For Remembrance Day : Dump Anti-Canadian School Boards, Not Canadian Traditions
Events at two Canadian School Districts highlight the point that, once again, Canadian-born who are trying to pander to immigrants are throwing away Canadian traditions.
Just over a week ago, Saginaw Public School in Cambridge, Ontario decided to ban students from wearing Halloween costumes. In addition, they re-named Halloween “Black and Orange Spirit Day”. The school made the move in an effort to “engage and include all students”. When students petitioned and parents protested, the school and board relented, but insisted on retaining the new name for Halloween.
Why? Would they take it upon themselves to arbitrarily change the name of the ethnic festivities and Holy Days of minorities? Would they presume to call The Year of the Dragon “The Year of the Mythical Reptile”? Would they call Vesak “Buddha’s Birth Day”? Would they give Ramadan, Rosh Hashanah and Diwali bland generic names devoid of historical content? One rather doubts that, because after all, “reasonable accommodation” in Canada is clearly a one-way street—with Canadians excluded from that street !!!
This week, the Edmonton Public School Board is making attendance at Remembrance Day ceremonies optional. Some officials are saying that the event is connected with religion or that it glorifies war, and for those reasons, students should not be compelled to attend. But the main purpose of Remembrance Day is to enshrine in Canadian youthful memory (and to revive in the memories of our mature citizens) important events in Canada’s history and to ensure that these not be forgotten. Opting out of important traditions is opting out of Canada. If people are allowed to “opt out” of our heritage, what then binds us?
Or as a parent at Saginaw Public School said : “Canada can’t become a blank slate that everyone can write on except us.”
The incidents demonstrate that some Canadians think that the best way to deal with an abnormally-high immigrant inflow is to jettison Canadian traditions in order to make the newcomers feel more comfortable, even at the expense of our comfort. Most Canadians would say that these school boards are completely out of touch with reality. Most Canadians, and arguably many immigrants, are completely fed up with this nonsense. Most Canadians think these school officials should get into their heads that immigrants have come here because Canada is superior to the countries that immigrants come from. If that were not so, why would immigrants come here? So why are these schools insisting that we erase our traditions and become something that is faceless?
The point is that Canada has a large number of traditions which have either been inherited from our European-based population or have evolved, in the case of Remembrance Day, from our involvement in European-based historical events such as, in the case of Remembrance Day, World War 1 and 2. Canadians new or old should be proud of our traditions—-and skeptical of those who claim to speak on behalf of those who have newly arrived.
These traditions may be shared by countries with similar populations, but they remain important items in Canada’s identity too and should not be thrown away, particularly by people entrusted with teaching Canadian history. If these school officials insist that these traditions be thrown away, perhaps it is time that Canadians throw those school officials away.
In fact here’s a suggestion : Maybe we can arrange to re-float the “Sun Sea”— the ship that arrived with a load of smuggled Sri Lankan asylum-seekers,—load it up with these school board officials together with the fake refugees, and send it off to Sri Lanka or any other destination whose citizens these school officials want to protect so much from Canadian traditions. Now that we think about this a bit more, how about arranging an entire convoy of ships and loading them with these politically-correct officials. God knows, we can fill a convoy.
Once there, these school officials could enjoy all the wonders of those countries whose customs they think should not be contaminated by anything Canadian. One caution however. If they have the ambition to resume their vocation, they shouldn’t count on an Employment Equity program to enable them to get job preference over Sri Lankans or the citizens of any other country——–as Sri Lankans and all other visible minorities are allowed to get over Canadians in Canada.
To ensure that this remains a one-way trip for these officials, perhaps we can arrange for a welcoming party to meet them upon arrival and treat them to a live demonstration of one charming local Sri Lankan custom, like say, suicide bombing. That would be Lesson One in “Diversity Awareness” !!!
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For details, see the following :
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/11/01/seeing-red-over-black-and-orange-spirit-day
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Canada/2012/11/07/20339356.html
