Erasing history

This latest insanity comes from Ontario elementary teachers, who have passed a daft and contemptible  motion to eliminate Sir John A. MacDonald's name from every school in the province just because he was the prime minister during the residential (read 'boarding') school era.  "Native children in these schools might be frightened when they see the name 'MacDonald' on their schools," 'said the obviously-uneducated and ignorant head of the Ontario union.  What an outrage. 

MacDonald, the founding Father of Confederation and first PM of Canada, was a giant -- a visionary from a tiny country who actually imagined the impossible creation of a huge nation from sea to sea before anyone could even have conceived of such a notion.  Without MacDonald, there would be no Canada because this country would have inevitably been annexed by the US.

First crazies pushed for -- and won -- the changing of the name of the "Langevin Block" to the meaningless "Prime Minister's Office" and now they're going after MacDonald.  And just for good measure, they next have George Cornwallis in their sights.  What's next, book burning?  Why not denigrate the parents who raised them?  Absolutely shameful.

Sadly, this is all about natives and their desire to perpetuate the schools issue, Colonialism and the flogging of the inept "missing women" inquiry -- which, by the way, isn't going too well, thanks to its infighting native leadership.

Natives were among the most brutal and warring peoples anywhere, something completely overlooked by all-and-sundry.  Take the Iroquois.  In 1649, they massacred the Huron, leaving the latter a pitiful group of a few hundred of the more than 30,000 they had been before the brutality.  Twelve hundred of them also tortured and murdered the Jesuit priests who had come to educate and convert, tearing out fingernails and sparing no body part, according to recorded eye witnesses.  The Huron were decimated because the French refused to sell them conventional weapons, backing the Iroquois instead. 

It was end of a people and its culture.  Any mention of this anywhere?  No. 

Canadian history is being denied and erased by people who know nothing and will continue to be by those not even born yet if this PC nonsense continues.  It has to stop. 

  

 

Two words

"Stupido" and money.  Those words explain everything that ever happens anywhere.  The first word was used frequently by my late mother-in-law, who lived in Spain, to describe a wide range of random, senseless  acts; the second explained everything else. In fact, my mother-in-law didn't even need to utter the word "money", she just held up one hand and rubbed her thumb fingers together -- the universal symbol for money -- and everyone got it. 

"Stupido" was behind Calgary's gay pride parade organizers when they announced the new unified Conservative party would not be allowed a float in the parade unless members attended a three-day seminar on what it means to be LGBTQ...w x y z...whatever.  A three-day seminar??!!  How is that being inclusive?  The very thing they want the rest of society to be, gay pride organizers aren't.  First Toronto bans the police from having a float in its parade -- in or out of uniform -- and now Calgary is banning a political group.  Get over yourselves, please.

How dumb.  Toronto is even dumber because it has allowed the lunatic fringe "Black Lives Matter" to disrupt and highjack its parade two years in a row.  What does "Black Lives Matter" have to do with being gay?  Stupido.

As for "money", that word explains everything else going on around you.  Life is simpler now that I just need two categories to decipher it.          

An obituary...

...for the "past perfect" and "future perfect" tenses of  verbs.  I am constantly bombarded by atrocious grammar.  It's everywhere.  Did English grammar die in the 1950's?  I guess it did and I wish I hadn't been a recipient of such good grammar teaching because here's what I have to endure:

"He finished his work by noon, but was killed before that."  Incorrect.

"He had finished work by noon, but had been killed before that."  Correct.

This is the "past perfect".  People are always saying, "but was killed after that."  The verb indicates an action completed prior to another time or another action, thus the auxiliary "had" must be used with the principal verb.  This is called the "past perfect tense."  It's long gone.

"I shall finish my work by noon."  Incorrect because you do not know if you will have finished by noon. 

"I hope I shall have finished my work by noon."  Correct.

"The conference was to start tomorrow."  Incorrect.

"The conference was to have started tomorrow."  Correct.

This is the "future perfect" tense because the verb indicates an action which will have been completed before some point of time in the future, so the auxiliaries "shall have" and "was to have" must be used.  It must also be used to describe, for example, a conference which had not actually taken place.  If the conference were still on schedule, you would say, "The conference is to start tomorrow."  If it had not taken place, you would say, "The conference was to have started tomorrow."  Long gone.

Listen to any television show, or read any newspaper and you will know those "perfect" tenses died agonizing deaths years ago.   











 

Not a good look

If you're watching the Roger's Cup right now, you're watching Federer and Haase.  What hits me is the linesman behind Haase.  Whoa!  The guy has a gut from here to next week!  Why would they put an out-of-shape specimen like that on the court in full view??!!  He'd be fine refereeing a sumo wrestling match, but it just looks terrible and out-of-place on a tennis court.

Must be related to someone in Tennis Canada, or the guy who owns the stadium to get the job.  You would never see that at Wimbledon.  When we saw Federer win there in 2005, all the crew, officials, linesmen, ball boys and ushers were pukka-pukka to the back teeth.

Watching the women's semi this morning all you heard was whack, whack, whack, whack, whack, "out", as one or the other hit it out, or into the net after a boring, baseline rally.  Seems an awfully difficult way to win a point when you could come to the net and put it away.  No wonder they are so tired.

And I see Roger is sporting that unshaven look, which I don't like on him.  Usually he is so crisp.   

I thought I was pretty good

But I am not a patch on my new cleaning lady.  Since retiring, I have made efforts to do my own house cleaning -- albeit haphazardly.  Shoving the vacuum around the other day, I decided that was it, but where to find a good cleaner?  Over the years I have had this-one-or-that, all with dismal results.  Was that because they were native-born Canadians of the lazy me-generation?  Probably.  OK, yes.

In Calgary, the dust is relentless and I have long since given up trying to keep on top of it.  This town is officially one level up from a "desert" climate classification, so it's dry.  Don't get me wrong, I love the dry heat we enjoy here and miss the wretched and murderous humidity of the Ottawa Valley not a whit.  But constantly seeing a thin film of grotesque dead skin cells in the form of dust blanketing everything, along with errant bunnies blooming in every corner, chronically pisses me off.

But my wish was granted when I ran into a young Filipino woman loading up her car with vacuums and mops outside my neighbour's.  "Hi there, did you just clean TJ's house?" I asked.  "Yes, he's a regular client of mine."  Now, if she had been a Caucasian Canadian, I would not have bothered because I would have known what the results would have been.  But because of her culture, I knew she would be an excellent cleaner.  It's not racism, by the way, it's cultural. 

She showed up yesterday with an assistant and my house now literally sparkles and glows.  I had cleaned it (or so I thought) only a week earlier, but after the two of them scrubbed and polished and washed and shone it for five hours -- that's actually 10 hours of cleaning -- my humble abode is now bursting with pride.  And she tackled stuff I never look at, let alone clean.  They moved furniture, got into nooks and crannies, removed hard water stains and even polished the toaster!

Did I worry about theft?  Absolutely not.  She will now be coming every two weeks and my and I house will be thankful.      

Same old, same old

So, the whopping drug overdose and death figures among natives are caused by.....wait for it....colonialism!

Yep, you could have predicted it the minute the First Nations Health Authority put fingers to keyboard to whack out a report.  Apparently, the fact that natives have three times more overdoses and deaths is a result of "colonialism, displacement, inter-generational trauma and systemic and institutional racism," says Shannon McDonald, deputy chief medical officer of the FNHA.  And just for good measure, Grand Chief Doug Kelly threw in "unresolved grief and spiritual pain."

Another biggie is residential schools -- known in other cultures as boarding schools.  Apparently, natives only feel comfortable accessing health services (for which they pay nothing) when, "it is appropriate to their wellness beliefs, goals and needs.  Traditional healing practices and medicines are an important part of First Nations health, but not currently well-integrated within the broader health system," the report bemoans.  So let's just use drugs instead.  Brilliant.

All of Western Europe and Britain renounced colonialism generations ago, but here in Canada, the natives are demanding it be kept alive via their never-ending blame game.  

I'm sick of it.  Time to move on.

The answer lies in getting off the reserves and becoming integrated within mainstream Canadian society.  But as I say over and over, it'll never happen because the Indian Act and the reserve system are the mechanisms through which the money flows to native leaders.  That's the ugly stench of truth no one wants to smell.