right mind can justify owning that many
pairs of shoes? It gives me a headache
just thinking about the storage space
necessary to store all of them.

Most of the males I know, own
at most half-a-dozen pairs, and they
manage to keep them neatly pilled up in
their designated fifth of the closet. I say
a fifth because for the most part, women
tend to hog the closet space, not only
with their shoes, but with the rest of
the crap that they will never wear ever
again, if at all.

Recently, an acquaintance of mine
decided to rant to me about his wife’s
little faults. One of which was an
addiction to shopping. He told me about
the time his wife was clearing out her
desk, and in the process stumbled across
four pairs of heels that were still in
their boxes and had never been worn.
She had purchased these shoes during
her lunch breaks and had managed to
forget all about them. By the time she
discovered them she no longer liked
them and had to throw them out.

Stories like the one mentioned above
frustrate me. But don’t get me wrong,

I love it when my girlfriend gets all
dolled up, but there’s no need for a
wardrobe that looks like a department
store.

My only request for you ladies is
to try to be a little more sensible. If
you don’t need it, don’t buy it! Just
because it’s half-off, it doesn’t justify
a purchase. And maybe, just maybe,
consider putting that money that you
would otherwise be wasting towards
something a little more sensible, like the
purchase of a big-screen TV or some
new power tools for your man.

 

 

 

The
Mosaic

Canada stirs the melting pot

 

Sven Heyde, Mars’ Hill (Trinity Western University)

LANGLEY, BC (CUP)—Ever since
John Murray Gibbon published his 1938
book, Canadian Mosaic, Canadians have
been increasingly obsessed with the
notion of Canada as a country where
new immigrants are encouraged to
retain their traditions, where we respect
the uniqueness of minority groups,
and where pluralism and diversity are
honoured.

Canada contrasts the US, where
immigrants are assimilated, forced to
pledge allegiance to the American flag,
and their traditions are made secondary
to the American way.

This myth, of the mosaic and the
melting pot, is one that for a variety of
reasons will not die.

The unofficial, and, at various
times, official policy of the Canadian
government, even prior to 1867, has
been to assimilate French-Canadians into
the rest of Canada: they were pressured
to give up their language, religion, and
customs. The institution of elected
representation in Canada was initially
delayed for several years while the British
government waited for Anglophones to
outnumber francophone. Today, far more
Francophone than Anglophones are
required to be bilingual for their work.

The treatment of Aboriginal people
in this country is much worse. Residential

schools are older than Canada and

have an ugly history. Children at these
schools were sometimes beaten, sexually
molested, not allowed to speak their own
language, told that their culture was evil
and not worth preserving, and forced to
try to be like their oppressors. In 1969,
the federal government took control of
residential schools from the churches.
By the mid-70s many residential schools
had shut down, but the last one remained
open until 1996.

It is worth noting that the forced
removal of children from their parents
and their culture, one of the hallmarks
of residential schools, is one of only five
acts explicitly regarded as genocide by the
1948 Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,
signed by Canada, among others.

In the 1880s, 15,000 Chinese
immigrated to Canada, of which 6,500
worked on the railroad. The familiar
adage, “one dead Chinaman for every
mile of railroad,” stands as a reminder
of the conditions they worked under.

As soon as the railroad was finished,
however, the Canadian government
implemented a head tax to dissuade
further Chinese immigration. By 1903,
this head tax was $500, the equivalent of
two years’ wages.

Those Chinese people who could

 

afford to come here were then denied
citizenship. When the head tax did not
deter enough Chinese from coming to
Canada, the exclusion act was instituted
in 1923. Until its repeal in 1947, Chinese
immigration to Canada was limited to
only a few annually.

Government policy is one thing, but
the question remains, how do people
actually live in Canada? In Vancouver,
Toronto and Montreal, there is a very
different perception of diversity than
in the rest of the country, and for those
living in one of those cities Canada
probably seems pretty diverse. But even
in Vancouver, this may not be as true as
we think. Our ideal of different people
living together, each enriched by each
other’s cultures, has typically manifested
itself as a series of minority ghettos.

The myth of the mosaic betrays the
Janus face of Canadian diversity: we live
in a country where women couldn’t vote
until 1918, where Japanese-Canadians
were forcibly moved into camps during
the Second World War, where Aboriginals
on reserves were denied patronage until
1960, where homosexuality was outlawed
until 1969, and where we’ve been
bragging about our multicultural, tolerant
mosaic since the late 1930s.