It is getting harder and harder to hold my tongue when the immigration loonies come out into plain view.
You know the people I mean? Those who go on and on (and on…and on…and on) about how all these “immigrants” are ruining this nation.
My most recent encounter, of what is fast becoming my largest pet peeve, happened recently while a friend and I sat enjoying lunch in a local eatery. A would-be acquaintance of his, who was finishing up at a nearby table, stopped by ours on his way out the door to say hello. Somehow, the conversation quickly escalated to this gentleman’s distaste of all the foreigners being allowed into his country.
And so I sat, enjoying my Greek salad and Columbian coffee…fighting back my repulse to ask this Jack-ass (who’s facial features and voice clearly conveyed his European heritage) exactly which indigenous band he was part of.
Fact of the matter is that most of us that make up this amazingly diverse and splendidly inclusive nation, we so proudly call Canada, are walking around with DNA that originated somewhere else on the planet. We are all immigrants.
My parents, one of Irish lineage and one of French, were the descendants of people who came to this country to find a new and better life. They might have sailed here on the bow of a great ship or perhaps in the brig. Frankly, I don’t give a rat’s rear-end either way. They came here to live and to be free. And I owe them the gift of being able to call myself Canadian.
That is kind of our deal here in the true, strong, north and free.
Canada has always been, Canada still is, a place where people who are fleeing oppression and hardship run to for shelter from those political storms. Canada was the last stop on the Underground Railroad for people who were being held in slavery. It is a place where human beings are accepted as human beings…where we celebrate freedom of voice, freedom of religion, freedom of speech…just plain freedom.
And damn, don’t we do it well?
Show me another nation where so many cultures have come together to create a stronger, more globally respected and unique society. Canada is comprised of strands of heritage that stretch from nations around the globe and back again.
As I enjoyed a Canada Day breakfast in our local Legion, my mind couldn’t help but think of all the brave men and women who went to war, giving their all so that I could proudly display my Canadian flag on my luggage in any airport in the world.
I would welcome any of the immigration loonies to visit our Legion buildings and explain to the families of so many Canadian heroes who died on far-away battle fields, showing the world what it meant to be Canadian and paid the price for freedom, why they don’t think our Canada is a place for “foreigners”.
Joe Martelle 
Well written, Joe. I, for one, am glad my family came to Canada, after WW II, to be given the opportunity to buy land and build a family home. It was something they could not have done had they stayed in a war-torn country that had to rebuild from the rubble left at the end of the war. Thank you, Canada.
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I am the child of immigrants! Proud to be the first born and bred Canadian in ny family! My older brother was born here but conceived in the UK. A country that in the 60s still clung to a system where the highest rung of the business world he could go was set by the place of his birth. So he and my Mum packed up their 3 kids and sailed to Canada where he was able to go high up the ladder in his field amd later was able to call those who woyld have been his superiors in the UK equals. I married a foreigner and 2 years ago he emigrated from his country where we had lived for many years to my homeland. What makes Canads great is the fact its ability to welcome all people and incorporate parts of their culture into its own and be a continupusly changing culture!
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