Think like an Immigrant

 

Newly arrived immigrants at Pier 21, Halifax, Canada, mid-1950s

                                        

             

The strength or weakness of a society depends more on the level of its spiritual life than on its level of industrialisation. If a nation’s spiritual energies have been exhausted, it will not be saved from collapse by the most perfect government structure or by any industrial development. A tree with a rotten core cannot stand.

                     --Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

There is something unsettling about seeing the happy, laughing, vacuous faces of the wealthy and their happy, vacuous children; privilege doesn't evoke empathy. For some, the parents or grandparents of the wealthy were born here, for others their parents or grandparents were immigrants to Canada. In either case, people had to work for what they had, they put in long hours of  work to make money and to build a legacy for their children, to make a good life for their families, they didn't want their children and grandchildren to go without as they had. And they succeeded; see the expensive cars in the driveway, the big houses, the mansions, the fine clothes, the Patek Philippe watches, Rolex, Louis Vuitton, and other brands indicating status. It's from rags and being poor to riches and wealth and back to rags and poverty in three or four generations. Material stuff doesn't last forever, eventually it ends up in the landfill, the dumpster, or dust.

So now I suggest that we think like immigrants. These are people who arrived here with nothing but a suitcase and five dollars; they were willing to live in small apartments, several generations living together and being frugal, working several jobs. I am not suggesting that we all live exactly this way but at least we could reduce our level of acquiring stuff we don't need, stuff that we just want, we could be frugal and careful with money. We could remember what it was like in the past. We could prepare for the hard times ahead of us.

It is with this in mind that I wrote a memoir of my grandmother, Edith Morrissey; it is a memoir of her Girouard Avenue flat. I wanted to remember her--she whom we all loved--and so I wrote Remembering Girouard Avenue. My grandmother had little money but she lived in a large flat and family members who needed a home were welcome to live there, her door was open; she always had family members living with her: her Aunt Lib, her father, one of her sisters, and then, later, another sister lived with her and also her daughter, my Auntie Mabel, who never left home; and in the early 1950s my parents, my brother and I, lived with my grandmother for several years. The irony of this is that when my grandmother's husband died in 1932 my father told her to move to a smaller place, that family would want to live with her, he knew her generosity and what do you know, almost twenty years later, we were also living with her.

In the past few people were homeless, now there are homeless people everywhere. Now homelessness is a possibility for all of us; indeed, many Canadians are one pay cheque from being homeless, one rent increase from being homeless, one visit to a food bank from being hungry and eventually homeless. Homeless people live on the street, in a tent, in a bus shelter, they have no home to return to, they have no home to return to, no bedroom with a comforter on the bed, a night table and a book to read, food to eat, the heat turned up in our cold northern climate. There were always a few homeless people, they were usually older men who were often alcoholics; and they were taken care of by mission halls or the Salvation Army that fed them and put them up for the night or as long as they needed; it was not an easy life but it was not as widespread as it is now. Now, the homeless are everywhere and they include young people. What family did in the past is being replaced by government services, and while there are well-meaning people in government we can't rely on government to provide for everything people need. 

I remember two elderly women in Vancouver, they lived a few blocks from where the billionaires now live in West Point Grey in their $45M homes, 15K square feet for two people, indoor swimming pools and a helicopter pad on the roof, a view of the water, and these two old women had a large house but it was getting old and looked a bit run down. It would eventually be sold for the land it sat on, that's how it works when a city lot costs $5M and higher, you don't live in the old house on the lot, you tear it down and build something new. These two old women drove identical cars parked in their driveway, cars maybe forty years old. Here's the point: prepare for an uncertain future, be anonymous, don't draw attention to yourself, don't forget where you come from. Think like an immigrant. 

What they did

Downtown Montreal, 1964

Our progressive leaders herded us into some completely ridiculous causes—for instance, that what you identify with is the equivalent of being that thing—this defied common sense; or they implemented policies that were against our accepted collective beliefs and traditions, and they made any disagreement with their progressive causes an opportunity to cancel offenders, to silence us, to ridicule  us, to deny free speech, and howled with anger and derision if religion was mentioned; they turned contemporary art into something not based on a foundation of hundreds of years of artistic expression but on fashion, sexual politics, and turned art into an expression of Wokeness; Wokeness, for them, was the real content of art. They attempted to make us into a society without any moral values; they were always out for an opportunity to impose their ideology on average people. The progressives promoted the worst people in universities, encouraged violent protests, denied free speech, and destroyed the humanities with pseudo disciplines like gender studies, and it’s still going on. They allowed unlimited immigration, a free-for-all of unrestricted and unvetted population growth, and instead of listening to the electorate, managing the country's economy, being frugal with our tax dollars, not spending us into debt, they didn’t care because their ideology came first; they didn't represent the citizenry but promoted their social justice warrior causes. This was a time of darkness and now that time is coming to an end new bullies are taking power; democracy and good government was not promoted or protected by the Woke, and to their shame that is the Woke legacy. 

The carelessness of the rich

 

Some of the many disguises worn by Justin Trudeau

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is not the "great American novel" but it is a great short novel, and Fitzgerald's writing is flawless. His insights into human nature are brilliant; he knows of what he writes, he knows the class of wealthy, careless, selfish people. One of the themes of The Great Gatsby is the carelessness of the rich, they are depicted as being entitled and privileged people who really don't care about anyone but themselves, they leave behind them a trail of broken promises, disappointment, and death. These are people who inherited their wealth, they didn't work for it. 

    Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the Conservative opposition in parliament, was not born to wealth like Justin Trudeau; Pierre Poilievre can be abrasive, he is too abrasive for the liberal white middle class of the GTA, Ottawa bureaucrats, CBC administrators and announcers, and other city folk who are progressive; they don't like abrasive people who disagree with them. Justin is suave and handsome and comes from a dynastic family, the son of a former prime minister and on his mother's side other prominent politicians; he was identified as a future prime minister by the Liberal Party of Canada from when he eulogized his father. I watched Pierre Elliott Trudeau's funeral on television, it was in 2000, and when Justin stood beside his father's casket and was introduced to the public I knew this was a future prime minister, he was to the manor born. But I also knew that Justin hadn't written his own speech and I doubt he knows the Robert Frost poem from which he quoted, "The woodshed are lovely, dark and deep, / But I have promises to keep, /And miles to go before I sleep, /And miles to go before I sleep." Even then you could see that he is a man without depth, a man who lives on the surface of life; and he still lives on the surface of life, recently at the Pride parade in Charlottetown, there he was, running along the sidewalk and shaking people's hands, taking selfies; there is no gravitas about him, there is only the occasional appearance of faux gravitas.

    Despite the negative way Poilievre is depicted on the CBC he is a man of possible depth and thoughtfulness, but maybe this is wishful thinking on my part; there was no silver spoon in his mouth when he was born; good people nurtured him and he seems to have good values. But he is not totally to be believed or followed, he is still a politician and full of ambition; neither Justin Trudeau nor Pierre Poilievre are particularly popular among average Canadians. Poilievre has already sold out the English-speaking people in Quebec as he lusts after the French Quebec vote, and the Liberals did the same. The progressive CBC and the liberal media condemn Poilievre and everything he stands for. Meanwhile, Justin maintains his progressive message despite the country being in the mess that he created; he doesn't care about the middle class who are experiencing what he has done to Canada, a country that is now woke and progressive and poor. "Go woke, go broke", as they say . . .

    Today, many Canadians can't find affordable housing; their children will never own their own homes; more people than ever are homeless; food banks are being used by people who used to donate to food banks, not use them; food has never been more expensive than it is now; our medical system is collapsing; crime rates are increasing; in sum, the country is on a downward slide. The rich are getting richer and the rest of us are getting poorer, and the gap between rich and poor is widening. Canada has never been in as bad shape as it is now, and Justin took us here in only eight years. I believe that Justin's emphasis on progressive woke ideology is inconsistent with Canadian values; woke values displaced a more practical management of the economy. But Justin is solidly committed to woke ideology and only tenuously committed to balancing the books, good administration, and serving the Canadian people, and he has failed the country because of this.

    Justin has also alienated the few cabinet ministers who were serious and decent people, not just ambitious politicians; I refer to Judy Wilson-Raybould and Marc Garneau, they cringe when they hear his voice, they regret ever having known him, and the politicians that remain, for instance Freeland, Mendocino, Joly, and Lametti, will do anything to remain in power. As well, Justin has been kept in power by the leader of the NDP, Jagmeet Singh, who doesn't see the contempt in which Justin holds him, or the contempt many voters now feel for Jagmeet because of this. 

    Despite the costumes he wears, the rich boy antics, the inconsistencies, the profligate spending, Justin does have a core personality, it is made up of two things: the promotion of woke and progressive values and a narcissistic hunger for power. To this end he has spent us into hundreds of billions of dollars of debt. He is used to a life of wealth and comfort, never any worries about money, and a subsequent carelessness in his behaviour. I don't know if the country can survive Justin's years as prime minister, years of carelessness, years of waste, years of progressive ideology; Canadians know that the values that will sustain a person--and a nation--are conservative values, these include decency, respect, and trust; meanwhile, Justin promotes diversity, equity, and gender fluidity, values that are not primary to Canadian values and history.

Fall planting of hostas

We've had a mild October this year, it was +20 C yesterday and most of the previous two weeks; however, it is raining today (on Saturday) and the coming days will be in the +10 C range. This means it's been great weather to get out and work in the garden, in my case moving or transplanting hostas. One of the advantages of perennial plants is that they are perennial, you buy them once and not only do you have them year after year, but they multiply, and then you can divide them and have more of the same plants; plus, you buy them only once so you aren't paying for them a second or third summer. Perennials are the gift that keeps on giving... Frugality is something the government of Canada needs to learn as we are now half way to a trillion dollar debt. Meanwhile, annuals look great for one summer and then, in October, they end up in the compost or the garbage; I've seen piles of geraniums thrown out, still in bloom, they could easily have been overwintered indoors and planted the following spring. 

    About five years ago I planted four hostas in the front of the house, as a border to the walk, as well as other hostas planted in the backyard; I decided to move two of these plants to the back yard garden and that's what I did last week. In fact, I also moved a few other hostas into this same long row at the very rear of the garden, it has the effect of pulling the whole garden together. This backyard, my Canadian cottage garden, is not very large and it doesn't get a lot of sunlight except where the house abuts the backyard and even what sunlight I get isn't guaranteed, it depends on the time of day; in other words, nowhere does this garden get twelve straight hours of summer sunlight on a single day as do the gardens of some of my neighbours. I don't have a great love for hostas; I like hostas, but... so, planting these hostas was a matter of convenience and even necessity, it is all that will grow where I planted them; also, they are perennials and there are many varieties of hostas, they will grow and flourish in the shade and I like them well enough. 

You can see where two hostas have been removed, they were the same size as the hostas on either side of the remaining hostas; by the way, hostas are easy to dig up, even four or five years after first planting them the root ball was more or less intact. It is also easy to divide the root ball prior to transplanting them.

Here we see the row of hostas only half planted; this is very poor soil and it's beside some cedars and below an apple tree, so not the greatest place to grow anything.

Here is the completed row of hostas, they'll look better next year or the year after next. It was only after planting them that I realized how they completed the garden; the hostas gave a sense of enclosure to the garden as a whole, a sense of completion. 

I planted these hydrangeas and the hostas in the foreground last summer when I also dug this small island in the backyard. It isn't a lot of work to dig up small sections of grass and, one thing I've noted, is that an island also creates green space surrounding it, it creates paths. I enlarged this area this summer and, recently, I moved the hostas further away from the hydrangeas. By the way, the hydrangeas were moved from the front lawn area where they were too plentiful. I don't throw out any plants or bushes.