Last year a couple of blue jays started building a nest in eves of our front porch, but they thought better of it when they caught Murray and Nick watching their every move. Hoping they’d come back. we left the unfinished nest alone, and this year a family of Mourning D oves took up residence.
Unlike the robins on our porch lamp several years ago. there always seems to be a dove there. I know this is the father because the Internet assures me the father is on day shift, and Mamma gets the nest at night.
The KW Chapter of the Council of Canadians hosted a Pharmacare Town Hall Meeting in Waterloo this week. The discussion was moderated by Ron Ward, and featured University of Waterloo School of Pharmacy Assistant Professor Dr. Sherilyn Houle, Catherine Fife Waterloo’s NDP MPP, and the Green Party’s Stacey Danckert
What Is Pharmacare?
Pharmacare is a government program that ensures all citizens have access to the medicine their doctor prescribes.
Of all the countries that provide citizens with Universal Health Care, Canada is the only one that doesn’t have Universal Pharmacare. At the
“Overall, it estimates a universal pharmacare plan would save up to $11.4 billion a year, with $1 billion of that saved just by no longer duplicating administrative costs in the current “patchwork” system.”
However, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s federal Liberal Government have more important things to worry about than the health of its citizens, so the Ontario Liberals Government has stepped up to the plate with an intention to add publicly funded pharmacare coverage for children and youth ~ adding to the patchwork system.
“Because Ontario is adding universal, comprehensive pharmacare coverage to the age group that uses medicines least often. Many working-age Ontarians, who are far more likely to require medicines than children, will still be uninsured.”
I was a small child when I first watched batman… small enough to believe Batman and Robin were really walking up the exterior walls of skyscrapers. When I saw it again in reruns as an adult I fell in love with Batman all over again for the breathtaking seriousness of the dynamic duo. Later still I became Facebook friends with Adam West, still cool after all these years. When he passed away earlier this year I was deeply saddened.
So I made this small video as a memorial. In case you wonder why I’m a free culture advocate, I wanted to publish this on June 9th, but it was held up by a copyright claim (to the Batman Theme/Music). I am only publishing this now after having made a successful case for Fair Use.
Now that it has been cleared, I can share it with you here for Caturday.
Canada Day is poised to be the high point of celebrations marking the 150th anniversary of Confederation. Ottawa is in Party Central mode, with guests including Prince Charles, Bono and The Edge of U2 and a host of Canadian performers including Gordon Lightfoot, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Cirque de Soleil. But there has been a vocal debate across the country about how celebratory Canada 150 events should be — and even whether it should be celebrated at all.
Indigenous leaders have called the events a “celebration of colonialism.” A clever designer has been marketing T-shirts with an inverted Canada 150 logo over the words Colonialism 150. On Twitter, hashtags like #Resist150 and #Unsettle150 connect posts calling the celebrations into question. The @canada1504sale account draws attention to how corporations are trying to profit from patriotism.
Questions about how Canada 150 is being celebrated abound. Earlier this year the Parti Québécois launched a campaign called “L’autre 150e” to suggest Confederation has been bad for Quebec. People have questioned the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on Canada 150-related activities. Some MPs have criticized the limited place for Canada’s history in the government’s plans.
Should planners be concerned that this party has gone completely off the rails? Well, perhaps not. Controversy and contestation have always been part of celebrations in Canada, including landmark birthdays and national holidays like Canada Day. It would be more surprising if there wasn’t active debate about Canada’s past or what the path forward from here should be.
‘Day of lamentation’ in Nova Scotia
Dissent about celebrating Canada goes back to the early years of Confederation. Debating an 1869 bill about making Dominion Day a public holiday, Nova Scotia MPs argued that they would rather make it a “day of lamentation.” For these MPs, Dominion Day showed their powerlessness in the House of Commons. The bill was withdrawn, and not revived again until a decade later.
After the passage of the 1923 Chinese Immigration Act, British Columbia’s Chinese communities organized Chinese Humiliation Day events to be held on Dominion Day. They wore badges stating “Remember the Humiliation,” organized speeches and handed out leaflets. Their goal was to overturn the law, which banned Chinese immigration to Canada.
In the 1960s, organizers designed theIndians of Canada pavilion at Expo 67 to challenge the celebratory atmosphere of the centennial. The pavilion discussed issues such as language loss through residential schools. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, Quebec sovereigntists transformed the religiously oriented St-Jean-Baptiste Day events of June 24 into the explicitly nationalist Fête Nationale. This set up the holiday as a rival to Dominion Day events. Québécois artists took sides on the “national question” by deciding at whose party they would perform.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stops for a photograph during a street party for the Fête Nationale du Québec on June 24th in Montreal.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson
National celebrations have also had the potential to change the way our country functions. Governments have used them to set the tone about what Canada could be, rather than simply celebrating what it has been. As part of the 1927 Diamond Jubilee celebrations, the postmaster-general introduced a series of bilingual stamps. The stamps helped set a precedent for the gradual introduction of bilingualism into federal institutions.
The narrative of Canadian identity that has been part of the federal government’s Dominion Day and Canada Day events since 1958 has been dramatically transformed over the years. They used to be militaristic, British-centric portrayals of Canada’s heritage. Over the decades, bilingualism and multicultural Canada became central themes. Messages about Indigenous communities morphed from those that were explicitly assimilationist and colonial into a celebration of First Nations cultures and hope for reconciliation in the future.
Celebrations send messages to Canadians
The decisions made about which artists will perform at Canada Day celebrations, the languages they use and even the way they are dressed all send political messages to Canadians. Organizers of the Canada Day spectacles in Ottawa normally invite myriad francophone performers. They purposely include not just Québécois but also Acadians, Franco-Ontarians and other French-speaking Canadians. Doing so reinforces the idea of Canada as an officially bilingual country, and also sends a message that French-speaking Canada is not restricted to Quebec.
On Indigenous issues, the change in messaging has been dramatic. In 1965, First Nations were represented by tartan-clad, bagpipe-playing teenaged Indigenous girls from a British Columbia residential school. By the 1990s, this had changed to rock and pop artists who performed in the Innu-aimun (Montagnais) language or Inuktitut. It was a major shift from a message of forced assimilation to one encouraging revitalisation of Indigenous languages.
The laudatory ways that Canada is celebrated in official speeches on a Parliament Hill stage on Canada Day may mask ongoing deep problems in our society. But these events can also signal key symbolic shifts from the past, and possibilities of change in the future. It’s commonplace to dismiss Canada as a relatively young country by global standards. However, 150 years of a stable, democratic, multinational federation is nothing to sneeze at.
Canada’s political nationhood is an ongoing process that requires constant renegotiation and dialogue if we are to continue to live together. Events like Canada Day and Canada 150 provide opportunities to engage and educate Canadians about the problems of the country’s past and present. The stories of Canada told at these events may encourage Canadians to support new directions for the future. The controversies that surround the Canada 150 celebrations may actually indicate our desire to perfect and improve this country, rather than consign it to the dustbin of history.
Matthew Hayday is the co-editor of Celebrating Canada, volume 1: Holidays, National Days and the Crafting of Identities
A senior staff member with the much-scrutinized inquiry into murdered and missing indigenous women has resigned.
Executive director Michele Moreau cites personal reasons for her departure, which is effective July 21.
The inquiry released a statement saying it accepted Moreau’s resignation with great sadness.
Some First Nations leaders have been critical of the inquiry’s progress so far and victims’ families have said they haven’t been adequately consulted about hearings.
Chief commissioner Marion Buller promised improved communication.
Moreau said it is with mixed emotions that she is departing.
This story is part of a series from CBC North looking at Canada 150 through the eyes of northern families.
Larry Audlaluk was two years old when he and his family were uprooted from their home in Inukjuak, Que., and dropped off 2,000 kilometres away, on Ellesmere Island.
They are High Arctic exiles; part of a group of 87 Inuit who, in 1953 and 1955, were persuaded by the Canadian government to leave their homes with promises of better hunting and the option to return to Inukjuak in two years.
But promises were broken, and Inuit were forced to stay and form the communities of Grise Fiord and Resolute Bay.
Audlaluk says the government’s relocation plan was billed as an opportunity for Inuit of northern Quebec to live more traditional lives in the High Arctic.
But there were underlying motivations, such as stopping Greenlandic hunters who were poaching polar bears, and exerting Canadian sovereignty.
“It was the time of the Cold War, and Americans were getting a little bit too close,” says Audlaluk. “They wanted a civilian component up here.”
Very often during elections Canadians have been convinced not to vote Green or NDP because “they can’t win.”
So instead of voting for (and maybe electing) who we want, we vote “strategically” for someone we don’t want because we’re afraid someone we hate will win. Frankly, I think the phrase “strategic voting” is a misnomer, because it isn’t very strategic to vote against the one you want. {Although it is very strategic for the one who gets your vote!) I think the American term “Lesser Evilism” is far more apt.
Thankfully we are waking up. Since Elizabeth May’s election to the House of Commons, the New Brunswick and P.E.I.Greens are the 3rd parties in their respective provinces, and now the BC Greens are doing very well indeed. And since the federal Liberals have dropped the ball, with both parties favouring Proportional Representation, it looks very much like BC will be the one to lead Canada into a real representative Representative Democracy.
