| Issue #50, March 23, 2007 |
YOU’D THINK YOU WERE IN A FOREIGN COUNTRY...
By Dan Rattiner
You know how we make fun of Canada? How we say they are all a bunch of provincials only interested in things Canadian? Well, I can tell you, having visited here for the past two weeks, it is true.
It is so bad that unless you talk to somebody on the phone back home, you literally can’t get any of what’s happening in the rest of the world.
For example, here is what’s on the front page of the Globe and Mail — its very name evokes faraway international news dispatches — the daily paper of Canada. I am in Vancouver, which is, in population, the size of Chicago, and you would think that this newspaper would keep the intelligencia of this great city fully informed.
The lead story is headlined ALL IMMIGRATION BY 2010, and it’s about the just revealed fact, that the increase in the Canadian population is more and more being led by immigrants. In other words, whites in Canada aren’t making enough babies.
Elsewhere on the front page, there’s an article about how the Canadian PM is soft on crime, or so says a loyal member of the opposition. There’s an article about how Canadian timber towns are among those suffering the fastest population decline. And there is an interview with the Mayor of Okotoks, a town of 17,000 in the Canadian province of Alberta, which is having the fastest growth rate of any town in Canada. The new population figures for Canada — Canada is one tenth the size of the U. S. in terms of people — is a really big deal and the Globe and Mail has sent out reporters far and wide.
Where are the stories about Iraq? About global warming? About Afghanistan? Ah, there is one about Afghanistan on page 4. An investigation has shown that Master Corporal Robbie Fraiser of Ottawa, who died outside of Kabul ten months ago, might have been killed because the safety on one of his mate’s guns was not latched.
Other stories inside the paper on page 2 and 3, where a big metropolitan daily in New York might have a story about Russia’s President Putin, the decision about whether or not to build a space station on the moon or the quality of China’s automobiles, there is a story about some sixteen-year-olds in Winnipeg who stole cars and tried to run down joggers, and a University of New Brunswick physicist who remains baffled as to why he was detained by border authorities when he tried to visit California in 2004.
Chris and I have been traveling through the Canadian Rockies for the past two weeks. It’s a vacation. But whenever we go on vacation, to Paris or Capetown or London, we always try to stay fully informed. And you always CAN stay fully informed.
Not here in western Canada. So what’s going on? Has Giuliani been nominated by the Republicans? Is the “surge” working in Baghdad? Did the Knicks make the play-offs? Are we going to the moon? How’s the Freedom Tower going?
We can’t find out any of this sort of stuff here. Even the sports is about Canada. Canucks can’t hold off Edmonton. Somebody beat somebody in Cricket. A Vancouver runner unexpectedly finished fifth at the Commonwealth Games.
Well, don’t tell me everything is local because Canada isn’t a player on the world stage. Neither is Sweden or Lebanon or Costa Rica. And in all those places you can at least get the New York Times. You’d think this place was a foreign country or something.
Well, we’ll be home soon.
 |
