Happy Dominion Day

. . . no, not Canada Day, but Dominion Day, the true name of the day that commemorates Confederation, the founding of our country, whose full, legal name is the Dominion of Canada. Its ersatz replacement, “Canada Day” or “Jour Fete du Canada”, was passed one late Friday after noon in Parliament but less than the thirteen member legal quorum by Pierre Trudeau’s Liberals.

It will never be “Canada Day,” at least not in my heart, damn it!

And that’s not the worst of it. Beginning with his predecessor, Lester Pearson, Canada’s traditions have been destroyed, one by one, by the Liberals, starting with the flag. Canada’s true historical flag is the Red Ensign, with a Union Jack in the upper right, for the simple reason that Canada was and is a British product, but all traces of our British heritage are being removed, starting with the flag, now replaced by that insipid red maple leaf.

And why attack our British heritage? Supposedly because it offended French Canadians, and subsequently because it was deemed not inclusive enough for newer, non-British immigrants.

It is beyond ironic that, in the name of multiculturalism, which is supposedly so inclusive and respective of people’s heritage, the Left is working so hard to exclude the British component our national heritage?

Can you say “hypocrisy”?

A full catalogue of the process is simply too painful to type out, so here is a summary:

• replacing the flag
• changing the national anthem (can’t mention the Queen, now, can we . .  . ?)
• changing our system of weights and measures (from British to – drum roll, please! – French)
• changing the name of the country (from the “Dominion of Canada” to plain old “Canada” because “Dominion” was thought to sound too British – it’s not; “Dominion” is a Canadian invention)
• changed the name of the national holiday (can’t have that pesky old Dominion, now, can we . . . ?)
• erased symbols of the Monarchy wherever possible (stamps, money, the names of the armed forces and Crown corporations . . . Papa Trudeau even tried to get rid of the “Royal” in “Royal Canadian Mounted Police”)
• And yes, I could go on . . .

And where does it all lead? To the Republic of Canada, sans (French chosen to make a point) all traces of our British heritage in order to fully realize Trudeau the Lesser’s Brave New World of the New Multicultural World Order. Little Justin has already gone on record as saying that “Canada has no core traditions” and so is destined to be “the world’s first post national state”.

And so, what is there to celebrate for a traditional Canadian?

Not much.

Read Full Post »

The Pendulum Swings

Remember Roger Miller’s song “England Swings?”

England swings like a pendulum do
Bobbies on bicycles, two by two
Westminster Abbey, the tower of Big Ben
The rosy-red cheeks of the little children

 

Lots of fun.

I have witnessed the rise of political correctness over the past fifty years – ruefully, I might add. We have gone from the witch hunts of McCarthyism to the witch hunts of so-called human rights tribunals.

Back in the 1950s, in the United States, you could get hauled up in front of the Senate’s Committee on Un-American Activities,  and lose your reputation and your livelihood for being a “communist” (the definition was pretty loose). Dark days, indeed, with those in power racing to outdo each other in trying ferret out communists, but it could’t last; the pendulum had to swing back sooner or later, and it surely did by the 1960s – with a vengeance, but it started before then: there was a moment when its progress slowed and came to a quivering halt before it started to trace its return journey.

When was it? When McCarthy failed to uncover a single communist in the State Department, which he had asserted was a veritable nest of communists.

We have seen the same abuse of personal freedom happen in the rise of political correctness, from equality (which  was only fair) to equity (which was anything but), from equal opportunity (which no-one can argue against) to so-called “equity” of outcome, necessitating the reverse discrimination of affirmative action – quotas, in other words, that discriminated against able-bodied, heterosexual, white men.

Concurrently, came the rise of globalization with ever-increasing immigration, official multiculturalism, and the weakening of national borders through lax enforcement, international treaties and inequitable trade deals.

Oh, yes, the pendulum swung mightily.

In the name of inclusiveness, Western civilization came under direct attack. How often, when I was a teacher, did I hear the cry that our curriculum was too “Eurocentric”? But we are a Western nation, and the contributions of Europe are a key part of our heritage.

Oops! Wrong heritage!

For years now, I have waited to see the pendulum slow and stop and begin its return trip to the centre.

And now I have seen it.

And its name is “Brexit”.

The majority in Great Britain went against its political elite, those who are the side of globalization and political correctness, to reassert their national sovereignty against the EU bureaucracy that was bleeding it away. This is not just my theory. News commentary and editorialists are consistently painting it that way.

The majority were so alarmed by immigrants who wanted to change the British way of life (not to mention migrants who included jihadis) and madness of paying for other countries who leeched from them (think Greece) or dictated to them (think Germany). They wanted a return to a sensible English way of life, to preserve their traditions, and to be safe.

Resoundingly so. In England, they won everywhere but London, which is rife with immigrants and those who depend on international business interests.

Brexit constituted the stop of the pendulum’s swing.

The beginning of its return journey will surely be heralded by Donald Trump’s election in November. And then? People who have been silenced by being called names like “racist”, “bigot”, and so on, will speak up, more and more. Politicians (like Trump) will appear who will give them someone to vote for – even here in politically correct Canada. Rob Ford was an early taste of that.

It’s inevitable and unstoppable because that’s how history works.

If I were Justin Trudeau, I would be getting nervous.

But he’s too arrogant and probably not smart enough to figure that out for himself.

So I woke up feeling good this morning. Freedom is coming, and I await it eagerly. It will take awhile, but . . .

. . . it’s coming.

Read Full Post »

Recycling at its Finest

Some time ago, a good friend of mine lost her mother. Eventually, she had to decide what to do with her mother’s belongings. Some things she kept, some were donated, others garage-sales . . . there was a whole house full of belongs. After the garage sale, my friend wondered what to do with the items that had not sold – she had not even gotten everything into the driveway let alone sold it. I told her just to leave it at the curb despite city restrictions about how much could go out there and when. Sure enough, it was all gone the next day.

Recently, I decided that I had too much clutter. It was getting hard to clean, and there was a certain messiness, a certain congestion that made me feel personally congested. But we get attached to our stuff. Some of mine was from my parents, and much of it had pleasant memories attached. It was hard to get rid of certain things even though I knew that it no longer served me. I found myself making up rationales for keeping certain things. In the end, I did get rid of a lot of it, and sitting in the living room now as I write this, looking at all the space, I feel freer and definitely better – it was a good call.

Somehow, I had acquired four television sets, old cathode ray tube beasts, so three of them had to go, as did a large, heavy television cabinet. I saw someone in a pickup truck take two of the television sets within minutes of putting them at the curb. I actually had to grab their attention as they were leaving to ask them if they wanted the third, which they did, so we brought it out to them. Imagine! I literally couldn’t get the stuff out fast enough for people to pick it up. I took my nephew out to Starbucks, and by the time we got back, the television cabinet was gone.

And I live on a culdesac!

It doesn’t seem to matter what you put out; someone will take it away for you, and within minutes!

I’ll bet we don’t even need a government run recycling program!

Read Full Post »

An Honest Conversation About Race

Barack Obama called for an open conversation about race. It never happened. It never will. It is utterly impossible because Obama and all the other people who say they want to heal the racial divide simply will not allow it. He asked for honesty, but those on one side of that divide are eerily silent because they know what would happen if they opened their mouths: they would be called racists . . . for starters.

In the United States, race is largely a blank and white matter; in Canada, it’s a little more complicated, but in both cases, the accepted “wisdom” goes something like this: white people oppress non-whites. Flowing from that premise comes a host of corollaries, and none of them are particularly appealing to white people.

And yes, just in case the picture did not make it clear, I am a white person.

Let’s have a look at the situation of supposedly-oppressed non-whites. In the United States, slavery ended over 150 years ago. (In the British Empire, it’s closer to 200, but who’s counting?) there is no living person who was a slave, and the number of living people who ever met anyone who was a slave is infinitesimal. Extensive civil rights legislation was enacted in the United States fifty years ago. Affirmative action, which actually discriminates against white people, has been the law of the land on both sides of the 49th parallel for decades.

And any white person who feels that this is unfair and has the temerity to say so publicly is quickly dismissed as a racist. That means, in practical terms, that most people who, justifiably, feel that way are forced into a resentful silence.

How, exactly, is healing supposed to occur in such an atmosphere.

This is a situation that is created by anti-racist activists of all colors and those whom they have brainwashed into accepting it.

All of this begs the obvious question: what, exactly, is a racist?

Is a racist someone who dislikes affirmative action? No. A person who keeps mostly to his own racial group? No. Someone who thinks immigration is too high, multiculturalism is a failed policy, or feels uncomfortable with the massive changes in Western society? No, no and no.

A racist is someone who thinks that his race is superior to other racist, which he or she feels are inferior.

Anti-racist activists have expanded that definition to the limits of absurdity.

Getting back to that honest conversation about race that Barack Obama called for, here is my contribution:

First, a disclaimer: I do not feel that any race is superior or inferior to any other. I’ve done some reading and some thinking, and my conclusion is that such a racist view is untenable, illogical, and despicable.

I grew up in a Canada that was almost entirely white and, in English Canada, largely British. These days, many is the time that I have looked around the bus and seen that I have the only white face. Other times, when I do see other white people, they are speaking a language other than English.

What happened?

Immigration policies were adopted where English-speaking white people were discriminated against by means of strictly enforced quotas.

And that’s just the start.

Along with the discriminatory policy of massive non-white immigration, the accompanying policy of official multiculturalism is destroying Canada’s heritage, Canada’s culture – my culture.

That’s honesty.

What say you, Barack?

Read Full Post »

Pity the Kids

When I was a kid, back in the 1950s, I did a lot of things on my own. I played with my friends up and down the street, having only to be home by dinner or by dark. We road our bicycles all over the neighbourhood. We ran around in “the woods” nearby. I walked to school by myself from kindergarten on.

And I was safe. It was what every child did, and they were all safe, at least in suburban Toronto. Not only did nothing happen to me, nothing happened to any of my friends or anyone in my school – ever.

I’m not saying that bad things never happened to unescorted children, but it was very, very rare.

How about now? Well, in the first place, if a parent gave his child that kind of freedom today, he would get arrested for child neglect, and have his child taken away from him by the state – guaranteed.

And to be honest, I would never give my child that kind of freedom nowadays, because I think he or she could be in real danger.

Why the change? Why is it so much more dangerous to be a child these days than it once was?

Hint: it’s not pollution or climate change.

It’s people’s behaviour.

Society has changed, and if it puts children at greater risk, how can these possibly be a good changes?

Society, back in the 1950s, ran a tighter ship. More was expected of people. They were taught more responsibility. Rules were meaningfully enforced. Morality was stressed.

And it was no accident that children were safer.

Today?

– sexually, almost anything goes

– moral relativism is king

– criminal sentencing has become so watered down as to become a virtual oxymoron

– common societal standards and practices have been replaced by the chaos of multiculturalism

Metaphorically, you can almost get away with murder.

Is it any wonder we have to put our children in a buble?

Read Full Post »

Why I do not Celebrate Canada Day

I was born in Canada, and lived my whole life there, so you would think that I would be waving my flag on July 1st, but I don’t, and I never will for the simple reason that this country is no longer Canada, at least not the Canada I know.

For one thing, they changed the name of the country. The Father’s of Confederation were afraid to antagonise our neighbour to the south, so they did not use the name they really wanted–the Kingdom of Canada–and settled for the Dominion of Canada, a uniquely Canadian innovation: no other country had ever been called a Dominion before. For anyone too young to remember, that’s where Dominion Stores took their name, and that’s why our national holiday (up to 1982) was “Dominion Day”–the day we became a Dominion Day.

So why did we change it? “We” didn’t. Pierre Trudeau, who hated all things British, was determined to get rid of every vestige of our British heritage. To be fair, it started earlier, under his predecessor, Lester Pearson, but Trudeau took it, as they say, “to a whole new level”.

Pearson got rid of our true, historical flag, the Red Ensign, which featured the Union Jack in the upper left quadrant, as well as three Canadian maple leaves and a few other symbols, a move that was opposed by the majority in English Canada.

Trudeau patriated the Constitution, making it more French and less British with his politically correct Charter of (so-called) Rights and Freedoms which was the basis for things like affirmative action and bilingualism.

He changed our system of weights and measure from the British imperial system to the French metric, which none of our major trading partners used.

He did everything he could to denigrate the role of the Monarchy, trashing the name “Royal” from every Canadian institution he could–only the RCMP successfully resisted. He further removed the Queen’s likeness from most of our paper money and virtually all of our stamps. He even slid down the bannister at Buckingham Palace to show his contempt for our Queen.

He made the country officially bilingual and gave preference in hiring to unilingual French. He made the country officially multicultural . . . goodbye “English” Canada. And he strictly limited the number of British immigrants.

Finally, he changed the name of our national holiday because he thought it was too British, even though it was a strictly Canadian invention.

And how did he do that? He rammed it through Parliament late one Friday afternoon with only thirteen Members of Parliament present–that’s less than a quorum. That means he snuck it through. It was illegal!

Trudeau was a traitor.

So that’s why I do not, and never will, celebrate Canada Day, symbolising, for me, as it does, the death of the country I love.

Why the hell should I?

Read Full Post »

Why I Am Thankful for Islam – ( and It’s not What You Might Think)

I am not a person to condemn something blindly nor am I given to unreasoning prejudice – I think about issues before I make decisions about them.

Regarding Islam, I have done a lot of reading and spent a lot of time in thought. I read the Koran cover to cover and found it absolutely appalling. First of all, there is no meaningful order to it; neither chronological nor thematic, merely from longest book or surah to shortest. Secondly, it is filled with violence and intolerance. It seems that every few pages there are vivid descriptions of the eternal horrors to be inflicted on unbelievers, like molten metal being poured down their throats. It doesn’t even seem like a religion in its own right, more like a heretical sect of Judaism which, admittedly, has some pretty gruesome passages in its own holy book, but nothing to rival the Koran.

Current events and recent history are filled with barbaric acts perpetrated by Muslim extremists, but the behavior of so-called “moderate Islam” – a textbook oxymoron – is pretty appalling in its own right. A couple of examples:

The Muslim majority at Don Valley Middle School in Toronto somehow managed to talk the Toronto Board of Education into turning the cafeteria into a mosque every Friday afternoon. That’s bad enough, but the seating arrangement is sickening. Boys sit at the front and girls sit behind them – so the Board apparently accepts blatant sexism in the schools as long as a big enough group wants to do it (but that kind of hypocrisy is another subject). Even worse, girls who are menstruating are forced to sit at the very back because they are “unclean”. I can’t think of many better ways to publicly humiliate young girls, some of whom would be getting their first period.

Notice, too, that it’s women who are blamed for sexual impurity of all kinds when, logically, by their own actions, Muslims display their hypocrisy by not placing the blame where they themselves show us that they believe it lies – men.

Women look at men and, as nature intended, lust after them (to put it Biblically). Women also lust after men, but that’s a bit more complex. The Western solution is to tell men to behave themselves. The Islamic solution is to make its women cover up in anything from a head scarf to a portable tent that covers everything – including their eyes. The message is clear: women are temptresses are should hide themselves. I vividly remember teaching a class in the hot, humid weather that included a Muslim brother and sister: he was comfortably sitting at his desk in shorts and a short-sleeved shirt while she was sweating under a heavy, black garment that covered her almost completely, head to foot, with only her hands and eyes showing. Back home, she might have been stoned for dressing as her brother did. That’s an extreme example, but the hijab, which I saw almost universally worn by female students, is the same principle at work.

To listen to the left wing, you would think that this kind of intolerant behavior comes from a tiny minority of Muslims, but it is widespread, and that this kind of enforced female modesty is just a cultural practice that is no different than the Western fondness for, say, blue jeans, but it is uncomfortable and largely unwanted by those who are under pressure to endure it.

I have heard average students defending Sharia law, telling me that the only reasonable way to treat a thief is to cut off his hand – it’s a mainstream view.

I could go on . . .

But let’s stop there, and I will tell you why I am thankful for Islam: it tells me that Official Multiculturalism, as set out in the Canadian Constitution and the so-called Charter of Rights and Freedoms is wrong-headed and needs to be repealed­–now.

Cultural relativism looks pretty harmless when the various cultures are similar, clustering around a common set of values, whatever their individual expression. But what about when cultures are poles apart, like Western culture and Islam? They do not complement each other, as various European cultures might be seen to do; they oppose each other, and that promotes a slew of difficulties.

We are a tolerant, Western nation; tolerance, itself, springs out of Western values. That’s why you will never see anything remotely like multiculturalism in any Islamic nation. In their home countries, they do not tolerate us, yet here, we tolerate them, including their rampant sexism, of which so-called “honor killings” are but an extreme instance of a more widespread pattern of Islamic intolerance.

Not all cultures are created equal. We in the West made that decision centuries ago. It flowed out of ancient Greece and Rome, expressed itself in Magna Carta, philosophy, art and social customs.

We repeal Official Multiculturalism to in order to reflect and honor that tradition and protect the rights and freedoms, not just of Muslim women, but us all.

Read Full Post »

Losing Our Rights to Human Rights Commissions

One of the things that we pride ourselves on in the West is freedom, particularly freedom of speech, but that freedom is, increasingly, an illusion. We simply do not have freedom of speech; similarly, we do not have freedom of religion.

Do you doubt me? Listen to this:

In 2002, during a period of debate leading up to the legal recognition of gay marriage, Fr. Alphonse de Valk, a Catholic pastor, wrote a letter to the editor of an Alberta paper in which he denounced what one might call “the homosexual agenda”, especially as how it sought to teach children that homosexuality was simply a perfectly acceptable alternative to homosexuality – which is what our current lesbian premier in Ontario seeks to do through her new sexual education guidelines. Right or wrong, it was his opinion based on his religion which is based, of course, on the Bible.

Freedom of speech and freedom of religion, yes? Who could stop him from speaking his mind?

The Alberta Human Rights Commission, a quasi-judicial body – there’s one like it in every province – that is increasingly stripping Canadians of their freedoms – when they offend someone – that’s who.

For exercising his constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech and religion, he was ordered by that so-called human right commission to pay $5000, publicly apologize, and refrain from making “disparaging” comments about homosexuality – even from the pulpit of his Catholic Church, which believes, as an article of faith, that homosexuality is “disordered”. In other words, he was forbidden to preach his own religion in his own church.

Thus, in this one decision, we see that, in Canada, we do not have freedom of speech or freedom of religion.

And how does the HRC justify stripping us of those rights? So-called “hate” laws. Preaching “hatred” is a crime, but what is “hatred”?

Is it “hatred” to find fault with what a person or group is doing? I don’t see how. It may anger and offend them, but there is no constitutional right not to be offended.

Advocating harm to a person or group IS hatred, but Father de Valk was not advocating that.

It’s time to take back our freedoms, beginning with the abolition of human rights commissions and the laws that set them up, including these so-called “hate” laws.

Overt criticism of homosexuals or Islam or ethnic/cultural groups may be uncomfortable, but it is also perfectly legitimate and even necessary for the kind of free exchange of ideas that helps us to move forward.

Isn’t that what the Enlightenment was all about?

Read Full Post »

For Me, There Was No Canada Day

First of all, July 1^st, to me, is not Canada Day; it is Dominion Day, the anniversary of the day on which Canada became a Dominion – a country.

Secondly, that country is gone.

What do the citizens of a country do on the anniversary of their country’s founding? They celebrate its values, its heritage, the things that they have been told from childhood constitute their country’s identity, things that they hope will live on after they are gone.

I can not do that for the simple reason that Lester Pearson and Pierre Elliot Trudeau changed all that. Between them, they rewrote Canada’s “identity” into something that I do not recognize. They changed everything that I thought of as Canadian.

They changed the name of the country itself from “The Dominion of Canada” to simply “Canada”.

They changed the name of our national holiday from “Dominion Day” to “Canada Day”.

They degraded the Monarchy, pretending that the Governor General, usually a failed politician, was head of state rather than the Queen, as stated in the constitution.

They saddled us with a Charter of so-called Rights and Freedoms that is actually the charter of political correctness, dealing a severe blow to freedom of speech (making it subservient to some people’s “right” not to be offended) and other real rights and freedoms that were part of our British Heritage.

They changed our system of law, making our system based on British Common Law subservient to the Charter and closer to the French system.

They changed our system of weights and measures from the British Imperial system to the French metric system, even though our largest trading partner still uses feet and pounds.

Our language policy was changed so that French was forced on every province except Quebec which all but outlawed English.

Our cultural policy was changed from favouring Canada’s heritage – any sane country takes that approach – to the relativism of official multiculturalism in a way that degraded our own heritage, especially its British component, to which it has become positively hostile (In Ontario, for instance, the teaching of British History was made illegal).

The courts were supplemented by star chamber like Human Rights Commissions in which the normal protections of law do not apply to the accused.

I could go on, but I don’t have the heart.

Sorry, but I cannot buy into this new “Canada”. I cannot pretend that the traditions I was taught have been replaced by these new “traditions”. And I would be insane to even try because I have learned something about “traditions” in the process: they can be changed at the whim of the people whom Shakespeare called “vile politicians”. And if I somehow did manage that act of insanity, who is to say that they, too, would not be changed somewhere down the road.

I no longer think of myself as Canadian because the traditions I was brought up with have changed into something unrecognizable to me, as if I had moved to a foreign country.

Happy Dominion Day, all.

 

Read Full Post »

A Poetic Complaint (an experimental post)

Race! Religion! Cripples! Oops!

Physically challenged?
Differently enabled?
“Special”?
Special, my ass!
(I think this irks them, too.)
Euphemising their distress
Euthanizes, with a “yes”,
Their deepest truths,
For words that camouflage their challenges,
All nicey-nice, make them invisible:
Trivialize their travails,
You trivialize their triumphs, too.

This is the stanza
Where my thoughts on race
Should one and all be written.
But take my word
Should they be heard
By “them” I would be bitten.
Call any race the worst at anything,
You’re plainly racist scum.
But call that race the best, you call all others worse,
You racist scum . . .
So saying something nice is saying something mean, it seems.
Political correctoids argue thus.

Now that’s just dumb.

And everybody knows that Scientology sucks . . .

These and all like subjects must stay closed
So those who won’t “offend” won’t take offence.

By that, I am offended!

Fuck!

How can their minds be so intolerant
Who pride themselves on being tolerant?

Read Full Post »