Ducky Tales or: How I Spent My Canada 150 Day

We (along with Jasper the retriever, a.k.a. The World's Happiest Dog™) took a cousin in from Texas down to Lake Ontario where, yes, we saw the giant rubber ducky! It looked like this:



As one wag (okay, 'twas I) quipped, the duck, which cost our profligate provincial authorities over 200K to rent for the occasion, is a lot like Premier Kathleen Wynne's government: it's overgrown, full of hot air and a colossal waste of our cash. Also, because of the hordes of celebrants, most decked out in our national colours of red and white, who had descended on Toronto's waterfront, it was rather hard to see.

The ducky was cute, but you know what would have been even more impressive? An immense Ernie swimming nekkid beside it, like some Sesame Street Gulliver in his Lake Ontario bathtub. And, hey, maybe he could have regaled us with his recent meet 'n' greet with some moppets (who are just like you and me) at a Jordanian refugee camp or, even better, with First Nations kids at some remote encampment in the frigid north. Anything to make us "privileged" "colonialists" feel ambivalent about our special day, as some of yesterday's waterfront entertainment, dubbed "Our Home on Native Land," laboured mightily to do.

Epic fail with that one, I'd have to say.

Update: With the Trudeaupian Liberals at the helm, soul-crushing guilt and PoMo ambivalence are the order of Canada Day 150, as Paul Keery writes in the Toronto Sun (my bolds):

Where do we find any such reflection [re the good things about Canada] in the government’s celebration of the sesquicentennial? There isn’t much on the Canada.ca website about Canada’s history. 

Instead, Canada has been celebrating “diversity and inclusion, reconciliation with Indigenous people, youth and the environment”. All worthy, but very contemporary. It seems that this government cannot contemplate anything beyond the present: where is any sense of Canada being the third oldest continuing government on Earth, of Canada’s proud experiment in self-government and respect for rights? Of one mosaic in which all of our stories are respected yet interwoven into one nation? 

It’s as if this Canadian government is ashamed of Canada’s past. The Trudeau government’s Canada is a strangely adrift country, a ‘post-modern nation’ celebrating identity politics and its resulting groups rather than celebrating Canada’s national identity. Only historic successes in its four themes matter. Beyond them, so many bad things happened in Canada’s past that there’s not that much to take pride in before 1967 in this government’s view. Move along, people. 

The Libs are such excruciating drips--and about as joyless as it gets. Here's hoping they're handed their walking papers a.s.a.p.