Reaping the fruits of our complacency

A very good friend of mine sent me an email forward today, knowing (as she knows me so well) that I would have an opinion on it. And did I ever. I've pasted the email here and have responded to it below...

WE ARE PROUD CANADIANS
Bruce Allen is on the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Committee and new Canadians (specifically Hindi's/Indian's) want him fired for his recent comments outlined below:

[Note: these comments included the phrase "If you choose to come to a place like Canada, then shut up and fit in."]

I am sorry, but after hearing they want to sing the National Anthem in Hindi at the 2010 Olympics - enough is enough. Nowhere or at no other time in our Nation's history, did they sing it in Italian, Japanese, Polish, Irish (Celtic), German, Portuguese, Greek, or any other language because of immigration. It was written in English, adapted into French, and should be sung word for word the way it was written.

The news broadcasts even gave the Hindi version translation - which was not even close to our National Anthem. I am not the least bit sorry if this offends ANYONE, this is MY COUNTRY; My Grand Dad served in the military, other family members also served, as well as my wife & I served a combined total of 56 years between us. We made many sacrifices for our country and do not feel we should feel obligated to allow invited people we've welcomed with open arms to influence & change our society to better resemble the one they chose to leave to come here!!! - IF YOU AGREE ABOUT THIS GREAT COUNTRY, SPEAK UP BEFORE ITS TOO LATE

I am not against immigration. In fact I believe we need more, my ancestors were immigrants -- just come through like everyone else. Get a sponsor; a place to lay your head; have a job; pay your taxes, live by the Rules AND LEARN THE LANGUAGE as all other immigrants have in the past -- and LONG LIVE CANADA!'

It's time we all get behind Bruce Allen, and scrap this Political Correctness His comments were anything but racist, however, there are far too many overly sensitive 'New Canadians' that are attempting to change everything we hold dear.

ARE you PART OF THE PROBLEM ??? Think about this: If you don't want to forward this for fear of offending someone, will we still be the Country of Choice and Still be CANADA if we continue to make the changes forced on us by the people from other countries who have come to live in CANADA because it is the Country of Choice??????

Think about it!

IMMIGRANTS, NOT CANADIAN'S, MUST ADAPT.

It's Time for CANADIANS to speak up.. If you agree ? Pass this along; if you don't agree? Delete it and reap what you sow because of your complacency!

Well... first things first:

Maybe if the person who wrote these comments knew the difference between a possessive apostrophe and a contraction, I would have more respect for his/her opinions.

Seriously though, I hear and see this kind of shit all the time, especially living in Toronto, and I have no patience for it. I happen to think the Canadian anthem should stay the way it is, because it's tradition, but I don't think the mere suggestion to translate it (and that's all it was, a suggestion, not an order or a decision) should cause mass xenophobic hysteria. Incidentally, xenophobia is the fear of foreigners or strangers. People who rant against immigrants "trying to change our great country" are scared, and their fear blinds them to the realities of how immigration actually impacts this country.

We are a nation of only-children who are not reproducing our own population. Once the baby boomers grow old, retire, and begin to pass away, we will not only be left with gaping holes in our employment system, medical staff and political leadership, but with holes in our society as well. We NEED immigrants - just as early Canadian settlers needed other settlers to help them establish themselves.

More importantly, whether our population grows or shrinks, our country is not as perfect as these people would like to believe. Canada may be high up on the index of living standards in comparison to much of the world, but the fact remains that we have major, major issues here that are not being dealt with. The rise in homelessness, the lack of government attention to problems like mental illness and inaccessible education, and many industries that lack young people being trained to work - crucial industries like health care, elder care and essential trades - all of these are really big problems that are convenient to ignore as we go about our daily lives, belting 'O Canada' at opportune moments and slagging the Americans for their messed-up way of running their country.

When I hear about people keeling over and dying in emergency waiting rooms because there aren't enough doctors to tend to them... when I see taxi drivers with medical training kept out of our system because of government bias and red tape... and when I see homeless men - and women - on the street corner every morning as I approach my office building, with their feet black with frostbite, it makes me wonder who could possibly think that immigrants are "spoiling" this country.

And for anyone who would accuse me of being cynical or anti-Canadian... I love my country fiercely and I vote every chance I get - thus I have the right to speak up. It is the unpatriotic and the politically apathetic who have no right to complain.

An Olympian in the opposite of Lego-land

Anna Rice, one of Right To Play's long-time Athlete Ambassadors, arrived in Kampala, Uganda two weeks ago to visit two of our organization's projects in refugee camps. Along with her fiance and a third professional badminton player, she'll be running badminton programs at the camps to teach Right To Play coaches how to run their own sessions with their students.

Anna is a habitual blogger and a great writer, with an eye for detail that allows us to picture her adventures. I especially like the part where she compares Ugandan scooter taxi drivers to "young Evel Knievels".

Check her out at CBCSports.ca!

Looks like I wasn't the only one ranting...

Interesting follow-up to my post from last week in today's Globe, by Judith Timson (who I respect much more than the unfortunate McLaren...)

Take the response to a recent column by my colleague Leah McLaren, in which she had the temerity to list her thirtysomething fiscal grievances right down to admitting she was peeved because now she wouldn't even be getting an inheritance. "How do you spell sense of entitlement?" one poster fumed. Another pronounced: "People need to get a grip and adapt, that includes the endlessly whining and self-absorbed and overly spoiled boomer children. Your timing in the cycle may be wrong, but there are no guarantees that life is fair, despite maybe having been told the contrary."

For the whole column, click here. To read McLaren's original article, scroll down to my post from last week and find the link.

When will we learn...

Ron Judd of the Seattle Times has posted an article on his Olympics blog entitled "Women ski jumpers just don't know their place - VANOC".

I know this title is sarcastic. It has to be. Right?

Even so, it's a bit of a shock to hear that sentiment in 2009, or to see it plastered across my Google Reader page.

For further reading on this topic, please see Gary Mason and John MacKinnon's articles.

Generation debt is in for a rough ride -- and the rest of us just have to put up with them.

The Globe's Leah McLaren makes me irate sometimes.

Today is one of those times.

The gist of her article is that people currently in their late 20s and early 30s - the children of the baby boomers, known as the "echo" generation or mini-boom - were promised this fantastic, affluent lifestyle purely based on demographics, education rates, and the sheer hubris that comes from growing up with two career parents and no poverty. And guess what - the universe went back on its promise. Wah wah.

Not only does McLaren bewail her fate as an educated, employed, 30-year-old homeowner... she scorns the boomers, now in their 50s and 60s, for similarly bewailing the loss of their affluent lifestyles. Mutual funds have tanked, six- and seven-figure home values have tanked, and retirement plans are going out the window. But apparently this situation deserves no sympathy from twenty-somethings.

In fact, McLaren finds it helpful to blame her parents' generation for the mass financial chaos that surrounds us all.

"Who's crying the blues? Why it's the baby boomers, of course! The generation in charge - the one that created and perpetuated the unsustainable financial model that led to the current collapse in the first place," she writes. "And as for their jobs - you know the high-paying, secure ones at the very top of the pay scale? Well, they're going to have to hang onto those for a while longer than they had thought. At least until they get old and sick enough to max out the health-care system and the national pension fund. It's a wonder my generation isn't demonstrating in the streets."

Well, Leah, maybe it's because not everyone in their twenties feels quite as entitled as you do to owning a home by the age of 30. Perhaps you should take a hint from several of your interview subjects, who seem "relentlessly positive about the future" - or, as you put it, "close their eyes and plug their ears and hum Mary Had a Little Lamb till it's over." I'm not advocating unrealistic optimism. We are truly in the midst of an unprecedented global situation, and it would be foolish not to acknowledge that. But to bitterly declare "We have been robbed"? Comparing people who, as McLaren herself notes, have been privileged enough to buy expensive homes and find lucrative careers by their late 20s, to "hobos"??

What about the kids who never had a hope of belonging to a tennis club or riding a pony? Are we supposed to feel more sorry for people who had it all, and then lost it, than those who never had it in the first place and likely never will?

I don't want to sound unsympathetic to those who have hit hard times. Being in my early-slash-mid-twenties myself, I am no stranger to the crushing stress and anxiety that comes with thinking about the current job market. And being in the field of media like McLaren, as well as the non-profit sector, I do know what it's like to fear for your job, your rent payments, your livelihood. But like me, Leah McLaren still has a job - as a lifestyle columnist (which some misanthropes might say is the marshmallow fluff of the journalistic world) for one of the country's most well-respected and widely read newspapers, in an era when media jobs have taken massive hits and print media has been doomed to failure, not to mention the current wider economic gloom. I don't know what her personal finances are like right now, but her job status in and of itself should be causing her to thank her lucky stars.

And how does McLaren end her essay, after spending 1000 words or so pointing fingers at Mommy and Daddy for getting upset about their depressing financial statements?

With this mindblowingly self-centred epiphany:

"Which was when it hit me: Not only was I unlikely to get through this recession unscathed, I probably wasn't going to get an inheritance either."

Thanks for nothing, McLaren.