Letter to the Editor

[Kip Powick]

This was passed to me today...............not attempting to "beat a dead horse", but I don't think the author is alone in her/his thoughts

So many letter writers have explained how this land is made up of immigrants. Maybe we should turn to our history books and point out to people why today's Canadian is not willing to accept the new kind of immigrant any longer.

Back in 1900 when there was a rush from all areas of Europe to come to Canada, people had to get off a ship and stand in a long line in Halifax and be documented. Some would even get down on their hands and knees and kiss the ground. They made a pledge to uphold the laws and support their new country in good and bad times. They made learning English a primary rule in their new Canadian households and some even changed their names to blend in with their new home. They had waved good-bye to their birthplace to give their children a new life and did everything in their power to help their children assimilate into one culture.

Nothing was handed to them. No free lunches, no welfare, and no labor laws to protect them. All they had were the skills, craftsmanship and desire they had brought with them to trade for a future of prosperity. Most of their children came of age when World War II broke out. Canadians fought along side of men whose parents had come straight over from Germany, Italy, France, Japan, Czechoslovakia, Russia, Sweden, and so many other places. None of these first generation Canadians ever gave any thought about what country their parents had come from. They were Canadians fighting Hitler, Mussolini and the Emperor of Japan. They were defending the Freedom as one people. When we liberated France, no one in those villages was looking for the Ukrainian-Canadian or the German-Canadian or the Irish-Canadian. The people of France saw only Canadians.

And we carried one flag that represented our country. Not one of those immigrant sons would have thought about picking up another country's flag and waving it to represent who they were. It would have been a disgrace to their parents who had sacrificed so much to be here. These immigrants truly knew what it meant to be a Canadian. They stirred the melting pot into one red and white bowl.

And here we are in 2007 with a new kind of immigrant who wants the same rights and privileges. Only they want to achieve it by playing with a different set of rules, one that includes a Canadian passport and a guarantee of being faithful to their mother country. I'm sorry, that's not what being a Canadian all is about.

Canadians have been very openhearted and open minded regarding immigrants, whether they were fleeing poverty, dictatorship, persecution, or whatever else makes us think of those aforementioned immigrants who truly did ADOPT our country, and our flag and our morals and our customs.

They left their wars, hatred, and divisions behind. I believe that the immigrants who landed in Canada in the early 1900s deserve better than that for the toil, hard work and sacrifice those legally searching for a better life. I think they would be appalled that they are being used as an example by those waving foreign country flags, fighting foreign battles on our soil, making Canadians change to suit their religions and cultures, and wanting to change our countries fabric by claiming discrimination when we do not give in to their demands.

It's about time we get real and stand up for our forefathers rights we are CANADIAN lest we forget it!!! NO MORE POLITICAL CORRECTNESS.. NO more not saying CHRISTMAS in stores and our schools, Seasonal Holiday be dammed!!! I Want my Canada of birth BACK!!!

[chockalicious]

Hi Kip

There have been a few of these types of things that have been posted. I suppose that because you posted it that you agree with the basic premise.

The problem I have with e-mails, chain letters, rants, whatever you want to call it is that it seems to harken back to a country that never was.

How far back should we go? 1900? Does that mean that women can't vote anymore? It took until 1974 to have a female RCMP member, we can all see what a disaster that has been. Speaking of police it took until 1998 for Winnipeg to have a Chief of Police that was not of white, Saxon descent, we certainly could have never had a Ukrainian running things back in the fifties could we?

How about a time to no Labour laws? How about no union movement? I guess some folks with union-won pensions are going to be mad but hey...at least they can say "Merry Christmas".

I am sorry if this comes across as pissy but the seeming never ending chorus of articles, editorials like the one you posted bemoaning how things were so great way back when are loads of crap.

Plenty of immigrants still come to thsi country and embrace the Canadian way of life, just as immigrants before them did.

I just don't understand the apparent fear mongering/resentment that writers of these types of articles get off on.

[Guest rattler]

The good old days are not necessarily the "good old days".

I hear a lot of folks who want to go back to the good old days but as "chockalicious" says it all depends on when those days may have been.

Some things from the "Good Old Days"

- Backhouses

- Typhoid (At the present time, incidence of typhoid fever in developed countries is around 5 cases per 1,000,000 people per year.)

- lots of childhood polio (the first vaccine was developed in 1952)

- Segregation based on skin color

etc etc etc.

We may well be living in the "good old days" now.

However, it seems that some can voice their disagreement with things and that disagreement is judged to be valid based on their race or religion. All I want for Christmas is the ability to state my point of view when / if I disagree with them without being called racist for doing so.

[dagger]

This was passed to me today...............not attempting to "beat a dead horse", but I don't think the author is alone in her/his thoughts

So many letter writers have explained how this land is made up of immigrants. Maybe we should turn to our history books and point out to people why today's Canadian is not willing to accept the new kind of immigrant any longer.

Back in 1900 when there was a rush from all areas of Europe to come to Canada, people had to get off a ship and stand in a long line in Halifax and be documented. Some would even get down on their hands and knees and kiss the ground. They made a pledge to uphold the laws and support their new country in good and bad times. They made learning English a primary rule in their new Canadian households and some even changed their names to blend in with their new home. They had waved good-bye to their birthplace to give their children a new life and did everything in their power to help their children assimilate into one culture.

Nothing was handed to them. No free lunches, no welfare, and no labor laws to protect them. All they had were the skills, craftsmanship and desire they had brought with them to trade for a future of prosperity. Most of their children came of age when World War II broke out. Canadians fought along side of men whose parents had come straight over from Germany, Italy, France, Japan, Czechoslovakia, Russia, Sweden, and so many other places. None of these first generation Canadians ever gave any thought about what country their parents had come from. They were Canadians fighting Hitler, Mussolini and the Emperor of Japan. They were defending the Freedom as one people. When we liberated France, no one in those villages was looking for the Ukrainian-Canadian or the German-Canadian or the Irish-Canadian. The people of France saw only Canadians.

And we carried one flag that represented our country. Not one of those immigrant sons would have thought about picking up another country's flag and waving it to represent who they were. It would have been a disgrace to their parents who had sacrificed so much to be here. These immigrants truly knew what it meant to be a Canadian. They stirred the melting pot into one red and white bowl.

And here we are in 2007 with a new kind of immigrant who wants the same rights and privileges. Only they want to achieve it by playing with a different set of rules, one that includes a Canadian passport and a guarantee of being faithful to their mother country. I'm sorry, that's not what being a Canadian all is about.

Canadians have been very openhearted and open minded regarding immigrants, whether they were fleeing poverty, dictatorship, persecution, or whatever else makes us think of those aforementioned immigrants who truly did ADOPT our country, and our flag and our morals and our customs.

They left their wars, hatred, and divisions behind. I believe that the immigrants who landed in Canada in the early 1900s deserve better than that for the toil, hard work and sacrifice those legally searching for a better life. I think they would be appalled that they are being used as an example by those waving foreign country flags, fighting foreign battles on our soil, making Canadians change to suit their religions and cultures, and wanting to change our countries fabric by claiming discrimination when we do not give in to their demands.

It's about time we get real and stand up for our forefathers rights we are CANADIAN lest we forget it!!! NO MORE POLITICAL CORRECTNESS.. NO more not saying CHRISTMAS in stores and our schools, Seasonal Holiday be dammed!!! I Want my Canada of birth BACK!!!

Give me a break. The welcome mat wasn't out pre-World War II. A lot of politicians and activists were advocates of exclusion acts, quotas, and expressed outright bigotry towards newcomers. Yes, newcomers presumably didn't expect anything handed to them, but that doesn't mean that there weren't public and private institutions helping them in a myriad of ways, including putting food on their tables. Ever hear of settlement houses? Church schools? And who says that the overwhelming majority of today's immigrants aren't grateful for Canada and making do without handouts. In fact, Kip, a lot of them are doing jobs YOU wouldn't do - make beds, wash toilets, gut a carcass in an abattoir. You should get down on your knees and thank God that we have hard working people doing a lot of the grunt work that keeps our cities moving. Did you ever work as a coach cleaner overnight at CP so you could take a clean plane out the next morning? No, it was somebody else doing a job you'd never do.

Don't give me the guff of how "yesterday's immigrants" fought for Canada. You have no idea how many new Canadians are members of the armed forces and the Reserve today. Have you been down to an armory lately? I have. With my two eyes, Kip, I've seen just how many youngsters are joining the forces from varied Asian and African backgrounds. But if you want to talk about fighting for freedom in the Second World War, lots of immigrants and their children fought for Canada, but that doesn't mean they were welcomed by your parents! Tens of thousands of Jews fought in the Canadian Army, Air Force and Navy, and lots of them died, but Canada wasn't very welcoming to them in the 1930s. Perhaps you should Google the name Adrien Arcand, or read the book "None is too many" by Irving Abella (husband of the supreme court justice).

Frankly the article you posted is a piece of crap. It presents a distorted view of immigration then and now, especially the way immigrants were received by "the majority" prior to 1945. It was the war that changed our attitude to immigration.

Yes, in the first half of the 20th century, nothing was handed to new immigrants because Canada was in many ways too bigoted to allow them to establish themselves on a level playing field. Admission to certain universities? Not even for the brightest. Einstein wouldn't have gotten into some English Canadian universities. I'm not sure he would have gotten into Canada because we were even more restrictive than the Americans.

So yes, they - including all of family - established themselves despite discrimination liberally ladled out by "the majority". My late uncle who died in 1999 at the age of 97 came over in 1903, and I have an oral history that includes the reaction to him when he went out as a young man in search of his first real jobs. Most doors were firmly shut in his face. What he ended up doing was joining with his father and brothers was to start a construction company and build houses and apartment buildings for other immigrants to live in and for immigrant investors. The banks were owned by "the majority" and wouldn't lend immigrants money. So the immigrants created benevolent or building societies to pool capital.

Please don't make it sound like everything was happy happy, like Anglo-Protestant Canadians of the day thought the immigrants of the day were desirable or of "good stock". They absolutely did not. They looked down on them as the lowest of the low, and warned about Canadian being swamped by these dregs.

Nothing has changed except we seem to have a better class of immigrant today because by and large it's a smaller world and even poor people in poor countries have a bit more knowledge about us. And we require them to learn more about us as part of the process of acquiring citizenship.

Please Kip, stop. The horse is a corpse.

[Kip Powick]

Hey Dagger,

How about climbing off your high horse and coming down to reality. First read the preamble...I did not write this. Don’t presume you can lecture me, or anyone else about how the world is, or is not. Just because everyone doesn’t agree with your parochial view of the world does not mean they can’t have an opinion and more importantly a different opinion that yours. If it doesn’t fit into the world, according to Dagger…tough crap.

Gut a carcass at an abattoir??? Would it surprise you to learn that we had one of the two slaughter houses in our small town and I regularly worked in it before, and after school? Don’t be so damned presumptuous.

[chockalicious]

Hi Kip

While Dagger can certainly express himself and does not need me to defend him I hardly see a high horse situation here. There is legitimate difference of opinion going on.

I think too that to hide behind "First read the preamble...I did not write this." is a cop out. On these type of opinion pieces there is usually some sort of sympatico with the person posting it.

I did not see the demand in dagger's post that everyone see things the way he/she does, only the challlenge that the person who wrote the piece is full of crap.

[Kip Powick]

I think too that to hide behind "First read the preamble...I did not write this." is a cop out. On these type of opinion pieces there is usually some sort of sympatico with the person posting it.

Chocky...

let me see if I have this right... I post an email that was sent to me and then an individual starts to deride me personally and lecture me on Canadian history and when I post a rebuttal that he should have read the preamble you then feel I am "copping out"?

This is from a person who in another thread expresses his opinion about another "cut and paste" in such a congenial way....

Nice right wing clap trap post from De-icer. Did you download that of Bill O'Reilly's website?

Your opinion and you are entitled to it but don't you think that was a bit caustic?

Dagger's opinion as to the content of the post is just that...an opinion, but when a poster starts getting personal about what I do, have done, or know..I feel I am justified in setting the record straight.

PS..."Sympatico" is an ISP...you want "simpatico"

[chockalicious]

Hi Kip

I did not see you being derided personally in Dagger's post. I saw the ideas in it being torn apart. If they hit too close to home then I can see why you feel attacked.

The other cut and paste that you reference is crap. More"woes is me...my way of life is under attack" BS. Funny that no Republicans are mentioned in it, hence my categorizing it as Bill O'Reilly type garbage.

As I mentioned before, when these opinion type pieces are posted then I think the views generally reflect on the poster. Most would not post an idiotic diatribe that they don't at some level agree with.

Thanks for the spelling lesson. I prefer the European version of sympatico..it's a labor vs labour type thing.

[Guest rattler]

I can see how Kip considered Dagger to be launching a personal attack. I wonder if Dagger is aware of Kip's military history? I suspect Kip's knowledge of the Military is not confined to the odd visit to an armory.

The following from Dagger's post is an example of things becoming personal.

And who says that the overwhelming majority of today's immigrants aren't grateful for Canada and making do without handouts. In fact, Kip, a lot of them are doing jobs YOU wouldn't do - make beds, wash toilets, gut a carcass in an abattoir. You should get down on your knees and thank God that we have hard working people doing a lot of the grunt work that keeps our cities moving.

Did you ever work as a coach cleaner overnight at CP so you could take a clean plane out the next morning? No, it was somebody else doing a job you'd never do.

Don't give me the guff of how "yesterday's immigrants" fought for Canada.

You have no idea how many new Canadians are members of the armed forces and the Reserve today. Have you been down to an armory lately? I have.

With my two eyes, Kip, I've seen just how many youngsters are joining the forces from varied Asian and African backgrounds. But if you want to talk about fighting for freedom in the Second World War, lots of immigrants and their children fought for Canada, but that doesn't mean they were welcomed by your parents! Tens of thousands of Jews fought in the Canadian Army, Air Force and Navy, and lots of them died, but Canada wasn't very welcoming to them in the 1930s. Perhaps you should Google the name Adrien Arcand, or read the book "None is too many" by Irving Abella (husband of the supreme court justice).

[Guest rance]

Why does everything have to be black or white or left and right...where's the middle?Is it not possible that both sides are making legitimate points (regarding the article)?

We have laws and rights in Canada to protect all races and religions against unfair employment practices and discrimination, which is a great thing, but is there not times when the boundaries are getting pushed further and further?Should we not be allowed to at least discuss these issues without personal attacks?

Kips article raises some interesting points, not just about immigration, but generational expectations.Compared to our forefathers our current generation has a sense of entitlement and victim mentality, which in my opinion is a bigger concern.

[Specs]

I read Kip's original post and had three immediate thoughts

-In light of similiar discussions we've had on here lately I thought he was just putting forth another opinion he'd read somewhere. I didn't make the connection he was of the same mindset as the writer.

-When did he change the little footer whatchamacallit thing after his name. It used to be a nice little philosophy. Now he's dumpster diving or stealing jokes from.........Rodney Dangerfield?

-The writer has had a disappointing life. The Canada of his birth changed the day after his birth. It even changed from the day, year decade, etc before he was born. It changes a little every day and it always will. Is he really saying that when he was born it suddenly became perfect?

We are and will continue to always be a nation of immigrants. Without them, economically we'd perish and wallow in underachievement. Take a look at our universities and you'll see that immigrants are now the bulk of the graduating class in Medicine Science and Technology. Take a look at the new breed of enterpreneurs and you'll find a huge percentage are visible immigrants. Our success in the future is dependant on our immigrants.

In a critical objective analysis of how our Canada is changing I think the final analysis would be that we are a stronger country because of our immigrants. We have a democracy that can bend and adjust to meet the needs of the population. A woman pushed the envelope on existing rules to highlight a possible failure of our system. Maybe she could have used a different approach to get her point across but she didn't. In the end she was penalized but she also won a moral victory because she highlighted the need for a change. Democracy recognizes that need and one way or another it will be addressed. In the long run a democracy like ours will attract more immigrants because it is perceived to be honest and fair and it offers hope. Yes the country will change but it always has been. The writer is just to narrow minded to see it.

[Kip Powick]

Specs.

Thanks for your comments….

My life has been one of fortune and fun, fortune in that I got to do what many only dream of, and what is more important is the fact that I have been blessed with a wonderful and understanding wife and three great children, all of whom, for some reason, (product of their environment? ) have a great sense of humour. The recent change to my “signature” block was the result of a quote sent to me by my middle son…I thought it was a hoot and thus went from………..

Life’s journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well preserved body…but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting…”Holy crap…what a ride!” .

to the one that now adorns my signature block…and I don’t think it can be attributed to Rodney …..sometimes change is good. Not too often do I take anything said or written about me to heart but on occasion, when the right buttons are pushed, I leave my comfort zone and get my back up…perhaps it is cathartic because oft times I normally don’t get too excited about anything except family, boating and scuba.

Life is too short to attempt to correct all of civilizations wrongs and, more importantly, each day that damned light at the end of the tunnel gets a little brighter.

Have a nice week.

.

[HHI]

I normally don’t get too excited about anything except family, boating and scuba. 

Kip,

As usual you are leaving the best til the last - right?

Henry

[IFG]

.... I post an email that was sent to me and then an individual starts to deride me personally and lecture me on Canadian history  and when I post a rebuttal that he should have read the preamble  you then feel I am "copping out"? ....

Hi, Kip - I'm trying to follow this ... You posted somebody else's piece. Fine. Another poster's dander was raised enough to post a pointed reply. If you take some of the comments against your posting personally (and it wouldn't be the first time in dagger's case), you can meet that head on. But why disavow a reasonable indication that you agree with what you quoted?

People often paste the writings of others that they find resonant with their own opinions and beliefs. They don't have to state it in so many words. There's an old maxim that "Silence gives consent", and it applies here. In the absence of anything said to the contrary, it is natural, and a fair assumption, to take as given that you were sympathetic (confession: i'da made the error about simpatico as well ) to that polemic you put up.

But it's not even that you were completely silent:

I don't think the author is alone in her/his thoughts

I've always thought of you as a straight shooter. The above doesn't literally say you're in agreement with your paste-up, but if you're telling me otherwise, I'd have to parse anything else you say very carefully.

Cheers, IFG

quick PS: ed. for spelling, and to agree that in the end: "Life is too short to attempt to correct all of civilizations wrongs and, more importantly, each day that damned light at the end of the tunnel gets a little brighter. [posted while I was cobbling up my own]" (starting to squint, too )

[Kip Powick]

The above doesn't literally say you're in agreement with your paste-up, but if you're telling me otherwise, I'd have to parse anything else you say very carefully

Start parsing........... I will admit that this media can sometimes lend itself to intimating something that is not there. In this case whether I agree with the author or not ,is not relevant. Based on previous threads, the authors content, and the wide variance of opinions being expressed in this forum , I merely added a comment that "he is not alone in his feelings".

If that simplistic comment indicates to the reader that I am in agreement with the authors opinion then I guess in future I will have to put an easy to read/simple disclaimer on anyhing I cut/paste/ post that may be of interest to others.

So.....there is an article written about how we should bring back Capital Punishment...I cut/paste and add " I would think this fellow is not alone in his feelings" and right away you would ascertain that I am advocate of Capital punishment...pretty much a stretch isn't it??