One little, two little, three little Indians....

Flipping open today's local paper I came across three different takes on what it means to be an aboriginal in Canada today. Amazingly, or not, each was completely different. The first was a letter-to-the-editor by a man talking about the many unique privileges afforded Canadian aboriginals. He cited everything from the non-payment of taxes and the many lawless road blockades to the smuggling and other criminal activities that are tolerated by the authorities simply because....well, simply because they are. This gent's bottom line was that unlike the rest of us, aboriginals consider themselves outside of and above the laws you and I have to obey. He concluded by noting that "the litany of apologies by federal and provincial governments for attempting to bring aboriginals into the Canadian mainstream furthers this notion...yet we hear a constant stream of accusations from partisan groups that the royal treatment accorded them is not enough." Well, no argument from me on that one. I nearly wrote a letter myself, but restrained myself (for the moment).

The second was an article by Matthew Coon Come, grand chief of the James Bay Cree and former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations. Now, if ever there was a guy with a vested interest in keeping his portion of the $8 unaccountable billion we give the natives every year -- yes, every year -- I'd say Mr. Coon Come qualifies. Anyway, his bottom line was that Canadians have been guilty of centuries of both official and unofficial "genocide, ethnic cleansing and cultural destruction". He asserts that unless all Canadians keep discussing this travesty and tragedy, reconciliation "will remain a distant and difficult goal." He is also including the residential schools and their original (legitimate) victims. The thing I have a big problem with is that most of the "victims" in the media today are two and three generations removed from the actual events??!! How does this work? Many people have experienced abuse, but encouraging it to continue to drag people down generations later is simply irresponsible. In fact it is complete b-llsh-t. I'd wager that Mr. Coon Come and his fellows have had a big, guilty hand in the genocide, ethnic cleansing and cultural destruction of their own people.

Before he gets to his conclusion, he rants, weeps and wails about "the oppressive laws and policies that resulted in the withholding of such essentials as clean water and education". Last time I checked, it is the native leaders themselves who withhold these necessities by not passing on the money to their band members. Simplistic, I admit, but when Ottawa gives the money carte-blanche to the native leaders and their people continue to suffer on and off reserve, where else can you point the finger? It always amazes me that the natives can't see this reality?! Now and then, a few band members will organize, hold a press conference and demand accountability from their leaders, but these fizzle and fade.

The third was an article tucked away on the back page entitled 'First Nations Women encouraged to pursue science'. Now this was a fabulous article. It featured a woman named Becky Code who graduated with a B.Sc. in geology and geophysics from the University of Manitoba. She did this thanks in part to a program called "Operation Minerva", run by the Alberta Women's Science Network, which encourages young aboriginal girls as they pursue their education. The successful graduates then become mentors to younger girls and so pass on the keys to a better life. This network also offers scholarships to woman for study in science and engineering with some targeted specifically to aboriginal women. Challenges and barriers for native girls are met head-on -- especially for those living on-reserve, who have to take a bus to classes. Living on-reserve means there is a disconnect between how they view their future opportunities. As we see so often, living on-reserve means drug and alcohol abuse, teenaged motherhood and suicide. Operation Minerva works against these demons to keep these girls in school. Too bad this article was hidden on a back page. I would have liked to have seen it juxtaposed right beside Matthew Coon Come's wail.

So, instead of following Mr. Coon Come's mantra and continuing to lament the dismal pasts of their grandmothers and great-grandmothers, these young women are getting off the reserve and into a productive life for their own children and grandchildren. Bravo to them!

The Queen and I will meet again

Very excited. Received a call this morning that I would be invited to attend the Tree Planting ceremony at Rideau Hall on Wednesday, where Her Majesty would be...of course...planting a tree. Sure enough, the invitation arrived. To meet The Queen once in a lifetime is wild enough, but twice! I am over the moon. This event will require a hat and I have one I plan to wear. Not a huge brim in case I block someone's view, but lots of plumes and feathers. There is quite an article in the local newspaper about wearing hats to meet The Queen. I also googled "hat etiquette" a while ago and learned a ton about where and when to wear them. One thing I did not know was that if The Queen is not wearing a hat, no one else can. Apparently, the hat is a substitute for The Crown, so if she has not donned her symbolic crown, no one else can trump that. Happily, she never appears without either a crown or hat during state visits. I gather the hatless rule is for those occasions when one visits her during the day at her place, Buckingham Palace, for example, and she is just wearing an old tweed skirt and cardigan. Then you will be asked to doff your hat.

Brian, being in Houston, doesn't get to go this time. Well, that's what happens when a daughter marries an American.

I have been dining out, as they say, on my original Queen-meeting story for four years; now I will have another one with which to bore people to death. Having been raised by strident monarchists, having spent lots of my childhood making scrapbooks of every visit, having waited for hours in sweltering sun with my mother and grandmother on the side of highways for a fleeting glimpse of her as she drove by...I know they are dancing up there at the prospect of their daughter again meeting the Monarch -- something neither of them had a chance to do.

So, more news at 11 on that file.

The last touchstone

I just called my Great Uncle Paul -- the youngest brother of my grandmother. He is 95 years old and still totally with-it. He is a part of my birth family, my only touchstone with my long-dead birth mother. We talked and switched back and forth from his constipation to my mother, Shirley (dead at 49), to his daughter, Judy, who had died a year ago, to his nephew, Jim, dead two years, to his late wife, to his son who looks in on him...........to the nurse who gives him his enemas..........I kid you not.

When I finally found my birth family I was overjoyed and Uncle Paul was and remains one of the touchstones of my birth family. He was the one who dropped this into a conversation a few years ago.........."Did I ever tell you that your great-grandmother was a Mohawk Indian?" Whaaaaaaaaaaaat????? Well, he had forgotten to tell me that bit. He went on to say that this grandmother had no teeth, spoke no English, smoked a pipe, but was the only one who could chop frozen wood for the cook stove in the dead of winter. After her husband died, she moved back to the Tyendenaga Mohawk Reserve in Napanee to die. My Indian heritage explains a lot about me. Let's leave it at that.

I did not meet my birth mother, she had died a year before I had found her. More about that in another blog. Suffice it to say, I am like her in many ways. The argument about genetics versus environment is an interesting one. I am completely like my adoptive mother when it comes to rearing and values, but completely like my birth mother when it comes to personality and intelligence. Shirley I am, but Lillian I am also.

A Canadian Tragedy??!!

The report release the other day about the Air India crash being a "Canadian tragedy" struck me as wrong. It was not a "Canadian tragedy", it was a Sikh tragedy begun in Canada on a foreign airliner. The perpetrators were Sikhs, carrying out their hatred on other Indians via Air India. But as Canadians, we shoulder the blame and have paid millions and millions for inquiries and trials and reports and we are blamed for the importation of their hatred and violence into Canada. Those responsible walk free, while innocent Canadians have wrung their hands in shame and guilt. Remember, all this was pre-9/11 and security was normal for the times. The sikh who checked the bomb walked out of the airport and didn't even martyr himself. Back he went to Surrey and a nice dinner. Makes me so angry.

Many immigrants import their hatreds into Canada. Not what Canada is about. Last year we endured protests, traffic jams and blocked streets from the...I can't even remember the name of the disaffected -- oh yes, the tamil tigers, an East Indian faction on the banned list here, but still your tax dollars went to the police who had to man the barricades. That's what I love about Canada -- we let anyone protest anything. Thus, the whole thing modulates itself, rather than escalating into violence and killing. I would love to check the clothing labels on all the thugs who will be masked and throwing things at the upcoming G-8. They protest capitalism, but they sport the latest in guerilla outfits, made by slave labour in oppressed countries. Wanna bet?

"Bone Idle" versus "a psychiatric condition" .

In the world of Kim and Aggie, hoarders with filthy houses are just "bone bloody idle". In the American version of 'The Hoarders', similar slobs have a psychiatric condition. 'How Clean is Your House?' is a British show in which Kim and Aggie tackle a dump of a cesspool of a dump of a cesspool every week and clean it up. I'll get to 'The Hoarders' later, but first a peep into the muck and mire of Kim and Aggie's weekly mess. I absolutely love the show!

Kim appears in jewelry and died blonde hair, dolled up to beat the band. She dons rinestone rubber gloves and gives the home owner s-h-one-t. "Shut your gob," is followed softly by, "my love". Aggie swabs every surface and comes back with billions and billions and billions and billions of different bacteria -- all analyzed by special hospitals -- found thriving and multiplying on every surface. Don't get me started on the toilets!! I can't even go there. I am only talking about the kitchen counters! Nightly visits by ugly mice just enhance the domestic scene. Gag me.

So, the hapless owner stumbles around while Kim extoles the virtues of vinegar, tea, lemon, nail polish, bleach, grapefruit juice and bicorbonate of soda. Shoe polish is also used. "Well, I just sort of lost touch", says the idiot who lives there. Kim gives absolutely no quarter. He or she is a "lazy slob, my love,". Bone idle and useless also emerge as descriptors.

The American version of Hoarders has everyone suffering from a psychiatric malady. Please. Each show features mostly women weeping and moaning over three-year-old yogurt. Gag me again. Of course, we have the usual motely crew of victimologists and grief counsellors, all wading through tons of paper, shopping debris and decades-old purchases. Vermin and children are a-one. But instead of giving these women a slap upside the head, they are given to believe they are suffering from a mental illness. Whaaaaaat? Naturally, they all suddenly act mentally ill and begin to weep over the fifty pairs of shorts they bought last year and the one hundred newspapers they hadn't had time to read and the 250 cans of cat food they had left open on the floor for the 75 feral cats and the 10 family albums they were trying to sort and the christmas decorations they hadn't put away and the shoes and socks they planned to deal with and the bathroom they hadn't cleaned in five years and the kitchen stove they couldn't find anymore.... and on and on and on and on and on.................

But, as Kim says, "Darling, you are just bone idle," See, that's the difference. After Kim and Aggie leave there is a sense of accomplishment. They then return a few weeks later and find that Joe-Blow is still keeping up. The American hoarder has a sense of entitlement that empowers them to get right back into hoarding -- just to prove they were actually mentally ill and deserved a TV show afterall.

Just shoot me.

Other than that, Mrs. Kennedy...

Other than that, Mrs. Kennedy, how was your trip to Dallas? That's an old one, but it sprang to mind during our daughter's wedding this past weekend. No matter that we dealt with the golf club a thousand times, they managed to spell the groom's name incorrectly on the table card. They also managed to forget the dessert. They also did not have a point person with whom we could deal. It was this server and that server and this server and that server.....such a poor show for such a famous club.

And the church managed to spell Susanne's name wrong. They forgot the "ne". She would officially have been "Susan". They also did not issue a Catholic Fatima certificate -- the reason she had to be married in a catholic church in the first place. She needs the certificate for her school. So, Monday morning back we traipsed to the office and had the whole thing re-done. But they did cash the cheque in jig time. Make no mistake about that. I can also guarantee that all of the mis-steps are my fault. Ask anyone at the golf club or the church office and they will tell you that I did something wrong. So, I wrote two letters today: one to the president of the golf club and the other to the pastor of Fatima. Didn't think that writing to the people who messed up would guarantee they would report themselves to their superiors. As if.

But the wedding was wonderful. I am so happy that my darling Susanne has married her prince. Colin is a fabulous guy and he loves her so much. I also loved his parents and now have a clue about why he is such a cool fellow. We managed to keep the guests to 29 and as a result, there was not one person there that I did not love. It's either 25 or 150 and with 150 you have no time for about a third of them. Life is settling back to normal.

So, anyway...........

...we went to another reception at the British High Commission this evening. we have been going to these for various functions since the mid-nineties and have enjoyed them immensely. We have known four sets of High Commissioners and their wives and have made friends with two sets. All of the male high commissioners were/are wonderful; only two of the four wives have been nice. But, enough about bitches in the foreign service. I am looking forward to a lovely dinner at our golf club with the current high commissioner and his charming wife in July. They are just super people and very down-to-earth.

Whenever we go to Earnscliffe I am struck by the fact that this is the home of Canada's first Prime Minister, Sir John A. MacDonald. The British Government has elevated his presence in the residence, but it is appalling that the Brit's own his home. Can you imagine the United States allowing George Washington's home to be the residence of a foreign state!!??!! Would never happen. Canada should spend whatever it costs to buy back this home from Britain -- no matter the cost. There is a bust of Sir John A. in the foyer and whenever I pass it, I silently apologize for our having forfeited his abode. I am sure his ghost haunts the resident High Commissioner!

Over the years and the many receptions, I have come to know all the waitresses at Earnscliffe and hence, get all the best canapes. Seriously, you have to pay attention to the waiters and waitresses to get the best food. I always tell them I am not on a diet and I always remember their names. That is the key.

I plan to weigh in on the firing of the general who dallied with a subordinate. Not enough time right now. Suffice to say, he had it coming.