Lemon: The Seven Blunders of Canada

So, the Seven Wonders of Canada are in and once again, no place or thing that I have any affinity for was included as being special.

I guess I'm deprived (though I don't feel that way) because I have never been in an igloo, never paddled a canoe, have managed to avoid Quebec City, only seen Niagara Falls from a casino, was born here didn't enter as an immigrant on Pier 21, and never really looked at the Prairie Skies except when I'd hit a golf ball up into them. The Rockies, didn't mind looking at them, wouldn't want to live there.

Bay St., fancy golf courses, cool bars and patios, gymnasia and the other places I really like weren't even given passing attention.

But I find solace in that when it comes to the CBC rating things, I can hearken back to Dr. Jonson and his opinion of dogs walking on their hind legs, "It is unusual, not in that it is done, but in that it is even attempted".

But what stands out is that 2 out of 7 of the wonders are aboriginal and this morning on the Ceeb they waxed poetic about how "the north defines Canada". I switched channels before they got to the wonder of canoeing on a silent northern lake with only the lonesome tones of a loon as company.

Why does the CBC always somehow want to define aboriginal things as part of "our" culture. I doubt that not many more that a tenth of our population has ever visited a reserve or even shared pemmican with an aboriginal.

Hearkening back (I hearken more and more as I get older) I remember the Global Millennium Festival - for about 24 hours every country in the world got 3 minutes on world wide TV to show their stuff, what they were doing special at the dawn of the age of Sagittarius (or something).

Canada's was three minutes of a couple of Inuit guys sitting on the ice beating a drum . . .
I'm sure that helped our tourism.

There is nothing in the aboriginal heritage or culture that is in mine. Oh, I respect them and their right to exist and have their culture so long as that culture doesn't involve taking over private developments or blocking railroad tracks.

But to somehow suggest that a country largely settled by the Scots, Irish, English, Germans, Ukrainians, Polish, Chinese, Russians, and French somehow share the igloo/canoe aboriginal heritage is preposterous.

But CBC is very good indeed at doing preposterous things.