Right in the centre - Some questions and some statements
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- Published on Friday, September 4, 2020
By Ken Waddell
Neepawa Banner & Press
•Why is the Canadian government ordering nearly three times the number of COVID-19 vaccines as there are people in Canada?
•Why have there been less than 12 deaths a day in New York State for the last month or more when they were losing over 800 a day in April? What did they do to bring down the death rate? Are they doing that good of a job of protecting the vulnerable?
•Why has the death rate fallen so much in Canada?
•Has C-19 taken out all the vulnerable people in Canada and in New York? That’s doubtful, as there are hundreds of people in care homes and with health issues that haven’t gotten sick, at least not yet.
•Why don’t the various health departments announce the daily deaths due to flu, suicide, traffic accidents or natural causes?
•Has the whole C-19 thing gotten placed out of proportion compared to other diseases and causes of death?
•Has C-19 shown us that the whole hand washing, cover your cough, stay home when you are sick routine should have been our routine all along? The Australian stats seem to show that, with them having lower flu deaths during C-19.
•Is everyone tired of hearing about, writing about and talking about C-19? I am.
•Why is it OK to go to a demonstration, a big department store or a riot, but not a football game?
•A peaceful demonstration is one thing but rioting, looting, shooting and damaging property is another. A peaceful demonstration is a right, the rest are not.
•Who is paying the expenses for the demonstrators or better yet, the rioters?
•Will the governments in both the United States and Canada do the right thing and arrest the lawbreakers and restore peace, law and order?
•Will someone please bring back the teaching of Canadian history? Tearing down statues doesn’t help anything except to stamp out the lessons of history.
•Here’s the John A. Macdonald story in a nutshell. In the mid 1860s, the United States had built up a huge army to fight the Civil War. Macdonald saw what was shaping up and that when the United States was done fighting each other, they could well turn their military attention towards Canada. The U.S. would likely have won.
In 1864, the Charlottetown conference was held and out of that grew the beginnings of Canada. Four provinces joined together in the Confederation in 1867: Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. A small portion of what is now Manitoba joined in 1870. Manitoba became the size it is now in 1912. BC joined in 1871, based on the promise of a trans-continental railway (the CPR). PEI joined in 1873 and all the while, the area now known as Alberta and Saskatchewan stayed as the North-west territories until 1905. Newfoundland and Labrador joined in 1949.
Without the determined, yet highly flawed, Macdonald, there would have been no Canada. Certainly, western Canada would likely have become part of the United States. I doubt that the people who want to tear down Macdonald’s statues would be happy with that prospect.
Disclaimer: The writer serves as a volunteer chair of the Manitoba Community Newspaper Association. The views expressed in this column are the writer’s personal views and are not to be taken as being the view of the MCNA board or Banner & Press staff.
