Whatever happened to Canada? How have we gone so drastically wrong? How have we lost our collective way and devolved into pandering ninnies to the interests of the perpetually woke, disgruntled and disaffected?
The latest is the news that 200 historical plaques and monuments -- cast in expensive bronze, no less -- will be renamed and recast because Pat Kell, director of "heritage" for Parks Canada, has decreed that our plaques do not adequately reflect....you know what's coming....the Indigenous.
"The dedication of these plaques are at odds with today's standards," she ludicrously said.
Why in Gawd's name is the tiny tail wagging the Canadian dog?! It's so insane and wrong.
"Parks is in the middle of a three-year program to re-examine and rewrite the plaques that the Historic Sites and Monuments Board use to point out places deemed important to understanding Canada's past.
"Some involve historical figures who held beliefs at odds with current standards. They include one of the Fathers of Confederation, John A. Macdonald; Archibald Belaney, otherwise known as Grey Owl; and Nicholas Flood Davin, founder of one of the West's first newspapers."
Reasons include ignoring Indigenous contributions or using antiquated language, such as "Indian" or "Eskimo." Another issue is controversial beliefs held by historical figures.
The most common reason for rewriting -- covering plaques for French explorer Jacques Cartier, Alberta's Bar U Ranch and Nunavut's Kekerten Island Whaling Station -- are "colonial assumptions," the document says.
One voice of sanity emerged, that of Larry Ostola, former vp of heritage conservation at Parks Canada.
"A new woke perspective is being imposed on what was formerly an apolitical, fact-driven historical designation process," he sanely wrote in the National Post.
But Kell said the changes are being partly driven by the 2015 report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. One of the calls to action recommended Canada "develop a reconciliation framework for Canadian heritage and commemoration."
She said it's an attempt to use the latest scholarship to broaden the stories told, not erase familiar ones. Sorry, Pat, it is because that's exactly what you are doing.
Bob Coutts, for many years the chief historian of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board, said it's a mug's game trying to decolonize sites that are historic, largely because of their role in colonization.
"The story still focuses on a colonialist story," he said. "You could pad it a little bit, but it's still going to be a plaque about the building of a fur trade fort."
As well, the whole idea of plaques depends on written history. That works against Indigenous history, Coutts said.
______________
In a further bowing and scraping to wokeism, Calgary is not going to celebrate Canada Day with the usual fireworks display because of....wait for it...."cultural sensitivity". Naturally, the affronted Indigenous are still not satisfied. Nicole Johnston, Piikani advocate, went all truth-and-reconciliation on the mayor and said she and others had asked Calgary to drop Canada celebrations altogether (really!!??) in 2021 following the discovery of children buried in unmarked graves at a Kamloops. B.C., residential school.
(Note: These so-called graves were later found to be tree roots, not skeletons -- an inconvenient truth no one ever mentions, except me.)
"They went ahead and had the fireworks anyway," she complained. Hello, Nicole! I thought Canada Day was a celebration of what's great about this country and all its people, not just about pandering to one disaffected group.
Guess not, what with our ultra-woke mayor Gondek in charge. "I think the mayor should step up and apologize for the first year for not understanding what the fireworks meant for Indigenous people and cancelling the fireworks when we first asked," opined Johnston. Wouldn't it be nice to see the odd native have an agenda other than what went on a couple of hundred years ago? Never seems to happen.
__________________
Since penning this, enough people hit the bullsh-t button to force Gondek to reinstate the fireworks. Calgarians are obviously much more sane that the dunderheads running it.
No comments:
Post a Comment