Wednesday, January 01, 2014

Canada July 2 - 2010

I was traveling through the Canadian prairie yesterday, Canada Day, and it made me really think about this country. How many countries can you travel in for 5 hours and stay in the same province? No borders, few limits. And, of course in the prairies, endless horizons. So how do we celebrate it, not just on the nation's birthday but all the time?

On the prairies we have world's largest things. yesterday I discovered that we have the world's largest perogie in a town outside of Bonneyville - yes I'm serious and I will post the picture to prove it - see below. So I started wondering, what the heck else is out there. I know of the world's largest Pysanka egg, Mallard Duck, Skunk, Tomahawk, Nickel, Covered Bridge, Moose, Turtle and garlic sausage; what have I missed. Further, I wondered, how did this get started in the first place, a response to the very big outdoors perhaps? Some feeble attempt by man to capture and control a space that is, in the end, uncontrollable. Is it the same drive that in years past had man explaining the thunder as an argument among the gods; is it at the root of the pyramids; does the Colossus of Rhodes now exist as a metal representation of kobasa? Clearly, large spaces make you think of weird things, and even inspire odd ramblings.

So here I am a day later still in Bonnyville and I am actually learning how much things have changed in Canada. I got here in 1958 and while there were some other black families, the numbers were exceedingly small. So much so that I was 10 before I saw a black girl around my age, and I had to go to the West Indies to do it, she was a cousin. I even met a black guy around my age when I was eight or nine and it didn't even dawn on me that his parent's weren't recent immigrants, he belonged to one of the oldest Prairie Black families, the Maises. Anyway I digress from my main point, or maybe I make it in an odd way.

Here I am in Bonnyville, as I said, and I am walking around going to restaurants and golfing and nobody is making a big deal of it. Of course, you say, "This is Canada" only two days after its 143rd birthday, we don't have prejudice and bigotry here. And really it seems that it is actually happening. Look, I lived in Saskatchewan through my formative years adn I never went anywhere without thinking I was in a zoo - and not on the good side of the glass. Today I felt like I was just some guy walking around town, except for one guy and maybe he just needs glasses so he wasn't really staring, just trying to focus.

This may not seem like much but let me frame it for you. I lived through the 60's, the Black Power movement, Women's rights, Flower Power, Woodstock, Kent State, the end of the Vietnam War and Disco. I all that time the only other black kid I knew and hung out with was my brother. All the rest were a fair number of years younger than us. We were then the first two black kids in the Catholic School system in Saskatoon, talk about living in a fishbowl. If we through a crabapple at someone's car window, our mom knew about it before the wipers brushed it off.

When I went to school the 'N' word was actually 'nigger', no apology, no one said a word, and who could when it was the teacher saying it. Who could when in Grade 9 I went to pick up a girl for the Catholic High School dance - she went there too - her dad said she couldn't go with a nigger. And then the girl who finally did go to a dance with me, was basically hounded out of the good catholic school. These are some of my fond high school memories - don't let me get started. This blog isn't about how bad things were, but about how good things have become.

NOBODY STARED.

My Aunt and Uncle left Canada in 1963 because she couldn't handle being stared at all the time, Today, nobody stared, it was enough to make me stop and almost stare myself. I had to look around and remind myself of where I was, what a great time to live. Naturally, this is what I always wanted, just didn't really expect to live to see it. I know I said something like that in my post about Obama but after you have felt that oppression for so long you don't expect it to lift. But this is what Canada is supposed to be about, this is what I tell people about Canada when I talk to them both at home and abroad. But I had only really seen it in the larger cities before now and Canada is so much more than that. Canada is a vast collection of small communities that have quietly been on the forefront of integrating the displaced Chinese, the kids from the reservations and every so often one of us misplaced black or brown kids. Mosques vying for space in the sky with Church spires in the Russian Orthodox style

My brother once told me that he was glad his kids were growing up in Millwoods in Edmonton because when he went to pick them up at school he could only tell them apart because of their height. I thought at the time, 'Well okay so one school is integrated", today he has been vindicated as there are very few people here who see colour, and believe me I had steeled myself for this trip, completely unnecessary as it turns out, well off to tour Cold Lake, let's see how the rest of the day goes, looking forward to it.

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