Silly Little Country

Heritage

I have been thinking about this word, and my life. The streets I walk are not the ones I grew up in. There will still be a part of Canada for a long time who thinks that this is quintessential heritage.



It was for me as I grew up; I got to grow up on a river, and also in a place where, with a little effort to go actually see logdrivers. I doubt there are many of us left who can do it. It could not ever be a part of mt life in a serious way again.

The video is, of course, a special bit of genius; the singers, by the way, are the progenitors of Martha and Rufus Wainwright (OK, one of them is).

But obviously there is an enormous part of what is great about the country is disappearing with nobody having direct experience of one tradition.

The more recent tradition of free speech is the one at stake now (and it is not a new one in Canada - we have a wonderful history of what some might regard as a less aggressive approach to free speech than the colonies that separated from our Mother Country in 1776, but it is nothing to sneeze at, and hard-won).

So I can give up the log-rolling, and make it quaint. But when the protection for free speech becomes quaint, then I am worried. And did not most of the people who came here come to luxuriate in that wonderful privilege, and I am sure they do not want jerks like Elmasry stealing that from them. And I ask them to speak up and many are doing so.

Labels: heritage

posted by Alan Adamson @ 6:37 PM