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Written by Citizen staff
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Monday, 29 June 2009 |
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Wednesday is Canada Day and it's every Canadian's opportunity to celebrate what's great about this country of ours.
Sure, we like to complain about our governments and institutions and they way things are run, but most of us will agree there isn't a country we would rather call home.
If our biggest domestic complaints are about the state of our roads, a politician's private thoughts gone public, or the weather outside, we should count ourselves lucky. There are about 160 countries that would trade for our troubles in a heartbeat.
Canada represents the best of all worlds. We enjoy freedoms and luxuries that are only hopeful dreams in many countries.
Our country is a true mosaic of colours and cultures. When our great neighbours to the south celebrate their nation's birthday later this week, they will commemorate the melting pot that is the United States, where there is much less of a distinction between their people's countries of origin.
Canada's birthday, on the other hand, celebrates the traditions, cultures and, oh yes, the food of our citizens' places of ancestry. That fact will be on full display Wednesday at Prince George's biggest annual party at Fort George Park.
So while most of us, to our embarrassment, know amazingly little of our own history (see story on today's front page), and we might not flash patriotic fervour as rabidly as Americans, Canadians on the whole wear their maple leaf on their heart.
Because they know that, all things considered, they live in the best country in the world.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 30 June 2009 )
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I believe the Chicano districts of Los Angeles represent the largest Mexican city outside Mexico itself. You can find bilingual (Spanish and English) directions on pay phones as far north as Ellensburg, Washington.
The movement to provide Spanish-language instruction to immigrants from Latin American countries, rather than instruction in standard English, is quite strong. Arthur Schlesinger, the historian and Kennedy-era Liberal, wrote a book in the early 1990s entitled The Dis-Uniting of America, in which he expressed concerns that this movement and other efforts in the education system to teach other languages or dialects instead of standard English would harm American national unity. However, multicultural Left-Liberals immediately denounced him as a reactionary, despite his service to the Progressive Kennedy government of 1961-63. Schlesinger died a couple of years ago, and I guess now his views would be dismissed as those of a dated Cold War Liberal. Despite some federal court decisions and some referenda in some states during the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations, multiculturalism and affirmative-action hiring policies are in effect in major universities, and multiculturalism is the standard mainstream view among American academics now.
The melting pot idea was dominant from the end of the U.S. Civil War in 1865 until about 1960. Now I think U.S. policy in most regions is little different from Canada's in terms of multiculturalism.