I just spent almost 3 weeks in a small Saskatchewan town. That was an eye-opener! First I encountered some severely racist attitudes...particularly toward Aboriginal Peoples, then a kind of closed-mindedness to many things progressive. First, the "Indians" were compared to animals in that you can't 'teach em anything, they're too wild'. WOW! Was I in Canada still? The other thing I noticed - particularly on coffee row - was that many people tend to take a personal anecdotal occurrence and make it the rule in society. Never mind that their experience might be the exception to the rule or that they may have not had all the information. Now, I know that this kind of thing happens everywhere - in fact, i remember it happening in a conversation with some "progressive" friends at Christmas regarding our privilege as white, middle-class people in our society. But I digress....
Of course, even as I write this I realize that I am using anecdotal evidence to generalize across rural prairie towns. But it was so striking. Nobody talked about what the trends were or stats or studies. Even the talk show host out of Saskatoon constantly uses anecdotal evidence to support his (mostly) right-wing rants against climate change, taxation, social program spending etc.
I can't help but draw a comparison to the small town in BC that I have been in since four yesterday afternoon - Fernie, BC. When driving through the prairies, I was hard-pressed to find a coffee shop - local or otherwise - with wifi. Here in Fernie, there are 5 in walking distance! As I sit in the Cincott Organic Market and Cafe and eavesdrop on the conversations around me, I haven't noticed the same kind of prejudices in the conversations. Perhaps I'm biased. Perhaps I need to be sitting in a different kind of coffee shop. Perhaps we just have lots of work to do across our great nation to dispel those kinds of attitudes.
Right now, I don't want to go anywhere else. The organic Moroccan soup is too good.
2 comments:
there are such things as regional differences. I suspect that small prairie towns are pretty hermetic; how often does new blood move in and change ideas and the landscape? perhaps a town like fernie-which focuses on middle class entertainment like skiing, draws a different demographic.
The more isolated a place, the less likely for attitudes and beliefs to evolve.
Well I live in small town Manitoba now and it is funny because it is so white. There is a lot of negative attitudes towards natives, mostly because they have so many 'issues'. Here in MB there are a lot of native gangs, lots of abuse, lots of crime and lots of government racist nannyism. The worst thing the 'white man' ever did was to force natives to live on reserves and treat them different. Natives are equal to any and all in Canada, equal, not better, not worse. Let me be clear though, the answer is not to work with current native leadership who exist to enrich themselves but rather to work with natives themselves to get them off reserves and into the 21st century. We cannot continue to treat natives as 'special', this is the worst form of racism and ultimately builds resentment and racism.
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