Tale of Two Summits by Roy MacGregor, Globe and Mail

The best thing that ever happened to Huntsville was the G20 Summit.

Did you know that Tony Clement is the MP for the region including Huntsville?

Did you know that the Parry Sound (now Parry Sound-Muskoka) has flipped back and forth between the Liberals and the Conservatives before Clement won the riding by LESS THAN 100 VOTES in 2006, and by over 11,000 votes in 2008. Reference here. Yeah it’s wiki. The Harper minority governmentS sure have been good for Clement’s career.

MacGregor goes on to describe:

While they marched in the hundreds in Toronto this weekend to demand a full inquiry into the police conduct during the G20 that saw shops vandalized, police cars burned and more than 900 people – not all of them protesters – arrested, in Huntsville they were sitting down with their weeklyForester to read an open letter from Colonel Wayne Eyre, commander of CFB Petawawa’s 2 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group.

And if that wasn’t enough, they could go to the local radio station’s Web page and read similar words from outgoing Ontario Provincial Police Commissioner Julian Fantino.

Wow. Talk about being blocked in by hegemony. When words of praise from the military, as well as the disgraced and scandal-ridden outgoing head of the OPP are words to be “proud” of, then we really are talking about two different worlds.

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Events of the past week have crystalized a number of feelings inside me, and rather than do another “Fuck Canada Day” post (see my post on July 1, 2009) I thought I’d do something that I’ve meant to do for a long time.

I seem to need containment these days, or my blogs will just be a long scream of inarticulate anger. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it just doesn’t make very interesting reading.

Canada’s anthem.

Those of us born here are taught it in school. Those who come here from elsewhere learn it. Or else.  Those who are Aboriginal are probably offended by the whole thing. As is anyone who calls themselves an ally.

O Canada, our home and native land

Many people have taken this line to pieces, most popularly, “our home ON native land”. But I still have a problem with this. Who is “our”? Anglos? The broader category “white folks”? Are white folks still the centre of the fucking universe? For fuck’s sake. And “home”, such a loaded term. Ward Churchill talked about colonization in a very personal way. Someone comes to your house, sits down and then says “Hey I live here now. Get the fuck out.” And when you protest you’re either taken out of your home, or killed. Or both.

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