What is a Canadian?

 What is a Canadian?

It was 1967, and I stepped off the airplane onto Canadian soil, intending to become a Canadian. Eagerly looking around, I searched for what Canadians look like. At the Calgary airport, I couldn’t identify even one. Being a teenager, I noticed other teens were wearing shorts down to their knees, while mine were shorter. Canadian boys at the time also had longer hair than what I was used to.

A year later, I knew that there were hardly any Canadians in Canada. All the people here identified by other nationalities that became Canadian but retained some traits from some old country. People were expressing a need to not be British, and there was a new flag with a red Canadian maple leaf. The indigenous race also had many faces and spoke a variety of languages. They were not the most popular members of the Canadian social order.

As soon as I understood a little English, I was bombarded by ethnic jokes. How many Ukrainians does it take to change a light bulb? I can’t remember but it was the same number as Newfies if told by an eastern Canadian. People joked about Wops, Gays, and Polacks, and they had annoying names for every nation, skin color, or country of origin. I was called a Camel Jockey even though I only rode a camel once in a fair. I rode an elephant twice.

People from English-speaking countries fared better than others, but they were also ranked. There were the Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Australians, Jamaicans, Africans, Indians from India, Americans with a variety of accents, and of course Londoners who could be identified by their speech right to a neighborhood in the British capital. One young woman said she was a true Canadian for many generations, but her last name was German.

I saw several fields with white crosses in cemeteries. Here were the Canadians. Didn’t matter where they came from, when Canadian freedom and way of life were threatened, they all donned uniforms and took guns. Fascist ideas that now are making a bit of a comeback were not popular with Canadians.

A couple of days ago, a program aired on “The Agenda” TVO, examining reasons young people in Ontario are leaving Toronto in great numbers. Many are heading to Alberta and Nova Scotia. According to them, the number of young people leaving Ontario grew by 94% from 2019 to 2022.

The main reason for leaving is the price and availability of housing plus other economic reasons. The COVID pandemic played a big role. Young professionals discovered they can work remotely. At times, they can work for Ontario wages, living for Alberta expenses. One young lady mentioned that her husband and her can save a thousand dollars a month on rent, saying that it goes a long way towards daycare and paying student loans.

Millennials who are now approaching forty and wish to have a family can no longer afford to live in Toronto. They may lose family support and familiar communities, but find living in a new place exciting. Calgary and Edmonton no longer seem as backward as they used to be. Alberta also is doing a marketing campaign geared to draw them. There are posters on the public transit system that they don’t miss. Others, such as electricians, plumbers, roofers, and new immigrants, see the trend and also move. The interior provinces are being built up at the expense of the larger economies in the east. Smaller communities, such as ours, don’t get the bulk of the population movement, but even a small percentage makes a big difference. Many are looking for public green spaces. It’s hard to beat tiny mountain towns in green spaces and proximity to wildlife.

There is some movement away from Alberta, offsetting the dominant trend. We all know about the doctors and nurses discouraged by the government’s attitude towards them. Some folks consider moving here but fear the negative reputation circulating. They worry about separatism, unbending Conservative attitudes, and the possibility that all the jobs here are oil-related. People are scared to find themselves without public health care or the availability of doctors.

This trend is offset by the fact that after a move, the new folks will be able to change things. They know that the major cities in Alberta are progressive thinking and that even global warming is considered important by much of the population. The wind and hydroelectric projects here are not invisible. Energy companies are not hiding the fact that they are involved in clean energy. Politics can change.

Years ago, I was looking for a typical Canadian and had a hard time finding one. Now, fifty years later, they are more obvious. Canadians are more or less the Europeans of North America, regardless of their skin color, accents, religions, or nations of origin. We are not the European imperialists of the past but a modern, well-educated new nation that 

The story that we tell ourselves.

 

 The story that we tell ourselves.

I was carrying my hotdog, fries, and drink in Costco and there was no free table to sit at. A voice by my elbow said, “You are welcome to sit here. I am almost finished.” It was an old guy with long hair and a beard, much like me. Thanks, I said, sat down, and introduced ourselves. There was some fierceness to him. I knew someone with your last name, I said, he was my professor at University. The old guy surprised me and said, yes, he was my brother. He is gone now. It made me sad. He said he was in Lethbridge for a class 50-year reunion. Wow!

He told me he visited the Crowsnest Pass the day before, to see a friend who couldn’t travel anymore. Tomorrow, he said, he was going back home to work. Work? I took a deep breath. He was at least eighty years old. Apparently, he is supervising some task force to save one of the Great Lakes on the American side. His brother, who was teaching me in the mid-seventies, exposed me to the idea that we will be fighting for the planet’s survival now, trying to prolong human civilization against people willing to destroy it for short-term gains. What a family! Why are some people willing to devote their lives to future human beings whom they will never know? They have a story that they are living here on earth. This guy had a good story. I know many who have dreadful stories. They accumulate wealth and care nothing about others of their kind. They attach their lives to their “investment portfolio.”

Everyone has stories, and to some degree, the stories form their reality. The reality is not what we want it to be, but all our thoughts. Your story includes all your fears, dirty thoughts, deceptive actions, hopes, and dreams, and yes, also your wishes. Those of us who pray mostly tell the cosmic God what we wish for or ask for forgiveness for things we shouldn’t have done in the first place. Often, we include excuses forgetting that the God we are praying to knows all that we are hiding. When we say “God” we have a story in our mind about what God is. He or she, if you wish, is all of what the story says, but there is no cheating. Cheating is only available for living humans and there is a price for it. He is a loving, forgiving God, but we call Him Father or our Father in heaven. A loving father is always concerned with how the children are brought up. If he teaches them to cheat, steal, and so on, he is not a good father. He will pay a price just like anyone else.

I invested a good portion of my life in studying subjects like memories. It is fascinating how it works. A game is played in each human mind. The experts say that we are our memories, but it’s not as simple as that. We forget much more than we remember. “How soon we forget.” What we remember is not what really happened, but the last version we made up the last time we focused on it. The reaction of others who may have the same memories also becomes a part of our memories.

When someone is telling a story, we often hear them say, “everyone has seen it. It’s true.” Not so, as any court official can witness. People remember the same event in different ways. The memories are tainted by what they want to prove, which will match their personal interests. They will be convinced that their story is true, but a camera may prove otherwise. Even a camera is not foolproof, since a human interprets what the camera records. Interpretations may not be the same. The angle of the camera matters. A portrait can be complementary or damning. It will change the story.

Now, in the year 2022, the story of most humans has changed. The story of the last hundred years was full of hope and promise. All eyes were trained on the West and its ever-growing economies. The political system of democracy insured a fair chance of success. People willingly worked, saved, and invested. Billions of people not fortunate enough to share in the good life could see on the newly invented electronic devices’ screens that a better story is possible, and they dreamed. The bubble of hope grew thinner and busted. The elite class consolidated its power and democracy lost the ability to guarantee a reasonably good life in exchange for work.

Beginning in China, a movement started spreading amongst the young to give up and do nothing. Young people don’t foresee a future like their parents had and give up on the American dream. They don’t have children, don’t buy homes and work to improve them, and rarely bother with higher education. They expect the world to burn down, flood out, or be destroyed by nuclear weapons. Many live on a trip of illicit drugs or alcohol. In China, they no longer are willing to work 9 to 9 for $10,000 a year and here they don’t wish to work for the benefit of large monopolies and billionaires.

There is a better story. People working for a better world for all. It can start somewhere and spread amongst all humans. It must start amongst those who have got; not fought over by those who have not.

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

Whose Land?

 

 Whose Land?

If you are a religious person, or a modern scientist, you know one constant thing. All of what you know is from the planet that we are on. Read the beginning of the Old Testament and all that God is reported to have created, including humans, is made from the Earth. Only light originates somewhere else and is reflected by things on Earth.

Every created thing is here since it has a place on Earth. The insects, plants, seeds, and all of what we know will not exist without the planet that some call Mother Earth. The Father is from somewhere else. My kingdom is not from here, the son said. No further explanation, only that it is above. On Earth, anything is above. Religious people talk about Heaven being above, perhaps meaning what the scientists call space. Humans can create a tiny place that is like Earth in space, but not enough for much to happen there. We must bring things from Earth to survive there, even for the shortest time.

Long before there were humans on Earth, all living and growing things competed for space on the planet. When humans came, they fought for space on Earth. We can follow archaeology or stories from the bible and come to the same conclusion. Humans fight for space on Earth. Only some of the space is premium Real Estate so the fighting is most fierce for the best choices.

Ancient people fought with crude weapons and modern people use the best technologies available to kill each other for room on the planet. The largest populations don’t have the most efficient weapons but make up for it in numbers. The latest wars that we have witnessed showed that being advanced and rich doesn’t guarantee to win against other humans. If all the military options are used, we can be guaranteed mutual destruction and annihilation of our species.

Scientists and religious scholars must agree that humans fight when there is scarcity. Natural disasters are most often followed by wars. Major human migrations happen when there are droughts, floods, plagues, or equal disasters. First, the poor and weak perish, some charity attempts are tried and fail, and later people understand the end is on the horizon. When flight is not available, the only thing left is to fight. Those who may have been poor begging refugees go back and learn to fight. We saw it recently in Ukraine when people who had never been close to a gun became effective soldiers, fighting and winning against a well-trained regular army.

I grew up in Israel, where the Jews went after they were almost destroyed. Their ancestors had that land in antiquity and were deported on mass bout the year 70 AD when they failed an attempt to protect it. 2000 years later, the British gave it back to them, but there were other people there. The Jewish race needed a piece of the world, but so did the Palestinians. My parents, who never knew life without war, emigrated to the most peaceful place they could find, Canada.

Some years after I became a Canadian, I learned our own history. We also took this land from others. A combination of disease and human-caused starvation weakened the First Nations and systematic discrimination made them poor subjects instead of proud owners. I will remind you again that all living things need a piece of mother Earth to live on, and it should be able to sustain them.

Now 2020 years after the theory of success achieved by people loving and caring for each other became popular amongst humans, we are facing catastrophic times again. Some hint that it is the perfect storm. Diseases are on the rise and our modern healthcare systems are breaking down. They have been weakened by politicians and starved of emergency capacity, and resources. The planetary natural, self-generating immunity systems are all on overload. We failed to transition to types of energy that can sustain in line with our constant development and accelerated use of favorite resources. Urgent action is required, yet blocked by the self-interest of a few. They are buying political support that many of us are happy to sell. Thirdly, the world’s economy and military powers are restructuring. Old and tired forces are less effective in keeping new players from playing the game of power. The empires of the past are turning inwards and the most populous countries demand to have a role on the world’s stage.

Most people agree that the best way to learn and teach is by example. I look around where I am living and see an opportunity to provide the right kind of example. Here in a Pass between mountains, humans came to trade for thousands of years. Now, this community comprises many nationalities and a sampling of races. It is a seed unique to the human experience. We have a common language and something forged together the ancestors of the community underground in mines. The old influence the newer people and there is an attitude of together is better.

We are used to our place, but people who see it for the first time notice something positive and rare. You can tell by how the place is growing and expanding. Drive from Pincher Creek and look at the countryside dotted with new homes.

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