Trudeau’s soaring rhetoric.

The glaring dissonance between Trudeau’s soaring rhetoric on reconciliation and the reality that he, just like many other Canadians, treated it as just another public holiday, has aroused justified criticism. To make the optics even worse, if that’s even possible, Trudeau’s office obviously lied about his whereabouts, claiming he would be in private meetings in Ottawa and then only updating his schedule after he was spotted in Tofino. The whole episode reeks of entitlement and arrogance and a blithe disregard for the impression that such behaviour leaves with the Canadian public……..The sad reality is that neither the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation nor the lowering of the flag indefinitely, nor the fracas around Trudeau’s vacation, is going to make a whit of difference to the plight of indigenous Canadians. (Rupa Subramanya, NP)

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How will our government respond to the latest indigenous crisis?

Here we go again. Another tragic reminder of our nation’s history. It has swung the cancel culture zealots into full bore protest. I heard a great description of protest movements today. Performance activism. Instead of parading for media, how about you white entitled activists come up with some solutions?

And how is it, that our police are not arresting hooligans who tear down public statues? It seems that one can engage in violent actions like wanton destruction of public property without any fear of consequence. How much of the public purse will be emptied this time, as we throw more money at the indigenous ‘problem’? Instead of a concrete plan to address this, no doubt we will simply distribute $billions more to the reserve councils to spend/squander/invest in whatever manner they see fit.

How about this for a solution? Send those self contained water treatment plants that we seem able to ship anywhere in the world except for our own first nations! Our military touts its disaster response excellence and sends water treatment facilities to places like Haiti following earthquakes, yet we are incapable of ensuring that every Canadian, be they native, immigrant or 7^th generation Loyalist, has safe clean drinking water! Forget the endless apologies and reparations for errors and crimes committed centuries ago. Clean the damn water. It’s a fundamental tenet of a civilized society. Until every citizen of this great nation can open their taps and drink the water, we are destined to slog through the quagmire of past wrongs, stuck in a loop of apology and money wasted. Oh Canada!

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Fully vaccinated!

Fully vaccinated now! I understand I have to wait a couple weeks for the full impact, but the second jab has been received. Oddly, I don’t feel anywhere near as euphoric and happy as I did after the first jab. I suppose that is understandable, the jabs are quite common now. Nevertheless I do feel a calm sense of relief that I can put the past year and half behind me. So looking forward to engaging in ‘normal’ social discourse again. It will be most unusual, the first time I do go into a pub or restaurant and rub shoulders with the masses. That might even be happening by early July, given we are exceeding all the so-called phased targets well in advance of the original plan. Tourists are trickling back. Bit by bit we are reclaiming our lives. Will there be a joyous Canada Day celebration? I’m proudly flying the flags, but even I have to admit that following the most recent finding of 751 unmarked graves in Saskatchewan, the year 2021 July 1st celebration will likely pass without too much fanfare. The blood shed by our ancestors is coming back to haunt us. Oh Canada!

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Sir John Alexander Macdonald. Celebrate Canada’s founding father before cancel culture zealots erase him from history.

I’m posting this Wikipedia definition of Canada’s first prime minister before the cancel culture zealots scream loud enough to permanently erase Sir John A. Macdonald’s marvellous accomplishments from the history books. It is a tragedy of Canadian history, how our forefathers tried to erase indigenous cultures. And the recent finding of 215 children’s remains at a long ago shut down residential school in Kamloops has dragged this controversy back into the limelight. Will protesters now take their protest and placards to the County’s churches, those religious institutions which ran the residential schools and killed those children? Doubtful. Unfortunately for our history, and the truth, the cancel culture zealots scream loudest and their myopic view of history has resulted in the removal of a wonderful statue of Sir John A from the front of Picton’s library. It should be noted that the statue celebrates Sir John A’s first court case in Picton, a case which he defended as a teen age law student! But, these cancel culture zealots don’t want you to remember this great man for his nation building achievements. They want to erase his accomplishments from the history texts and ensure that our focus is instead on everything uncomfortable and awkward about Canada’s history. Would it not serve truth and honesty to leave the statue there, with some kind of explanatory plaque, so that we can indeed recall everything about our past, not just the positives that built this great country, but also the negatives? And remember, the statue celebrates Picton’s connection to Sir John A Macdonald when he was a law student! I recall the fanfare and celebration when the statue was unveiled during Canada Day festivities. And now, a scant few years later, we will rewrite history to appease a vocal minority who think nation building should be sanitized. So long live the memory of Canada’s founding father, without whom this nation would never have been forged.

(10 or 11 January 1815 – 6 June 1891) was the first  prime minister of Canada (1867–1873, 1878–1891). The dominant figure of Canadian Confederation, he had a political career that spanned almost half a century. Macdonald was born in Scotland; when he was a boy his family immigrated to Kingston in the Province of Upper Canada (today in eastern Ontario). As a lawyer, he was involved in several high-profile cases and quickly became prominent in Kingston, which elected him in 1844 to the legislature of the Province of Canada. By 1857, he had become premier under the colony’s unstable political system.

In 1864, when no party proved capable of governing for long, Macdonald agreed to a proposal from his political rival, George Brown, that the parties unite in a Great Coalition to seek federation and political reform. Macdonald was the leading figure in the subsequent discussions and conferences, which resulted in the British North America Act, 1867 and the birth of Canada as a nation on 1 July 1867. Macdonald was the first Prime Minister of the new nation, and served 19 years; only William Lyon Mackenzie King served longer.

In 1873, he resigned from office over a scandal in which his party took bribes from businessmen seeking the contract to build the Canadian Pacific Railway. However, he was re-elected in 1878. Macdonald’s greatest achievements were building and guiding a successful national government for the new Dominion, using patronage to forge a strong Conservative Party, promoting the protective tariff of the National Policy, and completing the railway. He fought to block provincial efforts to take power back from the national government in Ottawa. He approved the execution of Métis leader Louis Riel for treason in 1885; it alienated many francophones from his Conservative Party. He continued as prime minister until his death in 1891.

In the 21st century, Macdonald has come under criticism for his role in the Chinese Head Tax and federal policies towards Indigenous peoples, including his actions during the North-West Rebellion that resulted in Riel’s execution, and the development of the residential school system designed to assimilate Indigenous children. Macdonald, however, remains respected for his key role in the formation of Canada. Historical rankings in surveys of experts in Canadian political history have consistently placed Macdonald as one of the highest-rated Prime Ministers in Canadian history.

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