Make America (Canada) great AGAIN?

Make America (Canada) great AGAIN?

My favourite outing in the summer is Waterton Park. I get to be surrounded by beauty and meet people from all over the world. Last Sunday I observed two young men eating ice-cream wearing red hats one saying Make America Great Again and the other Make Canada Great Again. Dare I ask which America or Canada they want back? I don’t know. Possibly they don’t know when it was great but they know that it was better before their time without knowing why. We are both enjoying a main street lined by little shops and places to eat. 

Canada was celebrating its one hundred birthday when I arrived. I could see it through the airplane window when I felt the landing gear touch ground, lift, touch again, and I was here in North America. I never left it for a moment since. It was great. Not so much for me at the time, but the people here had a good life. I still had to climb to get it but I knew I could do it.

Now I sit across from my seventeen-year-old grandson and it upset him that he is too young to vote. The news is showing hundreds of thousands of young people striking and demanding political action aimed at climate change. He feels that the adults who can, are not addressing his concerns, yet he will have to deal with the consequences of their votes. I was his age when I arrived in the “Canada” that they wish to go back to. I remember how great it was.

Let’s go back a bit. I was a young guy, and I used to do all the shopping for the family. I took the cloth bags that mom made and walked to a nearby grocery store. The owner was a proud business owner. From there I went to another little business, a vegetable store and once a week to the butcher shop. Now and then I would go on my bike with friends to a movie in a local theatre. I had a friend who’s dad was the shoemaker in town and there were lots of other little businesses, too many to mention. One can still see the empty stores in our towns. Canada and America were great.

At seventeen I had many jobs to choose from. There were no teen gangs in the streets, all the kids had part-time jobs mostly in the service industries. Most mothers didn’t work and nobody complained about their place in society. All our friends had jobs, a lot in transportation and manufacturing, and we considered teachers or nurses a higher class because of their education. Doctors were even higher yet, but they didn’t hesitate to make house calls.

It was not even that long ago when there were many people employed as a postman, milkman, postmaster, and even a waiter was well paid. We didn’t yet believe that we were saving money and becoming more efficient by firing people, closing family businesses and training the public to live without services. If the government shored up a corporation, it was expected that they will pay back their debt to society and not take the money elsewhere.  

Sadly, at about the same time that I arrived in North America, the picture began to change. It took a long time and was done in small increments so we didn’t notice. Instead of reusable cloth bags that mother sowed, we have one use plastic bags that are choking the oceans. There are no stores in neighbourhoods and we must use vehicles to shop and shopping we do. We shop online, in other cities or even the orient. There are no jobs so we make statistics look as if there are, and we dare not criticize the government since we are spied on every move we make. Instead of questioning actions that harm us or reduce our potential of well being, giant media corporations shy away from reporting anything which will make us question our way of life.

I happen to think that we must build upon our strengths instead of trying to protect what we have accumulated. To me saving money is important but only if I save it from being wasted or taken away by someone who is not willing to give anything in return. If I pay for the work of my neighbour, I don’t feel bad. He or she will return it for what I do if they are honest. What I hate is when someone rips me off. That includes politicians.

I want to see our children well educated able to compete with children from other countries, regardless of parents' income, so I don’t support cuts to education. I want our aging parents and those of us who are sick and injured well cared for so I don’t support cuts to health care. We only spend half of what our neighbours to the south do per person. I would like to support small family businesses instead of those owned by outsiders. That is why I write for a small locally owned newspaper, not for a large media chain.

When I hear that we must tighten our belts to attract investments I get confused. There are no investors who give us money because they care about us. They invest to make money promising jobs. We could have all the jobs we need, as we used to, if we invest in ourselves. If we run out of jobs, people would not come here as they do but it wouldn’t happen. All we have to do is make it popular to provide jobs instead of to eliminate them.

First I wish to be sure that there will be a Canada for my grandchildren. Secondly, I like to make Canada great again, by sharing and cooperating not by depending upon outsiders to save us. All we need is to know that it’s possible and do it.

In the words of a very famous US Congresswoman: We can be whatever we have the courage to see.

Here is a link to my blog: https://thesimpleravenspost.blogspot.ca/  Feel free to check other articles and comment.