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This was the actual, official death of Canada. This was the moment we ceased to have any semblance of a country.
Don Cherry was a Canadian legend, a household name, someone that every young Canadian grew up watching. He was a professional hockey player, then a coach, but most famously the main personality on Coach's Corner, where he would give commentary on hockey games, mixed in with a few of his own views.
He was fired for saying that newcomers to Canada should respect our customs. He spoke brashly and with conviction, as he always did, and he used the phrase "you people" in reference to fresh immigrants, but fundamentally he was fired for trying to enforce adherence to our tradition of honouring our fallen soldiers on Remembrance Day. He suggested that "you people" need to wear poppies as a sign of assimilation, of respect, and of appreciation to the people who sacrificed their lives to build and defend our once great nation.
If this man, beloved by so many and for so long, can't ask that Canadian traditions be respected, then no one can. That was the message sent by his firing and humiliation. The government and media wanted all Canadians to know that "we can't expect immigrants to do anything at all when they come here, they must be given free reign to opt out of our society, even as they come here 'for our milk and honey.'"
If no one is allowed to defend our culture, then our culture ceases to exist. If we can't hold newcomers to even this most basic standard, wearing a poppy-shaped pin for one day a year, then we can never hope for "assimilation," because there is nothing for anyone to assimilate into.
And this is what we have seen since then; newcomers forming their own ethnic enclaves, doing business in their own languages, hiring their own people, bringing their foods and their festivals and their customs with them, never even attempting to understand what Canada is all about. Most don't know a single thing about Canadian history aside from "White people stole the land from natives," and many don't even speak either of our official languages. Why should they? They have their own cultures and enough people to ignore ours.
Don Cherry being fired signified the end of any expectation of standards being upheld, and the end of the ability for Canadians to stick up for themselves. Every day since then, multitudes of foreigners have come here, and none of them have ever thought about what it means to be "Canadian," other than to be given a piece of paper from the government. This place and its people have no meaning to them, aside from what we can give them.
Unless there are serious changes, and we grow the backbone to stick up for ourselves again, soon, we Canadians will be a minority in our own home, disenfranchised and disempowered, left at the whims of the ungrateful hordes who resent us.
This Remembrance Day, wear a poppy with pride, and take note of those who don't. They are not your allies.
Sassygal@Sassygal1971
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