Saturday, July 05, 2008

"Longing for the Old Canada"

Here's a trip down memory lane for the nostalgic Ian Hunter and David Warren.

Capital punishment. The lash. Deaths from illegal abortion. Residential schools. Inuit starvation. Red squads. The padlock law. Polio epidemics. The Head Tax.

Internment. Christie Pitts. KKK meetings in Ontario.

Indians couldn't vote. East Indians couldn't vote. Japanese Canadians couldn't vote. Chinese Canadians couldn't vote. Women couldn't vote.

Homosexuals were jailed. Contraception was illegal. Domestic rape was legal until 1983. Women were paid less than men for the same job, never mind for work of equal value.

Jewish children were turned back to Nazi Germany to be gassed. It was legal to refuse to serve Blacks in a restaurant. It was legal to segregate Blacks in a theatre--and arrest them if they wanted to sit with the white folks. There were quotas for Jewish students at McGill.

Ah, the good old days. When men were men and women were girls. Dominion Day. "A Canadian citizen is a British subject." God save the King. The Queen. People knew how to behave. To think.
We had values. We had standards. We were civilized. All downhill since then.

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