Posted by We Canadians like to think of ourselves as being kinder and gentler than our neighbours to the south. We are a welfare state with universal health care and better and affordable public education. We live longer, have fewer murders (especially gun related ones) and less crime in general. Unfortunately, Canada’s self-image can be best described as what is it that makes us not American as opposed to what makes us distinctly Canadian. Culturally, we are much more similar to the Americans than we like to think. The one big thing that separates us from our American cousins are our socialist institutions that more resemble those in Europe. Liberals who have been smoking too much of their soon to be legalised high THC marijuana would assert that this is a good thing; although they would take exception to the statement that we are culturally similar to America. That’s because we cannot admit this basic truth to ourselves; it’s too much a shock to our worldview of how we want to see ourselves. A few though, like this opinion piece from the Toronto Sun, are at relatively honest in their assessment:
Canadians, it turned out, were not particularly mild. Nor were we particularly resilient, in contrast with our self-image as hardy pioneer stock.
Rather, Canadians tended to complain. We complained about the lack of central heating in Europe. We complained about the bad roads and the worse drivers. We complained about the lousy water pressure in the showers.
Most of all we complained about the weather. Who could have imagined Crete in January would be so cold? There was a commune here in the ’60s? Really? This place is a dump!
As we celebrate our 150th anniversary as a nation this year (the British North America Act was passed on 1 July 1867), our great pioneer spirit and pull-up-your-boots nation building attitude, if it ever really existed, is certainly now long gone. We are now just a country of lazy and entitled liberals who whine, bitch and complain about pretty much anything and everything without actually doing anything concrete to solve the real problems. Surprisingly, liberal rag Huffington Post got it mostly right in this article about the sesquicentennial:
Dominic Ardonato doesn’t see much reason to celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday. The retired high school teacher complains about a disappointing economy, racial divides, and political squabbles that dominate his life in Montreal. He’d much rather reminisce about the magic of Montreal’s Expo 67, the spectacular world fair that marked Canada’s centennial and served as the country’s global coming-out party.
“It was the best of times. And now it’s the worst of times,” the 69-year-old declares over the phone while reminiscing about Montreal’s extravagant birthday bash. “(There was a) new metro, a new world exposition site, a new downtown, all kinds of high-rise buildings. It was just growing. Growing and growing. And lots of money. And now there’s no money.”
So many of today’s millennials are struggling with a tough job market and soaring housing costs, and the path to building wealth is proving much steeper than the one travelled by their parents. “When I was looking for work in the 2000s it didn’t seem that great,” says Wilkes, born in 1971. “But even compared to that it seems worse now.”
Irma, to put it simply, was big news. It did not come out of the blue suddenly; it was reported on ad nauseum for over a week so anybody and everybody should have had ample notice it was coming. If you were to get a week’s notice that Godzilla was coming and was going to stomp your city flat, would you not pack the car and head for the hills? It’s like that ornery old man who refuses to leave his home, waving his walking stick at the police who tried to evacuate him while yelling expletives only to be crushed under the giant radioactive lizard’s foot a minute later; most of us would smirk with schadenfreude and says it serves him right. But not Canadians. Our discounted Caribbean vacation has somehow become the equivalent of a universal human right in the eyes of the media and of the glazed-eye populace. So when the hurricane of the century approaches, what do Canadians do? Get on the plane and fly right into the eye of the storm because, you know, I booked time off work and that vacation package and flight is non-refundable.
OK, so you’re an idiot and you went on vacation anyway despite ample notice that the perfect storm was bearing down on you (or you were on vacation already and decided to stay and ride it out instead of getting the first flight out of town). I guess you should just suck it up and hope that there is enough clean water and food at the resort to last until they restore power and you can catch a flight out right? Nope, not only do Canadians think it’s their God-given human right to vacation in the tropical sand despite imminent natural disasters; it’s the government’s responsibility to rescue their dumb asses when the shit hits the fan from their stupid life choices. “I have always travelled with the thought that our Canadian government would look after me if something like this would happen. This chills me to the bone,” declares Brenda Bot of Orangeville, Ontario. Wow, really? I’ve got an idea for you Brenda, the next time you complain about whiny “snowflake” millennials, maybe you should take a look in the mirror first. Maybe that should be a new Transport Canada rule that before boarding an airplane, all passengers are required to check their entitlement; it would certainly make life easier for the rest of us.
Then there were the complaints that while America was busy sending military aircraft and ships to the region to aid and rescue its citizens; Canada relied on getting commercial airliners to step up their flights. “Planes are coming and going but only for Americans to board and get home. We look pathetic as a nation and something needs to be done.” Well, if we weren’t a bunch of pacifistic liberals who have slashed their military budget to nothing, maybe we could send our navy and air force to rescue our citizens. The problem is, while the US has a massive military infrastructure that it can use during a time of crisis, we basically have nada as I pointed out in this earlier article. I bet you the same people bitching about Canada not sending our military to rescue them are the same jerks who supported the gutting of our military to the point where we have nothing to send in the first place.
Then the post-mortem arm-chair analysis started to come in with the CBC asking the really inane question, “Does the Canadian government owe an apology to Irma evacuees?”
Many of the Canadians caught by Hurricane Irma were already in the region when the storm formed: permanent or seasonal residents of the islands; people who operate businesses there; medical students studying there; or people on longer vacations. Others travelled to the region after it became clear there was a danger.
“I personally don’t think the government of Canada has to apologize really for anything,” said Mark Entwistle, who formerly served as Canada’s ambassador to Cuba, the Caribbean nation with the highest confirmed loss of life from Irma… The debate is a bit around where the line lies between personal responsibility when you decide to travel overseas and leave your home base,” said Entwistle. “Going into the Caribbean in hurricane season has risks to it.”
A lone voice of sanity and reason in a sea of whiny over-indulged Canadian entitlement. Thank you Mr. Entwistle, I’m sure you were a great ambassador to Cuba.
But the bitching and moaning doesn’t end there. Three months later, the saga continues with news reports that, “Passengers scramble after WestJet, Air Canada cancel Puerto Rico flights. Who’s to blame?” Good lord, here we go again. Essentially, the airport in Puerto Rico has been severely damaged from the hurricanes this year, especially Maria in late September. Reading between the lines, I think the terminal that services WestJet and Air Canada is the one impacted which would explain why, “American, Delta, United and JetBlue are still flying to the region.” But I have to guess at this because our lazy-ass reporters don’t have the time or brains to explain why this is happening; they just want to make a pithy point that Canadian airlines suck (they do… but that’s a different story). Plus Puerto Rico is an American protectorate so you would think that American airlines would continue to operate if only for humanitarian reasons.
But even a cursory examination would show that Puerto Rico’s problems are far from over with half the island still without power a month and a half after Hurricane Maria. I had a golfing friend who had booked a family Christmas trip to Puerto Rico who cancelled right away and was looking for alternatives over a month ago. That’s what any, in my opinion, reasonably intelligent, informed and educated person would do. Sadly, he is a recent immigrant from China which would explain why he still uses common sense. He hasn’t learned yet that the proper Canadian response is to ignore the problem, fly in anyway with a grand sense of entitlement, and then whine and complain after the fact that it’s not fair and the government isn’t doing enough to protect me from my own laziness and stupidity. Welcome to Canada my Chinese friend, true north whiny and entitled.