Politically Correct and Stuff

When growing up I do not remember anything being Politically Correct or Politically Incorrect. If someone were to preach today, what was acceptable in the 40s and 50s, they would be labelled a radical, a racist, a chauvinist, a sexiest and on and on and on. I do not think anyone felt they were insulting or degrading others (with the odd exception) because of words used to describe a person because of their sex, age, whether they were a minority, what country they came from, the colour of their skin, if they had a disability, etc. It was, at the time (I thought) correct and acceptable. Now I know that some or all of these description shouldn’t have been used, and I am sure at the time were very hurtful to those that were the subject of the names and remarks. I am having difficulty trying to figure out how to write this without showing that, although I pride myself at not being a radical, a racist, a chauvinist, a sexiest and on and on and on, when growing up I was indeed all of those. Some examples were songs and nursery rhymes that we sang – One little, two little, three little Indians, was a song that tells the demise of ten little Indians, one by one, with no show of sorrow. In all the Hollywood Cowboy movies, the Indians were always depicted as wrong, evil, ‘savage’, etc. – and deserved to be beat by the white man every time. Indian was the correct term at that time, but Injun was a slur that was often used. Today, in Canada we have the politically correct, “First Nations” and in the USA “Native Americans”. In Alberta, the First Nations people were not allowed in Beer Parlours, and if someone was ever convicted of a crime and the courts banned that person from consuming alcohol, they were put on the ‘Indian List”. No females were allowed to enter a Beer Parlour without a Male escort – and when they did, they had to use a different entrance and sat in a separate section from the single male patrons. Women may have had the vote for years, but their role was mainly that of a school teacher, bank teller, secretary, and if married, a stay at home wife and mother (a dress and apron wearing, smiling ‘stay at home wife and mother’) for the male ‘bread winner’. I have a copy of an ad out of a women’s magazine, telling women what their role was as a housewife – wow, I would hate to repeat the article to a women’s libber today, but I will share it in a future Blog. As the years have past since my childhood, and women started entering the mainstream work force, I admit at times my eye brows raised, like the first time I saw or heard about a female police officer, doctor, lawyer, car salesperson, truck driver, bus driver, border guard, pilot, and on and on. Living in the area of predominantly Ukrainian farmers I had no problem pronouncing all the various names ending in enko, ski, chuk, etc. When I joined the army at 16, I was amazed to hear the names of other ethnic people and mostly the names of French Speaking Canadians. I knew my country was bilingual, but ‘they’ were way back east! The only Asian’s that I knew was the Chinese owner of our lone café – and later his nephew who emigrated to live with him, who in fact – I helped teach English. Words like Jap, Chink, DP, Injun, Bohunk, Polack, were all used without the bat of an eye. I think I may have been about 7 when we were travelling to my Grandfathers and we had car trouble right beside a farm. While my father and the owner of the farm were fixing the car, we went into the farmer’s home. It was a very large house and the farmer had two hired hands, one of which was black (a race unfamiliar to me – with the exception of a long play record we had of the story of ‘Little Black Sambo’, which was very racist, but completely acceptable at the time). I was sitting on the floor in front of their huge fireplace enjoying the heat that the massive burning logs were giving, when someone came and stood beside me. I looked up and there was this man – my memory says very large man (but considering I was small and on the floor, he could have been only 5 feet tall), and he was black! It scared me so badly that I cried – terrible isn’t it? I remember the colour of his skin being explained to me, and vividly remember his smiling face, as later he sat on the floor beside me telling me a story. Finally I want to mention the ‘crazy people’. People did not have mental disorders or the many other problems that are medicinally treated today. It was very simple – they were all crazy! I am pretty sure using the description of ‘crazy’ is politically unacceptable today, but today I think a lot of the political decisions are crazy – does that make sense??

Onset of Winter

Bulrushes

Although Victoria is the Hawaii of Canada, we are presently experiencing snow, wind and 6 below temperatures (15 below wind chill).  For anyone not converted to metric that is the same as 25 and 5 Fahrenheit.  I am writing this rough outline on paper, by candle light because our power is out.  Without power!!!  What do we do? Help? Our home has electric heat, stove, lights, computers, televisions, garage door openers, coffee machines, beer bottle openers (well that is an exaggeration) – but you get my drift.  So, I definitely have the ‘mood setting’ for writing by candle light, with no electricity, as it was when I was a child.  The exception being, in days of yore, the wood burning cook stove gave us heat, coffee and somewhere in the kitchen the beer bottle opener would have been nailed onto the wall.  I have truly turned into some sort of a wimp, living where I do today (and complaining), compared to the winters of my youth. The onset of winter was always the best when we would not have much snow fall after the river started to freeze over. With very little snow on the ice, it would allow us to skate on the river, ponds and small lakes.  One year when I was around 13, I and an older friend skated up the river for hours, having to actually walk on the banks around any rapids (that had not yet frozen over).  The river had so many turns and bends that to travel a mile ‘as the crow flies’ you would actually skate about three times further.  The majority of the river activities would be at the south side of town. Some days it would be like a ‘Winter Wonderland” scene from a movie – all ages doing so many different things – it was so much fun.  If there was a few inches of snow, the skaters would have scraped large skating areas, and with the snow it allowed cars to tow skiers down and around the river.  There would be two, three or more camp fires, with logs pulled around for people to sit to put on their skates, and of course to roast wieners and marshmallows.  Sometimes as darkness approached, skaters would soak bulrushes in kerosene, light them (they would burn for a long time) and then skate around with their torches.  Yes – truly a scene from a movie – such a great childhood memory!  But alas, once too much snow would fall, that time would be gone until next year, weather permitting.