True confession--I am ashamed to post the meme on the right on anything that can be read by others. It represents intolerance and an entrenched world view that contradicts everything I know about Canada. I’ve seen this meme many times on various
social media, and it's past time to speak out.
Most often, the
words are slightly different.
“America” is politically incorrect, it reads, and “God bless
America.” If I look at the meme
closely, I can see that the words Canada
and everyone are in different fonts (Who says, "God bless everyone" anyway? Even Dickens' Tiny Tim says, "God bless Us, Every One"!);
my conclusion is that a disgruntled Canadian agreed with the American version
and altered the meme to express some angst.
The Canada I know is better than this
meme. The Canada I love is a
society that is a model for the world.
The Canada I know is neither politically
correct nor politically incorrect.
My Canada shows respect for all people. In the Canada I know, language honors peoples and cultures;
it doesn’t degrade them. As a
nation, we recognize that long-standing phrases that served some groups well for generations are no longer
appropriate in a society that is conscious of the power of implicit messages to
empower and uplift. We change our
language willingly as a result of growing understanding of the hurt certain words have caused and a desire to
move forward. As I have said in
another post, political correctness masks negativity, while respect is genuine.
In the Canada I know, the people who want
to say “Merry Christmas“ say it. That
phrase expresses their reality, and they are comfortable with it. They accept, as well, that many Canadians observe Christmas as a secular feast, not a religious one. They understand that, among
those for whom Christmas is a holiday in December, newcomers to
Canada make up only a small number, and that most have lived here for generations, even centuries, no matter
whether their origins are European, Asian, African, or Middle Eastern. It’s just that society is making an effort to be inclusive. Why? Because it’s 2016.
Christianity has never been the defining
worldview in our land for all people.
For millenia, Christmas was unknown to First Nations, whose Creator manifested
its presence through the land.
For a time, as European newcomers came to dominate that land, their
religious practices became the norm in Canada. Non-Christian newcomers and long-standing non-Christian
or atheistic citizens lived with
the way things were. The
Canada I know evolves. My Canada can live with
using “Happy Holidays” in broad, official contexts so that everyone can feel at
home.
For the same reasons, the people in the
Canada I know who want to trust in God will do that. Those who want to be blessed by their God will invoke that
deity, and those who want others to be blessed will pray to their deity for
that blessing. All of us can live
with that. Those who do not
believe in any deity won’t. Official activities that take occur in places that welcome everyone, like legislatures, government buildings and offices, public schools, and
public hospitals, as well as the official symbols therein, must be secular. Religious blessings and prayer cannot
be imposed on the general public. They
are a matter of personal choice. (I accept the presence of personal religious symbols worn by people working in those establishments or frequenting them, like the Sikh turban, the Christian cross or rosary, or the niqab, for example).
Canadians have always honored their
military. We have always been
grateful for the sacrifice our troops have made to safeguard the freedoms we
enjoy today. The Canada I know continues
that tradition. My Canada has laws
in place to protect those freedoms, so I know that people can make their home
here and maintain those traditions of their homeland that are congruent with Canadian law.
The Canada I know is a welcoming
place. It has welcomed more than
25,000 refugees since the fall.
Individual Canadians have donated millions of dollars, hundreds of
thousands of items of clothing and household goods, and thousands of volunteer hours to
help newcomers adjust to their new home.
They also understand that a good number of these newcomers would rather
be in their own land; strife and persecution in that country threaten their
very lives, and that’s why they’ve come here.
The Canada I know undertands that a few
people living in the past don’t define a country or a religion. My Canada knows that our country is
built on the people that have always been here and those who have come from all
corners of the world to create the society they could not construct in their
own land. Canada is a grand
experiment that works. All of us,
no matter what our origins, live together in relative peace. Do we squabble once in a while? For sure. Still, though, we show the world that different races and
cultures can do more than coexist in peace; they can thrive.
The Canada I know takes the high road. This sign defames everything we stand for.
