On 30/06/2012 10:31 AM, Mike Spencer wrote:
Daryl wrote:
Here's to the War of 1812.
I'm not so sure that we should celebrate. Here's a piece that sees
1812 as a major and lasting setback for Canada:
Like most Upper Canadian Tories in those days, Catherine and
William believed that, in the years after the 1815 Treaty of
Ghent, Canada's U.S.-born majority had become potential traitors,
the border was something that had to be sealed tight against both
invaders and immigrants, and such concepts as democracy, public
education, religious freedom, church-state separation and
industrial capitalism were dangerous Americanisms to be kept at
bay.
Much as the U.S. is doing to itself now?
While the United States flourished, colonial Canada became a
paranoid, insular place, with a sparse population and an economy
limited to resources -- a condition that would poison its growth
for almost a century and leave an even longer legacy of choked-off
development.
Perhaps the result of an over-bearing Monarchial system raping the land
and the workers. Which was then transferred to beating up on the Native
populations.
http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/my-ancestors-and-the-worst-thing-that-has-ever-happened-to-this-country/article4285769/
I only came to Canada from New England 43 years ago and at that time,
I recall noticing something similar that I inferred was a divergence
emerging from the American revolution. When the 13 colonies declared
independence, they abruptly lost the supply of manufactured goods from
England. The result (or one of the results) was that every town,
hamlet and farmstead undertook to produce what they needed because it
would no longer be supplied from foundries, smithies and mills in the
old country. No longer was colonial iron bar shipped to England,
forged into axe heads and door latches and shipped back to Boston.
Which is one of the ways I have suggested Canada act by getting out of
trade agreements with foreigners and building this country from the
inside. We have everything we need to live as free people in a healthy
environment if we kick the greed out.
I surmise (without having made a scholarly or even serious amateur
study of it) that, consequentially, an attitude (and practice) of
self-reliance and entrpreneurship emerged in the newly independent
nation in a way that never happened in Canada.
Indeed. Staying on as an Empirical colony (???) did not help our
independence but yet even we managed to slaughter or imprison the Native
populations. We never have become a true manufacturing nation only a
place for other countries to set up shop until we demanded too high a
salary and then they leave. And when there was a chance of it, one or
the other federal parties would stymie the initiative (Avro arrow as an
example) and allow either Britain or the U.S. to take the credit and the
profits.
The above-cited author says that the War of 1812 served to amplify and
reinforce the effect.
- Mike
However. I am not the one that is constantly playing the 1812 rah-rahs
about Fort York in Toronto on CBC and other local stations and how Laura
Secord aided the Canadians in getting the information to the Mohawk who
then took her and the info. to the military at the time thus heading off
the coming attacks. Nor do I enjoy paying homage to any monarchy as I do
not believe they deserve it. Whether the land and peoples are raped by
Baronys or by multi-national corp's makes no difference - it is still
rape, still unjust, still power over for the greed of profit. But, as I
said above, it is now the U.S. that is closing its borders, stomping on
education, mixing religion with politics and beating down the masses.
The problem here in Canada is not that we were there but that we are
about to follow and fall into it again.
My original comment was one of sarcasm toward a government that is
covertly doing something that I cannot figure out (other than the "slam
NDP" ads that are very easy to figure out) But maybe someone else has an
idea???
Darryl
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