Has the Canadian Anthem lost all meaning? We're now threatening principals with death
- Thread starter Machjo
- Start date
I believe the original maple leaf flag had blue on it, but George Stanley recommended going to red and white because they were our official colours.
I think the loyalists largely saw it as a country of convenience too.
Although I wouldn't use the word convenience. Some come and genuinely move here, forever to remain.
I don't think a country is a static entity either. If the meaning of a symbol never changes, then it isn't a symbol I can get behind to represent a country.
To many, Canada represents a safe country where one can go without having to hide ones culture. Where one doesn't need to leave one's identity at the door like a jacket.
The abuses of the Residential School System became a cause celebre after they had been dismantled and it became trendy to blame Christian Institutions for 'Cultural Genocide'.. for 'imposing' their faith on the 'culturally superior noble savages'.
In fact the Residential School Systems operated for 7 or 8 months of the year, the children spending the rest of their time with their parents. The time spent in the schools were often removing them from the severe deprivation of hunter gatherer societies, without fixed roots, in the depth of the Canadian Winter and its attendant high mortality rate for young people. The large percentage of those who ran the schools were dedicated and honest educators who also considered themselves missionaries.
The uniform portrayal of these institutions as places of sexual and physical abuse, and enforced religious indoctrination (a logical contradiction, since conversion is always an act of acceptance) came after our society had lost all confidence in its Christian roots as anything but a superstition unworthy of secular modern reasoning. Also the prospect of large payouts brought in a sudden flood of claims, and the whole thing fit nicely into the characterization of Christianity as a predatory cult.
You will find many graduates of the Rez Schools who will say their teachers were kind and inspirational, even if they didn't convert, many more who thank them for a religion that deals with Truth, rather than pagan animism and idolatry.
As for your comments about multiculturism always being a factor in our society, that is partly true. What was innovated in the 1960s was a concept that diminished the sense of patria to the nation first, for a degraded concept of Canada as a 'community of communities' without hard substance to its institutional traditions, with equal justice before the law replaced by a culture of victimization and retribution for sovereign identities, and without an imperative to fully integrated immigrant communities. Hence you have immigrants now who have no loyalty or understanding of Canada at all, identifying first with their country of origin, or their belief system if it is in stark contrast to the values on which our society is constituted.
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Are you denying the abuses of the Residential school system?
To start off with some interviews I'd seen on TV between some politicians and prison inmates who'd gone through the residential school system, one man had had a pin forced through his tongue as a child because he dared talk his language. Ouch! Another had been forecefully separated fro his parents and put in a new family that had abused him so severely that they'd broken his bones, literally. One woman was in prison for having murdered her baby. While hugging her baby in her arms one day, she suddenly snapped its head, because it reminded her of how, as a child, she was usually being hugged when she was being raped.
This was in a prison meeting. At one point, one politician in the inquiry asked who had gone through the residential school system. Nearly all hands had gone up.
This programme was on TV not long after the Oka Crisis.
There is plenty of documentary evidence of this.
One woman had ki
To start off with some interviews I'd seen on TV between some politicians and prison inmates who'd gone through the residential school system, one man had had a pin forced through his tongue as a child because he dared talk his language. Ouch! Another had been forecefully separated fro his parents and put in a new family that had abused him so severely that they'd broken his bones, literally. One woman was in prison for having murdered her baby. While hugging her baby in her arms one day, she suddenly snapped its head, because it reminded her of how, as a child, she was usually being hugged when she was being raped.
This was in a prison meeting. At one point, one politician in the inquiry asked who had gone through the residential school system. Nearly all hands had gone up.
This programme was on TV not long after the Oka Crisis.
There is plenty of documentary evidence of this.
One woman had ki
Now you mentioned that some had had good experiences in the residential school systems. That may be true. I'm just pointind out that the other side is equally true.
Now as for people I'd met myself, I'd met one Inuit who'd told me that her mother refused to teach her Inuit because in school she was taught that it was bad to do so!
And just going back to the man in the interview I'd mentioned above who'd got the pin through his tongue, his daughter had a similar story of how he'd refused to teach her his language, telling her this story of how he was treated for speaking it.
We're talking about attempted cultural genocide, and it is well documented.
Now as for people I'd met myself, I'd met one Inuit who'd told me that her mother refused to teach her Inuit because in school she was taught that it was bad to do so!
And just going back to the man in the interview I'd mentioned above who'd got the pin through his tongue, his daughter had a similar story of how he'd refused to teach her his language, telling her this story of how he was treated for speaking it.
We're talking about attempted cultural genocide, and it is well documented.
Toronto is where you can see it all too. Montreal and Vancouver too but Toronto has so many people from all over the world that bring the really good parts of their culture and put it on display all over the city. The food is such a huge thing here.
Toronto is a city of boroughs with each borough a treasure trove of restaurants and small stores brimming with culture from here and there. I've been to a few places during the World Cup and joined in with the patrons to watch and cheer their team on. A little enthusiasm and joining in brings out some of the best in people.
Everywhere I've been though among all the flags and what not of the countries people have come from, there is always a little Canadian representation. Most people get that this is a special place found no where else in the world.
Of course the Liberals did something right. They gave in to the majority regardless of all rules of justice. At the Federal level, they intoduced Official Bilingualsim which benefits the two majority ethnic groups but to hell with the Aboriginals.
In Ontario, they chose to discriminate in favour of Catholics for their school funding to hell with equal rights.
Seriously, catering unjustly to the majority is always a vote-getter.
Yeah, i could see that being sung in the Quebec's Assemblée Nationale:lol:
That would go over real well.
hy would Obama be looking at a health care system completely opposite the US one? In the US, it's almost totally free. In Canada, it's almost totally regulated.
Would it not make more sense for him to be looking at a European one instead? In many European countries, they have a two-tiered system, with both socialized and private medicine co-existing. I could see that being more palatable to the average US citizen than the Canadian one, politically. It would seem to me Obama really is trying to commit political suiside by choosing possibly the most different system from the current American one to aim for. It's like going from A to Z in under a second.
The liberals keep getting in because people get tired of the conservatives. Then they get tired of the liberals and the conservatives get back in. Neither the con party or the glib party is like their historical counterparts. Liberalism has changed and so has conservatism. Canada could be doing a lot better if we had better gov'ts. And I don't give a hoot what other people think about Canada because they don't live here and experience it from day to day.
I also don't care what politicians would or wouldn't do with the flag. To me it is simply a bit of fabric flopping on a pole. I don't care about it, I care about the country. I am only saying it looks like a liberal flag and it could do with more color.
What a load. You think if Canadians actually knew what was going on inside those schools at the time they wouldn't say anything? Get a grip. It wasn't until the stories started getting out about what was going on that Canadians started squawking about it. It has nothing to do with fads. Good grief!
The Gliberals always do bend over for the majority and make everyone else bend over for the Glibs.
You can see it in action when polls come out. Even if the Glibs maybe had a good plan, if they saw the polls ' results heading away from their plan, they adjusted to what the polls were concluding. It's funny if you ignore the sad part.
For one thing, the Canadian system is about half as expensive, both per capita and as a percentage of GDP.
Than the European ones? I don't know; maybe your right. But have you got any links to back that up?
As far as I know, the only main difference between the Canadian and many European systems is that private health care is not so restricted there. They essentially allow both the Canadian and American systems to co-exist in their systems.
... and blue.
That's not the English flag. That's the British flag. This is the English flag:
