Money makes us tick?

 

Money makes us tick?

When you are a child, you think that the greatest thing is to grow up. Adults have all the freedom that you envy, and they get to make the rules. I remember my teenage years and later watched a “replay” as my kids were growing up. All adults can tell you that becoming an adult is just the beginning, not the end. There is a lot to learn, but most people are afraid to do things. The catchy phrase is, “who is going to pay for it”. We try, learn, and pay for our mistakes that we adults know we will make.

Who is going to pay is also the main reason for people to choose a political philosophy to follow through life. We have three main political systems to choose from. Christian: give your material possessions away and attend to helping the poor. Only monks and crazy people follow it. “I fought and worked hard for my things and will not give them away.” Well, the funeral director tells me that eventually, we do.

The Liberal system is another. We place all of our resources and efforts into looking after all humans and guide them to be fruitful if they can. They cheat and try to live well while we work hard to pay for it. They should have done what we did, so they would have what we have. As my old hunting partner used to say, If they want to eat they must work. We can work moving forward or be stuck in a dead-end job until the end.

Next comes the Conservative view, greatly promoted by the writings of Charles Darwin about evolution. Nature looks after all problems. Now it’s the Market, not nature. The fittest survive and the weakest perish. Big dog eats smaller dogs and governments should stay out of it. That philosophy is missing a major component. The wolf pack can hunt the great bear. The ants defeat the grasshopper and the viruses beat the mighty humans. That philosophy denies taking chances and expanding.

Young people are eager to face life, believing that they will work and study hard and have a significant life, and a few do. If we include all the world population, we see that most people struggle hard to have the bare minimum and often less. That is the direct outcome of our greatest invention, money.

Gold and other rare metals used to be the medium of exchange. For convenience, we changed it to paper money and recently into electronic digits. Both are plentiful and can’t easily be controlled. First, we were strict about how much was circulating and people could trust it to some degree, but things have changed. We now see that it was just the beginning.

Money is no longer a medium of exchange, it became a way to buy pleasure, avoid work, and hoard wealth. Christ told us to give it back to the issuing government, but we failed. Some did very well, mostly by finding ways around just using the money for exchange, while others slowly gave up freedom and became enslaved to some degree or another. Now we are adults and life has no mercy. You owe, you pay.

In some places like Canada, we found ways to live and negotiate credit, payments, jobs, and all else, but there is another spectrum that we are unfamiliar with. Half of the world or more is living with hardly any money and all that it brings. While we try to buy pleasure, others can’t buy the necessities of life. They are on the move. Either they will find a way to survive or they will march.

We believed that our military might will save us but recently discovered that the great United States can’t even win a war against the poorest most backwords country, such as Afghanistan. The Wolfpack can hunt the great bear. Now we also have to deal with a war against a virus. We could win, but the pursuit of money stops us. It also stops us from saving our planet from being killed and buried under garbage on the surface, in the water, and in the air.

For example, we can look south of us where money won against people. We are honoured to be friends of the greatest empire the world has ever seen, but we see it crumbling down. Large numbers of their citizens don’t even have Health Care when they are sick. Many kids don’t have a proper diet and education. Yet they and other countries have people who own so much money they couldn’t spend it in many lifetimes. Some call them Oligarchs.

We print or create money all the time. It finds its way to the richest people in the world rather quickly while others work two jobs and hardly affords food and shelter. Eventually, the poor people discover what the Taliban did. (I don’t like the Taliban.) They get weapons and beat the system. That is not the desired outcome.

Humans could create money, as we do, and use it directly to do what we need by hiring, building things, and serving people. We don’t need to hand it over to a few individuals, in China, Russia, the USA, etc, and borrow it back on interest. We, the majority in society, can set our own new rules and not listen to those who say that we can’t. It’s just another monetary theory and we don’t have to set off inflation. Money performs and is taxed back to prevent inflation. Some very rich people advocate doing it when asked for their opinion.

The main idea we must remember is that we are adults and should fix things in a way that works for us, not against us. Even the biggest business needs customers and starving people shoot not buy. Under that system, all of us could have much more time for leisure, and we would pay for it.

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

Locals, newbies, and weekenders.

 

Locals, newbies, and weekenders.

Soon I will pass 25 years of involvement in the Crowsnest Pass. I was a weekender, later purchased a place and as soon as I could, moved here full time. The mountains are majestic, but the wonderful people attracted me the most. When I first arrived, half of the place was for sale, if not more. I remember ads selling homes for $16,000 and gigantic signs, “lots for sale” and “cheap acreages.” I walked into a store and was asked if I wanted to buy a business.

I have seen this trend in the city. A neighbourhood gets old and transforms. Inglewood, Calgary for example, used to be where all the CPR workers lived. The railway privatized its repair shop, and the area became poor. First, when the local industry moves or changes it seems as if it will kill part of the city but it doesn’t. Artists move in, builders get involved and the “last become first.” We saw it again when the armed forces left Calgary. Now their old area is beautiful.

That same trend happens with pretty tiny mountain towns. The economy changes and the worker’s old neighbourhoods go through a rebuilding phase. The old people always talk about the “good old days” often remembering the shiny highlights and forgetting the rest.

Now when I am witnessing a conflict brewing between “pro-mining” people and others, it worries me. Already the fight is extending to be between “weekenders” and “locals.” I saw a “local” crying and saying, all those people are moving here and changing “our” place, why don’t they go back where they came from. A hundred-plus years ago the people who lived here before mining and ranching felt the same. We named a mountain after them and moved them away.

Now the rage is around reopening coal mines. There is a popular story about the ranchers blocking the mines wanting to use the area for free grazing on public lands. It’s possible, but how many are we talking about? I see another popular story circling about the possible Selenium contamination of the water in the lower lands. The mining companies “guarantee” to block it but the question is for how long? Mines come and go but agriculture, (that also pollutes,) remains.

I need steel and also need food. My feeling is that we must work to have both. Mind you, there is research going on for ways to replace steel but it’s far from completion. Whose side should I support? Do I have to take sides? The most excitable people are pushing for all of us to take sides.

I asked some old people here about the good old days of mining. Stories emerged. A woman told me about the days when folks in Coleman had to stay indoors and couldn’t dry their laundry since it got black. Another told me that her dad, a miner, spent years waiting every day to hear a whistle to see if his labour was needed the next day, which often wasn’t. He had to work for a farmer in Beaver Mines for potatoes to feed the family. Miners died early and their widows and kids lived poorly. Another zeroed in on the great strikes, fights with coal barons, scabs, and police.

Some old-timers remember “good old days” but they were not miners. They had stores, theatres, medical clinics, barbershops, and other services. Apparently, mining companies lured people to mining towns with great promises and were not as great when it was time to pay. Similar stories are told by the farmers and ranchers about their history. I am a working man, so I will take the side of miners, ranchers, farmers, and those who serve them.

Since I was young, there were two competing stories that we all learned. One was that God created all that there is in a few days around six thousand years ago, and another was about evolution. Again, I like to not take sides. I simply wasn’t here. However, over my lifetime, the evolution story beat the creation story and churches lost attendance. Evolution based on competition took center stage and was declared as scientific truth. Recently the story began to change.

To my surprise, we realized we don’t live in a “dog eat dog” world. Some places in the world dropped the idea that the world belongs to the fittest who will survive and started a new social experiment. The “new” idea is that we do best when we exercise cooperation and bring the least of our brothers up. Sharing and caring seem to work better than winning. Perhaps it is simply the next step in our social evolution.

As the debate about what is more important, mining or farming heats up, some of us are veering in a new direction. It is possible to have both if we pay the price. There will be less profit from the mines if they don’t pollute so much water and food prices will rise if farmers will have to desalinate the water they use.

All humans need steel and all need food that grows with water. If people are not yet ready to pay higher prices for steel and food, soon they will. In the meantime, both prairie and mountain towns are finding ways to survive.

I see many new homes being built in the Pass and new businesses opening up. I asked the mayor if those are people moving in because of the mines and he said no. Those are people who want to move in and be a part of our community. I was delighted. Folks like me are retiring here and others are moving in since they can work from home.

Possibly we can take it easy, try one mine, reach a friendly hand to our neighbours, the ranchers and farmers and grow naturally. We discover new solutions for every problem every day. Possibly we could be a part of the solution.

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

Alberta’s future in a Crystal ball.

 

Alberta’s future in a Crystal ball.

A hundred and twenty years ago Alberta was the promised land and a new Canada was investing to develop it. There was farmland, ranch land, minerals, and coal. The aboriginal population didn’t fight as their relatives in the US did, and the only problem was getting people to move here. Train lines were built, and governments and churches got together in an effort to bring people who are tough enough to survive and build a province.

When I first saw Alberta it was a dreamland or heaven on earth. Farms and ranches dotted fertile fields, little coal mining towns with churches, and cities with industries and services. The population was comprised of a lot of optimistic people who enjoyed life and were looking forward to an even better future. During the Lougheed years, we built universities and hospitals, new infrastructure appeared everywhere and rural Alberta was booming. People from everywhere were waiting in line to move here, and in 1988 Alberta became a world-famous destination.

Sadly, later on, the leadership changed, and we focused the Alberta economy on oil alone, letting all else recede and decline. Foreign interests moved in, intending to make quick money and ignoring the well-being of the province and its people.

Imagine Alberta without the rural population. Miles and miles of export-grade farm commodities undisturbed by farms, villages, hamlets, towns, and small cities. Some areas are fully devoted to mining and others systematically stripped of forests. Seasonal workers in camps using large machines to harvest and mine, supply cheap labour, and are sent back to their home countries when the work is done. No need for schools, hospitals, and other infrastructure, only what is needed to make profits remains.

Alberta without rural communities wouldn’t have to worry about how rural people vote or about what will happen to older farmers when their working life is done. No school buses on the roads, few restaurants or religious communities, and no call for services. The whole rich province could be run from a central location in the most efficient way with one aim; make most money for the investors who financed the venture.

The cities would have the human resources but competition for jobs would eliminate the need to pay high wages or provide incentives other than pay. People would work and fly to other places to live, as they do now in Fort McMurray. Without the rural population, the cities would not need to serve so many people and would be focused on profit-making from the sales of resources. No need for the RCMP and no call for art. Only efficiency and austerity.

How would one go about creating such a utopian business? It could be easier than expected. Alberta is rich in resources and extracting or profiting from them is now no longer very labour intensive. Those who wish to cash in have a problem with large rural communities demanding services, having environmental concerns, and influencing politics away from easy profit-making. What would be an easy way to speed up the slow trickle of people moving away from the country? A solution is obvious. Life in the country could be made less attractive or even impossible. Corporations can use a sizeable amount of money to elect governments more loyal to revenues and less to the voting public. A government devoted to austerity will naturally lean towards spending less where the population is not dense.

Avoid developing labour-intensive industries in rural communities. Discourage health care professionals from serving in the countryside by removing incentives and reducing pay. Close hospitals and other medical facilities. Reduce the quality of education so the young generation will look for opportunities in cities. Reduce the number of teachers and support staff. Short change Seniors care or not support places for them to live. Reduce government services forcing people to go further for their needs. Reduce the quality of policing by forcing small communities to pay for it and offering cheaper less qualified options. Welcome temporary workers from poor countries at peak seasons and send them back at slow times. We had regulations that enhanced life in rural places and governments can remove them.

Next, a government can remember the empire’s motto of divide and rule. A simple change in regulations can divide the rural population and set them up against each other. Remove a rule that protected water for farms and wave a couple of hundred short-lived jobs in front of declining towns folks and you have them fighting each other. Farmers can’t give up fresh water and mines can promise to keep the water clean “if possible” knowing that it’s not. After all, they will be long gone when the problems they caused will show up. Just like cleaning “Orphaned wells” the socialist solution of “the public will pay” will be the only one.

I saw on the news a woman on the floor of emergency in a hospital (In Ontario) where all the beds were taken. She died shortly after. I don’t want this to happen here in rural Alberta, but it will if we don’t fight for our rights now while we can. I am afraid government policies or removal of such could end the way of life we enjoyed for over a hundred years. We built the province and we want to keep it for ourselves, not for “international corporations” that come and go.

People around me are confused, thinking that fighting for freedom means fighting not to wear masks. I wish it was that easy. The actual fight is the fight for our way of life. We look across the border and see millions of bankruptcies related to medical expenses. People working eighty hours a week to keep food on the table. We drive through barren lands viewing poor farms and see cities crumbling back to the ground. The people can’t trust their electoral system and many of them envy our way of life. What we have in Alberta is worth fighting for.

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

 

Converting to dollars.

 

Converting to dollars.

A young man wanted to follow a certain Rabbi from Nazareth. First, he needed to bury his father. Another did the same, but needed to do something with his fields. Another had a similar story. They were all told by the Rabbi to rid themselves of the money concerns and just come and they all couldn’t. Poor fishermen and a few women joined.

In my life, I faced similar situations a few times. I thought that working in recreation, a job designed to help people mentally and physically, I could safely follow my Christian morality and make a living, but I couldn’t. My boss during my annual performance review gently told me that I must consider what is a moral decision and what is a business decision. At work, they paid me with money funnelled from a political party and I had to make business decisions.

Later in my career, I found myself involved in committees that dealt with the gentrification of parts of the City. Our mission was to clean up areas and get rid of humans considered undesirable. It was tied to property values and corporate investments. Definitely a business decision. When you have a clear mission, you do the job and we all did.

Where did the undesirables go? They were chased around, always landing in a new older neighbourhood where crime soon soared and they moved to another place. To fix the problem permanently would have taken a lot more than what we could do. We would have had to change what society values.

A few people in every group have no pride and are willing to live on charity or beg for sustenance. Some fake it and enrich themselves with donations. Most are keen to be useful. Given an opportunity, most people will work, learn, and seek recognition. Olympic athletes will try to be the best even if the crowd is not there to cheer.  

Humans excel by working together. We admire stars, heroes, or even beautiful people, but our biggest achievements result from many people working together. For that, we need to know the right stories.

We have been telling ourselves stories that are the opposite of what the Nazarene told us. Even the churches do. Governments are completely sold on the idea that material success is supreme. We could classify all the countries that used to colonize parts of the world as antichristian, even those who didn’t send crusaders to exterminate the opposing religions. I am not surprised that so many folks left the churches and don’t have faith in governments.

People measure their personal success by how much money they have or control. They make sure that money is in short supply so they alone will have most, or inflation takes over and the economy crashes. The competition is fierce and the victims are many.

A good example of how the system works we will see in the immediate future. The country of Lebanon, which used to be known as the jewel of the Middle East, is now on the verge of bankruptcy. Bank owners and corporate high rollers drained its resources and millions are facing starvation.

Another sign of bad stories are the rich or famous men. Their nature drives them to try their best to impregnate as many females as they can and leave them to raise the young on their own. There are stories about a past president of the USA spreading his oats and it does not deter his so-called Christian followers at all. People are mesmerized by his success instead.

We name ourselves “Christian” countries but we are only two hundred years removed from selling and buying human beings. In our countries, we still practice trafficking girls for sex. All our actions are assigned a monetary value and we gear all our efforts in life towards increasing and hoarding more value.

People consider time that is not spent to produce wealth or its equivalent as a wasted life. You have to make something, socially advance yourself or travel, or you haven’t lived. If you go walking you brag about the trails you walked or the mountains you climbed, or you don’t do it.

I propose a new story told long ago. In that story, people measure success by loving and making life more enjoyable for all living things, including the planet we inhabit. A planet that provides us with our existence and gives life to all the creatures upon it, free of charge. A place in the vast universe that can be the heaven people die to be in, in exchange for minimal well-directed effort.

I don’t think that we must give all our possessions and experiences away, only need to work together for reducing suffering and helping those less capable. When we don’t compete to dominate and hoard, we have enough leftovers to feed all who are created.

If I will have time to reflect on my life before I die, what will I think about? Will I say I produced something in great quantities? Will I brag about the size of my home? Will I show a map of the places I travelled to? Will I tell those around me how much money I amassed by denying others basic comforts?

I think I will remember tender moments. My first interaction with my wife, the first time I held my child and attending her/his graduation, or being around a dying friend providing comfort. I will think about speaking up against the kids bullying a poor child in school or picking up a stray cat feeding it. I will remember the smell of the pines in the early morning when the fog blurs the mountains.

Life is not about the zeros in our bank accounts or the bling surrounding us, it is about the simple things that we exchange with the rest of God’s creation. If we must fight, let it be a fight for justice, not for power and money. That is when He blesses our sword.

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

The Church should apologize.

 

The Church should apologize.

If you are anything like me you probably feel like spreading your arms wide and shouting to the sky, “what’s going on?”

It was a short time ago when we were sharing the pain of so many seniors who were dying alone in their under-funded Care facilities. Canada, one of the richest nations in the world, found out that our parents and grandparents received a lower level of care than most industrial nations offer. When things got rough, the most vulnerable amongst us paid the price.

Our dilapidated health care system that has been robbed of resources for years by austerity cuts didn’t hold and needed surgeries were delayed for a long time. We pay but the service we should expect is no longer there.

When a vaccine was discovered, we found out that our research facilities, experts, and factories capable of manufacturing vaccines were long gone leaving us at the mercy of the “markets” far behind other countries.

As we were reeling, trying to absorb the fact that Canada is behind, a new news item hit us hard. We who feel comfortable telling other countries to observe human rights discovered a new historical reality. When countries like China tell us to straighten our own mess, they have a provable case. Canada jailed children for the crime of being Native and hired churches of white people to “take the Indian out of the child” in Residential schools.

Now using ground-penetrating x-ray technology, we are seeing how many of those children died and were buried without ever seeing their families. Like our seniors recently, they died alone with strangers around who didn’t have enough resources to comfort them or even give them proper human burial. Social media spread the news fast and the official news soon caught up. No hiding the facts.

The Prime Minister, eager to protect the government, jumped on the opportunity to blame the churches, particularly the Catholic church, demanding that the Pope will apologize and an apology could lead to demands of money that simply is not there. It could force me to pay for what a past government caused. Soon after, church buildings were burning on and around Indian Reserves.

 

I am all in favour of saying sorry when I am guilty or paying if I knowingly do wrong. I wasn’t even born when the Canadian government designed an evil way to rid itself of the past owners of the land. I would like the church to apologize for participating in what they were ill-equipped to handle but I don’t think it will bring the expected solution.

If the biggest church on earth is going to do some soul searching and initiate action to make amends there are issues bigger than the role it played in the Residential Schools fiasco. The church in one form or another existed now for two thousand years and other churches sprang from it. When it started it was a new religion but it was based on a much older religion.

Until Christianity religious faiths were competing on different grounds. It was a test between whose God is more powerful. The people who worshipped Gods didn’t think in theological or philosophical ways. They “feared” God not “believed” in God. Often religions won or lost by torturing people, starving them to submission, or chasing them out of their countries.

The Catholic church was one of the pioneers of bringing health and education as a tool for conversion but failed miserably to notice the biggest drawback. Based on the Jewish faith, it adopted a patriarchal system that set half of humanity against the other half. It failed to follow Christ in treating males and females equally, and all others followed suit. In the process gospels and teachings were destroyed or went missing, only to be rediscovered recently. That is the bigger problem that must be corrected ahead of all others and the hierarchy is not ready to reconsider.

The Israelites in biblical times treated women as property belonging to a father, husband, or another family. Women were looked after, not independent equals. Pope Gregory the Great declared Marie Magdalene a harlot and remained so with no proof until 1969 when the Church clarified that the theory lacked any basis.

In 1945 we discovered the Gnostic gospels revealing that early Christians believed that women, especially Marie Magdalene, were treated as equal by Christ. Magdalene started the Christian faith by being the first witness to the resurrection. Compare that to Paul, who only saw Christ in a dream.

There are people around the world claiming to be the lost tribes of Israel, most notable the people of Afghanistan today. It seems as if the Church adopted their view of women instead of the teachings of Christ. This historical mistake formed modern human social order and is still at play today.

We have formed woman's nature not as the half of humanity that is able to produce new humans but as humans who need special consideration from the males. We see it clearly in our fight for males to have the right to use women and control what they wear and do with their bodies. We see it evident in trials about sexual abuse and it affected First Nations women most severely.

The aboriginal nations in North America often had costumes that allowed women better consideration than Europeans had. The European migrants assumed that technological superiority was equal to moral and religious superiority which led us to today’s problems.

In my humble opinion, the biggest church in the world should consider updating its information and seriously entertaining sweeping changes. There is no shame in learning new things and changing behaviours accordingly. Each of us has done so many times.

If we are going to ask for apologies, I would go for the big one first. If a Pope is going to apologize, I would ask for an apology to the 52% of humans who are females.

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

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.