The Cons and the Great Rural Urban Divide

Well there I was biking down the boardwalk with my friends on a balmy Indian Summer day in November. Skidding on the dead leaves. And it was so excellent I'm starting to think life in Canada couldn't be better eh?

Until I noticed that this year many of the maple leaves are covered in big ugly black spots like tumours. And it just about ruined my day.

Because I couldn't help thinking of Stephen Harper and his Cons and what they're doing to Canada. Corrupting its values. Eating away at its fabric, like a fungus. By pitting Canadians against each other.

Like Great Ugly Leader is doing with the gun registry, using it to drive a wedge between rural and urban Canadians. Stirring up the Great Rural Urban Divide over gun control. Even though he himself once supported it.

Calgary Reformer Stephen Harper surveyed his constituents and found broad support in principle for gun control. He supported the bill at second reading. He then conducted another survey, in which he explained the details of the bill, and found a majority opposed to critical elements. He voted against gun control at third and final reading and faced accusations of flip-flopping and/or rigging the survey to get the result he wanted.

And was threatened by gun nutz.

Calgary Reform MP Stephen Harper, one of only two Reformers to support the bill, has also received “threats against my person or family.” .

But now he's quite happy to join them, as they whip up rural Canadians by claiming the registry only exists because city slickers hate them. Huh?

Because I don't hate anyone...except bullies and bigots. I don't judge people from where they come from.

And it all seems like Canada to me...















If you don't rake the leaves in the fall, you'll pay for it in the spring. If you don't shoot the critter eating the chickens you'll go hungry in the winter.

You know it's bad enough that Stephen Harper wants to change our gentle country into a nastier meaner place. It's bad enough that the opposition can't get more traction out of this health disaster.

Or all the other rotten things these porky Cons have done. But to allow Harper to play wedge politics in a country as fragile as this one, as he does all the time, could turn out to be the biggest disaster of all.

He has turned West against East, rural residents against urban dwellers. He has tried to marginalize women, gays, and artists. During the Coalition crisis he tried to turn English Canada against Quebec. Where will it end I wonder....and how much anger and resentment can a country take before it blows apart?

Which was almost enough to put a cloud over my beautiful Canadian Indian Summer day in November eh?

But not quite...














Because it was too warm and beautiful. And I love and believe in the infinite possibility of this young country too much to give in to despair.

So with that in mind I'd just like to say this to all the decent people in rural Canada.I hate the way some of you are being used by the Harper Cons to drive another wedge between Canadians.

I wonder if you, like me, ever wonder where all this anger and division might lead us?
















Because I think I can see where this one is going.

As more and more Canadians ....on all sides.... forget that this country was built on compromise not confrontation... like it was in the United States. And for good reason.

Oh well.... whatever happens in the future, I just want you to know that this city slicker.... from a rural/fishing village so small it makes a small village in Saskatchewan look like Chicago.

Still hates guns in cities. Still believes police officers have a right to try to make their jobs safer. But understands where you're coming from. Desperately wants you to be happy.

And although sometimes it's unbelievably hard eh?

Still loves you anyway...