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Has Canada Lost Its Identity? What Does It Mean To Be A Canadian?

Has Canada Lost Its Identity? What Does It Mean To Be A Canadian?

By Yvonne Sam
PRIDE Columnist

yvonne-samIn the history of the world there is no example of a culture, civilization or country that has survived in the absence of an intact family unit. From a historical perspective, this has meant father, mother, sister, brother, grandparents, and sometimes other extended family members.

The onset of the Industrial Revolution brought what we now know as the nuclear family — father, mother, brother and sister.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, immigrants flooded into Canada, fleeing oppressive governments, or merely seeking greener pastures. It was implicitly understood that English was the de facto official language, being a good citizen was expected, and contributing to the betterment of Canada, as a whole, was one’s civic and moral obligation.

Children were taught to attend school, get a job, get married, and ultimately raise a family. These were the inherent principles that pretty well served Canada as a nation, until recently.

Now, people are experiencing difficulty in knowing what it means to be a Canadian.

People enter the country, legally and illegally, and refuse to speak one or other of the official languages. Judges and politicians have redefined the family unit; gender is no longer determined at birth; and the government is invading every aspect of both our public and private lives.

One is left to wonder, how did mankind become so presumptuous as to say that their gender is no longer determined at birth, based on the anatomical features present when they are born.

As Mother Nature gets up in age, she is beginning to make all sorts of mistakes. Boys born with penises are claiming to be girls, while girls born with vaginas are now claiming to be boys.

Some have even gone so far as to say there is no longer a thing called gender; that there is no male or female; but to some extent one can “self-identify” from moment to moment, as to what their gender is.

Even former US President, Barack Obama, demonstrated his belief in this mode of thinking by making bathrooms in the White House “gender neutral”.

Bathrooms are no longer labeled as male or female. You can now choose which one to use, based on how you self-identify at that moment.

Such behaviours bring to recall Protagoras, the Greek philosopher, considered the father of relativism, who basically said there are no absolutes.

Protagoras is best known for his statement, “Man is the measure of all things: of the things that are, that they are, that they are, of the things that are not, that they are not.” Hence this insidious notion of “self-identifying,” is an extension of Protagoras’ philosophy.

In this view, there is no God or any higher power. Each individual is the all and be all of their existence. There is no common moral framework by which man should live by; every man lives by his own individual moral code.

With such a belief, a society loses the very glue that keeps a people (nation) united. Typically, language, moral values, and patriotism are some of the common threads that augurs for a cohesive society.

Since absolutes no longer exist, we now have a country, where sex is no longer determined at birth and race is no longer determined by genetics or ancestry.

I can claim to be seven feet tall, though I am only five foot eight; but yet have the legal standing of being a seven-footer, simply because I say it’s so.

A question that readily springs to mind is, “Would you go to a medical professional who only self-identifies as a physician; having never attended medical school?

A society without rules is a society in chaos. We have little kids thinking they are homosexual; illegals who think they have a constitutional right to be in the country.

Values are the DNA of a society and Canada has certainly lost her values in the name of individual freedom. Freedom only works within the context of shared rules or beliefs.

A prime example is the game of basketball. Everyone who plays the game agrees to a common set of rules by which the game is played. Within these rules lie the opportunities for individual players to express their uniqueness. But without a common acceptance of the rules of the game, basketball cannot exist.

So it is with Canada, without common acceptance of rules dealing with sexuality, morals law and order, we will no longer exist as a society.

Yvonne Sam, a retired Head Nurse and Secondary School Teacher, is Vice-president of the Guyana Cultural Association of Montreal. A regular columnist for over two decades with the Montreal Community Contact, her insightful and incursive articles on topics ranging from politics, human rights and immigration, to education and parenting have also appeared in the Huffington Post, Montreal Gazette, XPressbogg and Guyanese OnLine. She is also the recipient of the Governor General of Canada Caring Canadian Citizen Award.

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