A Canadian kid, Yumna made Canada search for its soul.

 

A Canadian kid, Yumna made Canada search for its soul.

The Canadian nation is going through what Catholics call an examination of conscience. Jewish people also do the exercise and others also set time to ask, have I done what I should, or do I need forgiveness. Show me a human that has never done something he or she is sorry for. There was one clean from sin, but they crucified him.

Two weeks ago, we were mourning the poor First Nations children who were taken from their families, stripped of identity, and “made better.” As we were talking, a new act of violence arrested the media’s attention. A Canadian family was mowed down by a truck driven by a young man. His co-worker, who knew him well, said, I can’t believe that Nathaniel (Veltman) did that. He was such a good home-schooled Christian.

Nathaniel admitted his guilt at intentionally killing the family who came here from Pakistan years ago. He singled them out by what they were wearing. Others were passed by because they stripped themselves from national identities and wore regular attire. Canada faced another shock, and it forced us to face reality. We hurt others by not doing enough to rid ourselves of prejudice. It is we who need forgiveness.

One victim, dead on the scene, was fifteen-year-old Yumna Afzaal. She came to Canada as a one-year-old and was a regular Canadian kid. One minute she was going for a walk with Mom, Dad, Grandma, and a nine-year-old brother, and the next they were all broken bleeding on the sidewalk a short distance from home. She could see that they were all irreparable and knew that death was here.

Dying mostly is not instant. I know. The body fights and minutes can feel like hours as they do in a dream. Probably the girl had a chance to see before tears filled her eyes and they glazed over forever.

She was at the age when a girl turns into a woman. From the picture, we can tell that she was pretty and on her school wall she left a mural that includes her image. Now she faced finding out if a dying person really sees their whole life flash before their eyes. A dream sometimes lasts less than a minute but you wake up realizing that your mind covered a complete story.

She may have seen her brother’s broken body trying to move and people rushing out to help. She knew that most Canadians are good, peace-loving people, but she was the one who babysat him all his life. Trying to move… her body would not obey. Who will look after him now?

An old Jewish prayer, “shma Israel” says that when the heart stops the soul is screaming. Yumna’s soul was hollering to God, Allah, they call him. She realized she would not hold her brother again or her own children. She had a tender feeling towards some young man in school, but never. In some corner of her mind, she dreamt of a wedding dress and her parents happy at her future wedding, but never. She wandered how they will dress her for the funeral.

The terrible pain was giving way to numbness. She was a young woman now and remembered that she never had her first kiss. They didn’t talk about sex at home, but she was a Canadian kid and knew what it was. There will be no awkward loving boy and girl exploring each other and no grand moment of ecstatic joy. God is calling over a dark chasm, and she trusts him, but she is so scared. He always favoured boys, she knew. Or was it people did? There was no chance to run away. What if He is like the driver and doesn’t like people like her? She didn’t wear a hijab, her mother did, but God knows everything. What if He is like the people in Quebec? Every human wears something that forms their identity.

Yumna wasn’t sure if her heart is still beating but felt that it was silently crying. God can do all things and Allah is great, she remembered. She felt alone. Time stopped all together. She didn’t want to go. She saw the white young man who killed her holding the steering wheel aiming for her and didn’t feel hate, only sorrow. Her arm jerked and her legs trashed, like an animal that a hunter has shot, and her beautiful long black curls were soaking up the blood from the pavement.

Let it be over, a whisper in her mind, and ”I am so tired.” Sirens came closer, but she didn’t hear. Dead on the scene said the news. Yumna felt, not heard, the voice of God. “Be at peace angel, all is within.”

So many people, like me, left life somewhere else to emigrate to Canada, since it’s known as a place of peace. The USA is the melting pot and Canada is the mosaic. It’s not the oil or wheat and minerals that draw people to Canada, it’s the image of good kind peace-loving people that attract newcomers. Humans who want to compete, hoard, and win go further south. Here is where the runaway slaves came for shelter. Here is where the young soldiers who liberated the Netherlands and kept the British Empire free came from. We are polite but we are not pushovers. All of us coloured little pieces make the great mosaic.

Our heaven is now under assault by far-right ideologies we fought against. Our sins of the past are being exposed and there are a new kind of people here wanting to change us into the place we run away from. It is tempting but we must resist.

The day after Yumna’s murder, thousands from all faiths came out to march. The next day her coffin draped in the maple leaf flag was wheeled with the coffins of her beloved family to be buried. Did she change our beliefs?

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

The good old days and unmarked graves.

 

The good old days and unmarked graves.

My wife’s parents were students in the Grouard Residential school. They told me about the poor conditions. It doesn’t make me an expert but:

People are shocked to hear what took place just a little while ago. We discover evidence of horrific abuse of native Canadians and all of us are rightly upset. Yet we don’t realize the level of brutality that existed not long ago, in my lifetime. The horrific part is that much of it was done by those who loved us.

I remember reading the book Young Winston, by Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of the British Empire, during the war. Winston was being educated in a rich private boarding school. He describes in detail a little room by the chapel where the kids suffered corporal punishment. He was a sickly child and after a beating got sick and almost died.

Sexual abuse, as we call it today, was a regular behaviour also, and no one gave it a second thought. At home, girls and boys endured what today would be punishable by jail time. We exposed kids who had no way to know about sex to sexual behaviour as a part of life. I was a teen when I saw touching and pinching take place in public. It intensified when youngsters began to work in low-paying jobs where protection from bosses was nonexistent.

When society allows very few people to enjoy most of the riches, the last on the totem pole suffers most from deprivation. Here it was, the children of the First Nations. They would be made “useful” or deemed expendable. Tears escape my eyes, thinking about their suffering.

In those days boys had privileges unavailable to girls while girls had to be “nice” by smiling or laughing at sexual advances. Some of what we bring up now as reasons to demote people in prominent positions was commonplace. I witnessed remnants of that kind of abuse right until recently. Older folks who grew up with sexual abuse have done it all their lives never learning that it’s wrong. Now generals can be fired for making sexual comments. Their sin is simply not changing fast enough when society did.

The problem is that moral norms change relatively fast and people’s careers span over a few generations. Everything changes fast these days but people’s behaviour stays the way they learned it.

Governments, churches, and schools are leaders but also a reflection of current public opinion. Just look at the rates of deaths from the Coronavirus in the US by the end of last year compared to now. The same people, the same virus, different government.

When Canada became a country, the emphasis was on building a new country on the lands previously occupied by indigenous “primitive” tribes, who were viewed as a problem. The motherlands of our population were fighting for domination in Europe and people as cattle were moved around subjected to the whims of whoever had bigger armies. It was normal.

What was done to the native population was horrendous, yet the intentions at the period in history were considered good and most voters supported it. The government intended to educate and convert people to give them a better chance of surviving in the newly formed country. The churches were involved in education and health care so they were contracted.

I listened to a nun who worked her entire life in boarding schools and she was a good person who sacrificed her life to help kids using the approved methods at the time. She didn’t know that a tiny percentage of people are born pedophiles.

Like most people, I was born into my religion and tried to be good. I don’t wish to excuse the injurious behaviour of individuals belonging to my faith or any other. I think we should apologize when we do wrong and do what we can to make it right. Sometimes we can’t. What is important is to ensure that we don’t continue or repeat mistakes from the past. “Lest we forget.”

Asking around, I found out that nobody knows which documents are requested from the church. Anything that we know of has been released. The religious orders have paid and apologized. All I do know is that the government Indian Boarding Schools were significantly under-funded as First Nation’s schools are today. Over the hundred years, we had Spanish Flu, diphtheria, smallpox, measles, tuberculosis, polio before vaccines, and much more.

 The RCMP and other agents were sent to take kids away from parents, but who was in charge of keeping communications between children and their families is not clear.

I am also aware of graves all over the place that were marked with wooden crosses that disappeared over time. The government didn’t pay for funerals. I don’t suggest that the churches were innocent or that we as a society hadn’t done wrong. My heart is bleeding for the victims and their families. I wish I could cry with the families who lost kids. My soul is shouting with unbearable pain.

However, when I hear the Prime Minister demanding the Pope apologize for what governments here caused, I become upset. We should apologize but it was politicians who possibly were not aware of what they should have been, that caused a huge painful problem. I call upon politicians today to do better and not play politics with people’s most painful memories. Sir, the Catholic Church is not the WE organization, and the Pope is not the owner of the corporation. Do your homework before making statements. Politicians hired churches to “take the Indian out of the child.”

The universal church was hardly aware of local schools situations but the Government was in charge. Then as now, politicians choose not to invest money in powerless people who couldn’t influence elections. First nations got the right to vote in 1967 and didn’t know how to vote strategically until many more became educated above what was thought in the Boarding Schools. Don’t blame, fix what is broken.

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