I was born and raised in British Columbia and I have always been a British Columbian, and as I grew up I kind of wondered why I was learning about Iroquois and Algonquin and Hurons, and never anything about local “Indians” as we called them. I always seemed to be getting a history of somewhere else that was being passed off as mine. Champlain and all the rest of them, Cartier and so on. You never heard about Cook or Vancouver... I grew up kind of resenting this as time went on.
I kept on wondering, what was the matter? Did I have to love the Toronto Maple Leafs to be a Canadian? Was that the rule? That I had to love all the things I’m being told? The Toronto Star weekly and so on... I know that sounds silly.
I’ve gone right through life always thinking, why can’t I be a good solid, sound loyal British Columbian and still be a Canadian? Why do I have to believe these other things? But it never really bothered me that much, I never thought of taking up the pikes and heading to the streets. It was just emotionally, I wonder why all my friends, most of us, felt the same way…
Now we fast forward to the more recent days and for the first time in my life it became very serious, because when I thought of what was going to happen with [liquefied natural gas] plants in Howe Sound, more particularly with the Kinder Morgan going through to Vancouver and right across our Salish Sea and so on, I began to be horrified.
Then when I heard Mr. Trudeau talk, I thought, we are not on the same wavelength at all. We’re like two different countries; he cannot understand that we hold these things in B.C. to be sacred. We hold them to be just as sacred as I’m sure he regards things in Quebec. You just don’t mess with them. And yet we’re not discussing on that level, just on the economic level.
Finally, being an old man and not giving a damn about anyone throwing me in jail anymore I thought, “Goddamn it, I’m gonna say what I think.” And I’ve gotten to the point where if British Columbia left the country, I’d be delighted.
https://thetyee.ca/News/2017/03/24/Rafe-Mair-BC-Leave-Canada/
and
Rafe Mair Online » Blog Archive » A British Columbian
I kept on wondering, what was the matter? Did I have to love the Toronto Maple Leafs to be a Canadian? Was that the rule? That I had to love all the things I’m being told? The Toronto Star weekly and so on... I know that sounds silly.
I’ve gone right through life always thinking, why can’t I be a good solid, sound loyal British Columbian and still be a Canadian? Why do I have to believe these other things? But it never really bothered me that much, I never thought of taking up the pikes and heading to the streets. It was just emotionally, I wonder why all my friends, most of us, felt the same way…
Now we fast forward to the more recent days and for the first time in my life it became very serious, because when I thought of what was going to happen with [liquefied natural gas] plants in Howe Sound, more particularly with the Kinder Morgan going through to Vancouver and right across our Salish Sea and so on, I began to be horrified.
Then when I heard Mr. Trudeau talk, I thought, we are not on the same wavelength at all. We’re like two different countries; he cannot understand that we hold these things in B.C. to be sacred. We hold them to be just as sacred as I’m sure he regards things in Quebec. You just don’t mess with them. And yet we’re not discussing on that level, just on the economic level.
Finally, being an old man and not giving a damn about anyone throwing me in jail anymore I thought, “Goddamn it, I’m gonna say what I think.” And I’ve gotten to the point where if British Columbia left the country, I’d be delighted.
https://thetyee.ca/News/2017/03/24/Rafe-Mair-BC-Leave-Canada/
and
Rafe Mair Online » Blog Archive » A British Columbian
