Tag / Canada

by Aleisha Hendry

History repeats itself

Well I definitely have to eat crow right about now.

Way back in the before time of 2016, when a so-called billionaire was running for the highest office of our neighbours to the south, I wrote a column about how everyone was comparing this sack of shit to Hitler. I wrote there was no way the United States of America would ever allow a modern Nazi party to take over and start putting people in camps and bringing about another Holocaust. Hyperbole, I scoffed. It’ll be OK, I wrote. It’ll be an amusing anecdote in a poli-sci textbook someday.

Oh, how wrong I was…Way to fail me and everyone else on the planet, America.

I honestly didn’t believe it could happen. I thought people were better than this. And yet, here we are. The leader of the free world wants to be just like some of the most ruthless dictators alive today, ones that starve and outright murder their citizens. He’s dehumanizing certain groups of people because they don’t look like him. His dumbfuck administration is taking migrant children away from their parents and putting them into camps.

Jesus Fucking Christ.

I can’t even fathom how traumatized these children are and how badly this is going to fuck them up for the rest of their lives. Granted this isn’t the first time America, or Canada for that matter, had broken families like this. Residential schools, Japanese internment camps…slavery, anyone?

You’d think people would know better by now, but clearly humans never learn a goddamn thing.

The most frustrating thing is all we can do-those of us outside the U.S.-is sit and watch the travesty unfold. All we can do it sit glued to our phones and tablets and laptops as the world’s superpower sinks to unimaginable depths.

Yes, we can boycott American products – Maclean’s has a nice little list of products with Canadian equivalents – while this ridiculous trade war goes on, but there isn’t much else we can do. Tweeting, Facebooking, even writing this post won’t change anything.

But we are a culture of venting our feelings and fustrations on the interwebs, so here we are.

All we can really do is hope that the Mueller investigation yields fruit and sees that P.O.S POTUS impeached and sent to prison.

One thing for sure…this will definitely be in all the poli-sci textbooks.

-A.

by Aleisha Hendry

When is the Canadian flag not the Canadian flag?

I haven’t been following the Olympics very closely this time around, but I have noticed something interesting. When Canada gets a gold medal, instead using the plain old boring official Canadian flag on the podium, our athletes hold a snazzy flag with a GOLD maple leaf. It looks like this:

Screen shot 2018-02-16 at 7.37.33 AM

There really should be a silver and bronze one too.

I like the gold maple leaf flag, as I said it’s snazzy and a cool way to acknowledge the athlete’s win. But after seeing it a few times now I got to thinking about a discussion I witnessed last year about the altering of Canada’s flag for a different purpose. 

The Pride Canada Flag. It looks like this:

Screen shot 2018-02-16 at 7.14.24 AM

Rainbows are pretty!

Many folks commented that this flag was “treasonous” because altering our beloved flag for ANY reason is super bad. When asked if they were upset because it had the rainbow Pride colours on it and maybe their bigotry was showing, they claimed oh no, they would be upset over ANY alteration of the Canada flag! Like, they totally don’t like the so-called ‘Oh Cannabis” flag either!

Here’s that one:

Screen shot 2018-02-16 at 7.48.06 AM

Expect to see this flag everywhere when recreational weed is legalized this summer.

So it got me wondering where those flag folks are right now upon seeing the gold maple leaf flag. That’s an alteration, so shouldn’t they be out in droves?

Oh, but wait. THAT flag is about the Olympic dream and national pride and athleticism and whatnot…clearly there’s no reason to get their panties in a bunch!

I mean, it’s not like the Pride Canada flag stands for anything more than the acknowledgement of the basic human rights of a significant portion of the population or anything.

Certain people get “offended” by anything that doesn’t fit their personal narrative. However it’s 2018 and the world is changing so they feel they can’t just come right out and say they’re against LGBTQ+ people or their event, so they lose their shit over the goddamn flag. Granted there are those that do come right out and say it, but at least they aren’t hiding the fact that they’re garbage people.

So keep this all in mind when those keyboard warriors start their ranting after this year’s Pride Walk. If they didn’t protest the gold maple leaf flag, they have no recourse to protest the Pride Canada flag.

-A.