Dear Editor
It might be thirty years since I remarked that we are products of our own era. I doubt if I am the only person who ever said that.
Anyone who grew up during the Second World War, for example, grew up with a wartime mentality. So did our government. Rationing was a way of life; it was also expected that young men should go off to war. It didn’t mean it was good. No one raised much objection when innocent Japanese Canadians were incarcerated after the government of Japan caused bombs to be dropped on the United States naval base at Pearl Harbour. It was all just part of the Canadian government’s mindset during the war, and it was the mindset of most Canadians.
I have some beautiful DVDs on gardens of the world. Two of these feature the garden of George Washington whom the people of the USA call the father of their country.
And each time those sections appear I am compelled to mutter, “George Washington’s slaves made those gardens.”
In those days the white man’s mindset was that was why the black man was created. The mindset of the era.
In the research Pierre Burton made for his books on Canada he discovered that Washington shrugged off atrocities practiced on United Empire Loyalists. When a group of clergyman approached him to beg that he get it stopped, he said, “They're just Loyalists.”
The people of the United States should tear down statues of Washington, erase his name from everything, don't you think?
It is no news that Sir John A. Macdonald had racist tendecies; it was not unusual in his time. It is also true he was a drunkard.
However, were it not for him my address might be Waseca, USA.
By the way, there is a Waseca in Minnesota, so I think we should change the name of Waseca, here, to some thing else. I'm sure everyone will agree.
I'm fed up with political correctness. Is it not much like throwing the baby out with the bathwater because it has warts and because it is the mindset of the era? Does no one have the guts to say, "But it’s our baby, warts and all. Maybe we can cure the warts or make sure new babies maybe won’t have warts.”
I expect Creationists know that Abel slew Cain and thus set a trend. Evolutionists must know that once an ape man bopped another with a club he kept doing the same when he felt like it, even to his own brother.
Brotherly love? Not likely. For centuries men all over the world have killed one another, wronged one another. (So have women.)
Have the so-called red men always got along? The black men? The so called yellow men? And so on and on.
What happened, happened. It cannot be erased by jumping on political bandwagons and demanding the destruction of statues and the changing of names.
Sir John A. can still be called the father of confederation – along with a bunch of other fellows, enough to fill a big long painting.
Are all fathers perfect?
Is this era perfect?
Meanwhile, does anyone ever stop to ask just who is driving all these politically correct bandwagons?
Christine Pike
Waseca
