Saturday, August 2, 2008

BC Day





The province's 150th birthday was celebrated on Monday. Both Gordon Campbell, the premier of BC, and Stephen Harper, prime minister of Canada were on hand to make speeches from the steps of the legislature at noon.
The ceremonies began with the obligatory genuflection to our natives who gave the crowd a little sample of their traditional music. Was it followed by a reading from the bible? Of course not, silly. You see, while all sorts of ethnic groups were lauded for their wonderful contributions, whitey and his religion are incorrigible villains, racists, imperialists, who must apologize for everything that goes wrong in the world.
I have lots of memories of how Americans celebrate Independence Day. It's almost like Christmas, only the weather is nice. Families and neighbors, kids, young parents, old people, gather in back yards all over the country to celebrate. Softball games, lots of homemade fried chicken, potato salad, cherry pie, the men smoking and drinking beer while talking politics, the kids shooting off firecrackers. These good times were spontaneous expressions of pride in their country. They were Americans, and knew how
In Canada on the the other hand, public holidays remind me of summer camp for kids. The kids are only interested in playing and having fun, but the camp attendants have already decided how the little urchins will spend there time. Programs are thought up, and the leaders' job is to whip up some enthusiasm among their charges. A Canadian public holiday is like that. The politicians have to invent slogans and activities to show how wonderful they are- that is the politicians and the bureaucracy who, out of the goodness of their hearts, and with our best interests in mind, run things for our benefit.
You see, something strange has happened in the last thirty or forty years. our history has been deconstructed. Where schoolchildren were once regaled with stirring tales of French voyageurs, intrepid explorers and courageous missionaries, they are now told how evil we were. For instance, in the nineteenth century it was thought that it would be a good thing if native children were taught how to read and write, how to carry on trades and practice agriculture. The reasoning was that nobody in their right mind would want to freeze and starve in a tepee all winter. And of course, to participate in the affairs of the world at large, it was essential to know English or French and so they were not allowed to use their own languages. Because the government itself had no money the task was foisted off on religious orders who were willing to work for nothing. These 'Residential Schools' are now deemed to have been criminal for which every politician must now apologize. Ensuing lawsuits have enriched many a legal firm in the last few years and large quantities of cash have been shoveled out to native activists to assuage our guilt.
That isn't the only demoralizing message drummed into the Canadian psyche over the years, but they all add up to one overarching theme: all us white, heterosexual, Christian Canadians- of the type who built this country from the ground up- are nothing but a bunch of racist, sexist, homophobic, fat, intolerant, narrow-minded honkies who pollute the earth.
For some reason our ruling classes are surprised to have discovered an alarming decline in enthusiasm among the hoi polloi for Canada. To solve the problem our rulers have resorted to thinking up vacuous slogans and putting on boring concerts that have absolutely nothing to do with anything that happened a century and a half ago.
You see, unlike Americans, we didn't have to fight for our freedoms.
Well, I liked the Snowbirds. They are the acrobatic team of the Canadian Air Force. The fact that they fly aircraft that are veritable antiques- the country isn't really worth fighting for as far as our leaders are concerned- because all that military stuff doesn't fit our manufactured image of a 'peacekeeping nation.' That in itself says a lot about how much we've declined as a nation since the early post war years.
Still, as the speechifying politicians told us, BC is one of the best places in the world to live. But it is no thanks to our politicians, and the 'progressive' forces they kowtow to, it is in spite of them.