You're not going to like this but I'm going to tell you another majority during that time. And the "N word" will be bandied about all willy-nilly. So if you can't endure that without being offended, skip ahead a paragraph. I need to do it for the purposes of accuracy and honesty. Until the early 70's, according to Stats Canada, 97% or more of Canadians were "European Canadians." This is the euphemism Statscan uses for white because it's just a helluva lot safer nowadays NOT to use that word in Canada when referring to people. But when those censuses were taken, I'm sure the box that was checked said "white." And I'm sure nobody considered that racist. I was alive in the early 70's. I said lots of racist things back then too. I didn't even know they were racist! I called Brazil nuts "nigger toes," I ate black babies candy, I picked sports teams by saying, "Eenie meenie miney moe catch a nigger by the toe," I even went out for Halloween as Aunt Jemima in blackface. In my peer group, when there was a fight (between ANY two people, and because there were only two non-white people in my neighbourhood, it was going to be between two white kids) a common chant could be heard: "Fight, fight, a nigger and a white." When somebody I knew saw me, they might greet me with, "What do you figure?" The clever answer was, "I figure nigger's lips are bigger." Then there was a song I heard my Dad sing once or twice: "Daniel Boone was a man - was a big man. But the bear was-a-bigger so he ran like a nigger up a tree." I'm sure if I thought really hard, I could come up with a dozen more normalized horrors as bad or worse than these. But when I was in elementary school I also had a black girlfriend named Anita. She was from Jamaica. Her and her brother Marlin were the only black people in my neighbourhood. (well, their parents too, but I mean the kids) Our next-door neighbours, the Bardy's, were native Canadian, which I think were the majority of the 3% non-white residents of Canada at the time. I couldn't believe my luck to have black kids living so close by! Close enough that I could walk to school with Anita. Every day. I think I was more fascinated by her difference than put off by it. She was very shy and quiet but I encouraged her to talk because I loved her cool, Jamaican accent. We sat together and held hands underneath our desks. One day I told her she was as sweet as an apple and she really dug that. So was I a racist kid or not?
A total of 619,636 men and women served in the Canadian forces in the First World War, and of these 59,544 were killed and another 154,361 were wounded. Of a population of approximately 11.5 million, 1.1 million Canadians served in the armed forces during the Second World War. In all, more than 45,000 died, and another 55,000 were wounded. Given the statistic of 97% European Canadians above, I need not mention, but I will, that almost all of these people who were wounded or who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country were white. Since the 70's the white portion of the Canadian population has dropped to around 70%. That is a very rapid decrease in a country that was almost completely white since confederation over 100 years earlier. This change in Canada was not handled well socially. It was dealt with in a most Canadian of ways: it was ignored, pushed down, hidden, covered up and replaced by statements of great multiculturalism that required the immediate support and action of the entire country. We were never a multicultural country until we were told we were, (not to say ordered to be). This was not universally embraced by Canadians.
In her New York Times article, Dr. Cheryl Thompson, an assistant prof at Ryerson University, says, "In the month since the photos of Mr. Trudeau surfaced, I’ve had white Canadians share with me that they, too, performed blackface as a child, or that blackface was ubiquitous in their community. If my research has encouraged some white Canadians to stop fearing their own racist pasts, more of our public leaders could surely do the same. What we need is courage, not a polite, “Sorry about that, eh.”" Read the article and click on all the links in it you can. It's an enlightening account of Canada's past and how my country has downplayed and hidden its history of white dominance. It always pisses me off when Canada is hyperbolically characterized as a big, nice, polite, friendly country. That wasn't my experience, and I grew up there! People who insisted on being different got their asses kicked in Canada too, don't kid yourself. And the reason people were polite was because if they weren't - you guessed it - they got an ass kickin'. Drivers who drove like jerks - ass kickin'. Spelling colour, honour, or behaviour without the "u" - ass kickin'. Some of the schools I went to you could get your ass kicked for wearing uncool shoes for crying out loud.
And in the years when I was growing up in Canada, not wearing a poppy around Remembrance Day was behaviour that would be questioned. Wrong answers to those questions could be assumed to result in an ass kickin'. I'm not going to say that this was wrong or right. I'm not going to say that the soldiers who died in wars fighting for our Canadian way of life would be happy or unhappy with the rapid change in our cultural make-up. I'm not going to presume to say whether or not multiculturalism legitimately IS our Canadian way of life, or whether it's just one that has been fairly recently manufactured. What I am going to say is that this momentous change in our country was foisted upon us (or is it "foistered" lol) completely without instructions. We were expected to adapt socially on our own. I have mixed feelings about how Canada adapted to the biggest change in my country since I was born. I have blogged on it frequently. I believe it has forced many Canadians to quickly develop multicultural thinking and tolerance, even respect for other cultures and people. I also believe Canada overreacted and became the most reverse-racist country in the world in many ways showing unfair favouritism to new Canadians. I love the fact that we welcome refugees and poor people looking for a better life into Canada, but I don't like the fact that a lot of immigrants are the rich from other countries bringing the despicable tactics and business practices that made them rich in their countries into Canada. I believe most Canadians have dealt with it in an honourable, egalitarian manner, and this makes me proud of Canada. Mostly. But there are some who haven't done so. And we don't hear about them. We don't WANT to hear about them. I've blogged on THIS before too. Canada has become a nation of ostriches putting our heads in the sand when cracks in our culture appear. We don't want all that negativity! It's harshing our mellow! It OFFENDS us! And we have become offensively offended. This is part of Canada I am NOT proud of. Don Cherry is the latest of many examples. Nobody gets their asses kicked any more for not wearing poppies. But we can be fired for having the wrong opinion. We can be fired for having a baby. And we can be fired, like Don Cherry, for saying things in a way that is a little to politically incorrect for some.
This hypersensitivity, I believe, is one result of this monumental change in Canadian cultural diversity. The other is more alarming and it is lesser known due to its mellow-harshing nature. If you're a Canadian who thinks Don Cherry is bad, you're probably in for a rude awakening. Another cultural crisis in Canada is Don Cherry on steroids. From 80-100 white supremacist groups in Canada in 2015 to almost 300 today.
We can't deal with the results of such a large cultural change by simply pushing away the negative results of it. Celebrating well adapted Canadians and ignoring or hiding the others does NOT a multi-cultural country make! We can't just BE multicultural by calling ourselves multicultural! And it looks like we're about to learn this lesson the hard way because immigration is only going to rise. Again, I have mixed feelings. I am sympathetic to compassionate immigration, but I call bullshit on the stated reasons for a lot of Canadian immigration. "Skill shortages?" "Gaps in the labour market?" Are they just euphemisms for cheap and handy labour? Why can't we train existing Canadians to acquire those skills and fill those gaps? The corporations who run our country could so easily afford that! But they don't have to and we don't force them to.
And now we come to the bigger issue. In the NY Times article, I'm not sure what Peter Mansbridge meant when he said Canadian voters were not interested in the pictures of Trudeau in black face and would prefer a return to the "real issues," but I am one Canadian who would prefer a return to the real issues. To me the largest issue in Canada, indeed the world, is not racism, immigration or any of the minor issues causing bruised feelings and butthurt in my country. The largest issue hasn't caused anywhere NEAR enough outrage yet! I'm sure if you've read my blog you know to what I am referring. It's been called social pollution by business professor Nuria Chinchilla. It sounds like a fake name to be sure. Stanford professor Jeffrey Pfeffer explains it well. If you read one article or link from this post, that one would be a good choice. I have the health issues he described and others and I have always considered workplace stress to be at least part of the cause. For me the stress of changing jobs frequently due to one-year contracts, working in foreign countries, and being apart from my family, friends and culture that the Canadian soldiers fought and died for, is part of that stress. Add to this the highest tax burden in the world (read my blogpost if you have an issue with that statement) and the pressure to have kids, raise kids, AND work long hours at jobs we usually hate, put on every male and female in our country, and you have yourself the largest problem in Canada. But why don't we talk about this? Why is it pushed down and hidden away? It's like the white supremacy groups. It harshes our Canadian mellow. I've been blocked by many a Facebook friend for speaking honestly about it. A lot of my family probably consider me a raving lunatic and a black wind of ill favour bringing words of unwanted darkness into their artificially lit lives. But I gotta be me!
Canadians KNOW they're not supposed to be honest like me and talk about these downer topics. They KNOW they're not supposed to complain about their jobs and their long hours because it's not the Canadian way or some dumb axiom they've been prescribed by the billionaire class of Canada and have taken religiously like the Soma it is. They know they're supposed to pay their high rent, pay their high taxes, earn their low pay, and vote every four years for the people who made it that way. Why? Because the truth has been hidden and blocked. Things don't need to be this way. Canada has SO much wealth! We could be the envy of all countries if we didn't have such drastic income inequality. If we didn't work such long hours and so much overtime, our companies would be more efficient and we'd get more time off. It's been proved again and again all over the world. Even in Japan where they are infamous for working themselves to death. Canada doesn't need to be thrown up there on lists of happiest, freest and most multicultural countries in the world to make us APPEAR to be so, we could actually BE that country if we just solve this, our biggest problem. And not just the vast majority of Canadians - the middle and lower classes, but the rich would be happier too! Because they'd make even MORE money! It's a super easy problem to solve! But our rich and our government don't have the collective balls to enrich the 99%, spread out that wealth, reduce the workweek and raise productivity, job satisfaction and profit and solve our major problem.
So like I usually do at this time of year, I write another blog post about the largest problem in Canada. A problem that has forced me to move away from home. A problem that has caused racism, hypersensitivity, and a lot of other minor problems we squabble about in Canada. Maybe someday the people of Canada will realize this, force the government and big business to do something about it, work less and make those big businesses even richer, be happier people again and make our country into the country our war heroes died to create. Then I'll move back home and you can be absolutely sure I'll buy and wear a poppy!
Some, most or ALL of this most certainly is what contributed to the wrath of Grapes and caused him to be over-passionate about his country and those who died for it. I forgive him.
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