Don't worry friends. I have not gone over to the dark side. I am not promoting the prosperity gospel of taking care of number 1 at the cost of others.
What I want to talk to today is the hatred that has been shown around the country the past few weeks. The first such event happened years ago. The fact that 215 children were found buried in a unmarked grave in Kamloops. These children represent the attitudes of many Canadians at the time. The lives of these children were not that important to them. The children were at a school setup to exterminate Indian culture and to demonstrate that white culture was paramount over other cultures. One might thing that such events were just from long past. However the last of the schools did not close in Canada until 1996.
We might think that such events don't happen anymore. But on Sunday evening, a family of five- grandmother, father, mother, sister, and brother were walking in London, Ontario. The family were muslim. A 20 year old, Nathaniel Veltman, fuelled with hate deliberately ran them over in his car, killing all but the 9 year old boy. Governments immediately began to investigate whether terrorism charges should be laid. Such tragedy again from hate.
I know that the vast majority of Canadians don't feel that hate, that the 20 year old felt in London. While we may not know our Muslim neighbour, our Black neighbour, our gay neighbour, our immigrant neighbour as well as we should, we would never think of harming someone just because they were different. In the same way, not everyone who worked at the residential schools felt such disregard for their students that they would bury them in an unmarked grave either. The fact though is we do our selves wrong when we discount those horrible deeds as just the work of one mad man, or a few bad staff members at residential schools. Something was wrong in our country when we set up a government and church run institution to rid the country of another culture. Something is still wrong in our country when the likes of Mr. Veltman (thankfully few in number) still feel that one culture is expendible.
We must teach in our schools, in our churches, and in our social gatherings that our Canada is a mosaic of people from many different cultures. Each different culture makes us richer as a society. No group is expendible. We are richer because the others are here. Everyone is important. Hate is never acceptible and hateful acts must be condemned. Blessings.
