In the scheme of things, a pretty good place

In case anybody got the impression in my yesterday's blog that I was somehow dissing my home and native land, nothing could be further from the truth. A country that invented Pablum, Graham Crackers and, yes it's true, basketball, cannot be all bad.

The items I cited yesterday are just some of the idiosyncrasies of this huge country -- second only two Russia in terms of geographic magnitude -- with it's little, teeny (relatively) population of 33 million, or about a 10th that of the US. In fact, if I were to say the worst about Canada that I can muster, it is that it is sometimes 'irksome.'

Wow, all things considered, irksome isn't quite so bad. Oh, it is irksome that makes me fulminate when I read the morning paper and it tells me that a bit of loathsome trash like vicious-bitch murderess Karla Homolka is walking the streets as a free agent, or that serial killer Clifford Olson (our very own Ted Bundy) is actually entitled to parole hearings. They fried Bundy, that is to the credit of the US. Olson, on the other hand, can plead his case every two years and put families through agonies in this sometimes irksome country. That is neither fair, nor right. Then, I will read of little elements of corruption in political parties and governments -- not Robert Mugabe vile corruption in which people are starving to death when they aren't being hacked with machetes -- and I get irked.

But, you know, as a Canadian, I never hear jackboots in the streets. Nobody is going to crash through my doors at 3 a.m., whack me with a truncheon and drag me off for questioning on some trumped up bullshit. I fear not stepping on a landmine as I walk down the street. Near the end of the day I wonder 'what' I am going to have for dinner, not 'if' I am going to have dinner, today, tomorrow or next week. I don't have to look at assorted ethnic or native groups and see their numbers diminish as they are 'purged'. Yes, we have treated some ethnic groups in uncommendable manner in the past, and our record of care for native Indians has been abysmal, and still has a very long way to go. But, it has been more a matter of benign neglect than purposeful annihilation. Still not great, but a long way from Iraq and the Kurds, or even England and the Irish in the very bad old days.

And, Canada has a huge potential, and it is an exquisitely beautiful place for the most part. I painted the picture shown above from a scene that exists about 40 miles (OK, I still don't think in metric, and always will find it irksome) down the road from where I live. It is the Strait of Georgia, a very long arm of the Pacific that separates Vancouver Island from mainland BC. It was a low tide scene that caught my fancy. The trees are arbutus (madrona, if you prefer), which is a native eucalyptus that predominates on the Vancouver Island coast. It is barkless, and the red wood is quite awesomely beautiful. It was a scene that put me very much at peace at the time, and not irked at all.

For such things I am very grateful to Canada.