Canada has evolved into a very diverse society with people choosing to come here from around the world. More than 140 languages are represented in some of our school districts.
In the U.S., Donald Trump won an election by promising to close the doors to the United States. Here, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau countered by welcoming refugees from war-torn Syria.
His approach was generally applauded, though it does come with problems. We can’t accommodate all refugees and many who come will be denied refugee status.
Still, Canadians are generous and proud of the diversity we have developed. From our comfortable lives it’s hard to imagine that right now there are more than 21 million refugees worldwide, over half of whom are under 18 years of age. That’s more than half the population of Canada unable to go home!
We have issues that need to be addressed and we have homeless people in our cities too, but for the most part they have people trying to help and they have services to feed and shelter them.
In recent weeks I’ve watched the events in Charlottesville, Va., where a crowd of marchers carrying Nazi symbols and Confederate flags marched in a racist demonstration. A young woman, Heather Hayer, marching in defiance and protesting the racists was killed.
In Vancouver a group of anti-Islam racists tried to launch a similar demonstration. They were all but completely drowned out by an estimated 4,000 people who came out in defence of our diversity.
It was very reassuring.
I’m old enough to remember when large numbers of Sikh people started arriving and were met with a lot of racism but most have adapted to our way of life – especially the second generation.
Before the Sikhs came, Chinese came and they were met with extreme racism, but most endured and over time became welcome. The Japanese were treated horribly too, during and after the Second World War, being forced into internment camps.
If you go to a Canucks game you’ll see a lot of minority groups represented, many wearing Canuck jerseys, a small sign of integration.
I also remember a time when gays and lesbians were shunned in our country. Today we’ve accepted gay marriage, and politicians of all stripes feel they must appear in pride parades. I’m not naïve enough to think there is absolute acceptance of these things, but the time has come where it would be unpopular to speak out against them. And that’s a good thing.
When you see 4,000 people taking time out of their busy lives to demonstrate their support for diversity it says a lot about how our views have evolved. In the lead-up to the Conservative leadership we saw a couple of candidates attempt to model campaigns after Donald Trump. Kelly Leitch and Chris Alexander both bombed miserably with what could only be described at attempts to marginalize immigrants. There are undoubtedly racists among us, but they have little voice in the overall fabric of the country and they are rejected.
We shouldn’t be smug though. We’ve come a long way but we have a shameful record of making life as good for most First Nations as we have for relative newcomers to this land, and for others we’ve welcomed as immigrants and refugees.
Too many First Nations people live in poverty, and in living conditions that are quite frankly appalling.
Many reserves are without clean drinking water, and far too many kids resort to suicide. Too many of those who don’t wind up in our jails. Aboriginal people make up four per cent of our population but 24 per cent of our prison population is aboriginal.
We have much to be proud of. We have created a mostly safe community for those of us with the good fortune to have been born here, and for most of the people we’ve welcomed from less fortunate countries around the world, but to be really proud we have to find ways to make life as good for those whose ancestors were first here. Surely given the generous nature of the majority of Canadians and the obvious inequality for First Nations, we can finally make good on decades of promising to reconcile with the first people.
@billgood_news
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