This is the place I came from. I sometimes call it a town, but it's really just a village.
I took this picture standing in a field full of sheep. Baaaaa. A couple of days before, I assisted at the birth of a cow. Mooooo. And when I was a boy I saw farmers protect their animals with guns. Bang. Bang.
So now that I'm living in a city I think I can safely say, I know both sides of the Great Urban Rural Divide.
And because I love both sides. How could I not? It really really pisses me off to see how Stephen Harper and his ugly Cons are using the gun registry to divide Canadians.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper rarely got through a speech here during his five-day tour of northern Manitoba and the territories without mentioning the crucial vote over whether to abolish the registry scheduled for when Parliament resumes in September.
And I hate how the debate is being framed.
Rural voters, the vast majority of whom are white, don’t understand why people in cities want further restrictions on their way of life and a culture that is under threat as Canada becomes ever more urban and multicultural.
I just don't buy it. City folk don't want to torture country folk, or take away their guns. People who live in the country know what community means better than most. And are perfectly capable of filling out a form and registering their guns just like they register their cars.
Because they're not dumb eh? Gun crime and domestic violence are a problem in rural areas just like they are in cities. And so is suicide.
“As a rural emergency physician and coroner, I can safely say that I’ve never seen a handgun injury. I have however seen my share of injuries and deaths inflicted by rifles and shotguns. I have felt the pain of investigating a double murder-suicide as a result of escalating domestic violence. Suicide, contrary to public opinion, is often an impulsive gesture. Keeping guns away from depressed people is essential.
In the assaults and murders I have seen that have involved guns, the perpetrators acted on impulse and the unsafely stored long gun was readily available. Gun-related injury is not just a Toronto problem that involves gangs. It has occurred in my small idyllic rural community and involved people that would otherwise seem quite normal. Registration of firearms is important to ensure accountability and compliance with safe storage.”
So when doctors, and nurses, and police officers and women's groups support the gun registry, both the rube country boy and the city slicker dweller in me agree: it's a good idea eh?
And I support the people who are trying to make us ALL safer.
As Toronto Police Chief William Blair, who heads the Canadian Association of Police Chiefs, told the Star, “Frankly I don’t tell hunters how to hunt. I’m not sure why hunters want to tell the police what we need or don’t need to do our jobs.”
And that's all I'm going to say.
Except that I'll always be proud to be a country boy.
This debate over whether to fill out a form is totally absurd, totally manufactured, and verging on MADNESS.
A man who would defy reason, endanger lives, and pit Canadian against Canadian just to win votes, isn't fit to be Prime Minister.
We need a Great Divider in this country like we need a gun shot wound.
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.
