revolver or pistol is now only referred to as my firearm. Back when I was a young police officer I was issued with a sidearm, it was referred to as a “weapon”, which under the circumstances, it was.
Well, the shooting sports have changed that perception over the years which might actually be a good thing. In the competition world they don’t call your “firearm” anything. They just tell you to “load and make ready”. Even the slowest among us knows what to do then.
Perhaps the most disingenuous use of language used today is that used to describe those firearms that have been prohibited by Order-In-Counsel. What is an assault-style weapon anyway? Parliament it seems, was never given the chance to render a legal definition of what this spooky gun is. In military terms an assault weapon is one capable of automatic fire. Those have been banned in Canada since 1977, so the progressives have had to come up with another definition to suite their needs.
The moral of the story is, when you read an article or hear an argument about anything, listen carefully to the language used and consider the meaning of the words used and the agenda of the source of that language. If any reader out there knows the concise definition of “interaction”, please tell me. Inquiring minds want to know!