I am Canadian 2024
Canada Day 2024. Here we are again with an opportunity to pontificate at what it means to have endured another year as a Canadian. And this year the term endure is particularly apt as we have much change in the status of our country. I am and always will be a Canadian, proud of what my country has done, from being a valued asset in the fight against Nazi totalitarianism to the surprise of the victory in the 1972 Canada-Russia hockey series.
Today though, we rest on those laurels. Having come through a global pandemic far worse for the wear we seem to have lost our way as a country. Our identity has been constantly chipped away at since the first Trudeau PMship when the idea of multiculturalism was introduce. No longer was it important to assimilate a new immigrate into the Canadian identity, please keep your old culture alive here. It seems to have worked so well for you where you came from. So well in fact you are running from it to ours.
Since I was a boy I have never understood this purpose of this. Other than as a wedge to eventually break apart our country. Today we have urban area that resemble the Canada of the 70’s very little.
Driving through Scarborough, as I did a few weeks ago, or the east side of Brampton through Malton makes you feel as if you have left our country and travelled to some third world dystopian movie set. Between the bicycle and transit lanes taking up vast percentages of roadways to a dearth of English signage, the Scarborough of my youth was far away in reality.
I am in downtown Toronto quite often as my cardiology team is there. I am never not surprised at the time it takes to drive the 154Kms from my home to the hospital parking lot. I try and budget 3 hours for the journey in. And this sometimes is not enough. The return is generally 30 minutes less than the drive in for some reason, that still makes for 2 and 1/2 hours on average. I remember in the late 80’s driving to St. Catherines on the QEW. 2 lanes each way and if there was an accident you were screwed. But during the week these were few and far between and the drive from St. Kitts to my home in Markham generally was less than 90 minutes.
Then the drive was mostly through farm country, today a vast sea of tract homes and condo towers line the roadway and back from it for several miles. I should say a vast track of unaffordable homes and condos that my 29 year old niece has determined that she will never be able to afford. Even if she were to find a man to share life with. So better to get a puppy.
My 25 year old daughter lives with us and has no expectation of moving into her own place anytime soon. Rental or purchase. It is just not affordable for her. At 25 I was on title for a very large property in Thornhill Ontario. It was just what you did, move out buy a home. It was not just a dream, it was a possibility. Today we are told that the massive influx of immigrants to our country have nothing to do with the spiralling cost of shelter. To me that is simply another example of media gaslightness.
Walk through downtown Toronto or Downtown St. Catherines or Ottawa and what you see and smell are disturbing. Pot, piss and an overwhelming human diaspora tenting throughout the city. I was in Vancouver for the first time last year and drove East Hastings, I was stunned and somewhat afraid, drug addled homelessness and crime was all I could see.
This in what is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Bounded as it is with mountains and the sea, most everywhere you look is a stunning vista. But often that vista is stained with the results of the decay of civilization.
How could it be called anything else. This country has so much. Stunning natural beauty, an endless supply of resources under our feet, an educated population to understand who to turn those resources into finished goods and a large enough workforce to accomplish this. We could be a totally self sufficient country, but we have shipped our intellectuals to the US where they can earn commiserate to their knowledge. Manufacturing has long left our shores for critical supplies such as vaccines and ammunition. We encourage one of our greatest resources to stay in the ground, and only recently if it is liberated and made available for sale have we a mean of getting
this to market in a reasonable way.
Our military is bereft of bullets and manpower. Our much vaunted social medicine is collapsing with doctors and nurses heading to the greener financial pastures of other countries or other careers. Ontario just 20 years ago made more cars than any other sub-sovereign state. Today the government throws $40 billion at the industry to make batteries for a vehicle people do not want.
Criminals are treated more leniently than law abiding citizens. New laws are drawn to limit dissent of the government although they disguise these as anti-hate laws. We have a constitution that provides less liberty than we had prior to its acceptance and a judiciary so out of touch with real Canadian values I can not begin to list the examples.
Canada Day 2024 leaves us at least a year from being able to make changes to this national nightmare. Maybe someone at the top could have the fortitude to look beyond themselves and do the right thing and bring about an election sooner than that. Sadly I do not think it will happen. So, we have another year of decay to look forward to. What willthis day one year from now hold? I wish I could say something positive.