Anyone in the media tends to get a lot of press releases from a variety of sources. I give them a quick scan and pass them along to the appropriate editor or trash them if I feel they have no interest to our readers.
One that made it to the trash recently was a screed on the negative aspects of multiculturalism. Since then a couple more releases have crossed my desk.
Seems the writer has a phobia about Asia. He was distraught that Jason Kenney had referred to Vancouver as Asian. The writer was concerned that French and English were not being recognized as Canada's official languages.
As someone said years ago (it might have been Bill Vander Zalm), in British Columbia, learning Mandarin is more beneficial than learning French.
Multiculturalism, along with bilingualism, is supposed to be one of the tenets of the Canadian federation. I always thought that multiculturalism was just a political ploy to garner ethnic votes. It seemed that the passage of time would result in the Canadianization of the immigrants within a generation or two. After all, people can only live in ghettos for so long.
Many years ago, I was part of a management group of six running a variety of businesses in Vancouver. Only one was originally from Vancouver. One was born in Italy, one in Norway, one in the USA, one in China and myself from the great city of Winnipeg, Manitoba. However, my Dad was from Slovakia.
Despite our cultural differences, we formed a fairly cohesive group. We would have made a pretty lousy hockey team, but all had picked up sufficient language skills and education to be capable of professional employment. To me this was the epitome of the melting pot - and a free enterprise system. A group of kids of humble origins from disparate parts of the world were in one generation able to achieve success and become active participants in the life of this country.
However, the country changed because of their background and cultural upbringing. The same is true of more recent waves of immigrants to this country. Their presence changes the country for better or worse. Those who miss the old days of an English protestant majority and a French catholic minority should realize that their arrival changed the country as well.
No one saw greater changes in their country than the native peoples. Canada was changed into something they didn't recognize. Those who complain about the prominence of non-official languages should check with First Nations on how well their languages fared with the coming of the original settlers.
Is it really a problem that some signs are in Chinese only? If you feel it is important to be able to read and understand everything, take language lessons. If in a few years we had another official language, so be it. Or we could just legislate Cree as our one and only language.
Canada tomorrow will be different than today. I have no doubt the melting pot will triumph. After all, weren't two solitudes two too many?
