Yesterday, I attended a wonderful class with my younger daughter that was put on by our Early Years Centre and Public Health. It was the second of a four-part class called Feed Your Mind, and it focuses on teaching small children the importance of good nutrition and a love of healthy food, in an interactive, age-appropriate, and delicious forum. We heard stories, did crafts and participated in the preparation and enjoyment of a delicious, healthy meal.
The class was made up of a very diverse group — no less than five languages were being spoken and we were not all cookie-cutter images of each other.
I felt like I was back in Toronto. I felt at home.
I felt like my misgivings about leaving our big, wonderfully, beautifully diverse city populated with people from every corner of the globe, speaking every language, practicing every religion, normalizing differences and respecting the hundreds of cultural norms that exist there, were dampening.
I felt like this very homogenized place was maybe not quite as homogenized as I had feared; and that with this existence of a richer cultural stew, we were heading towards a greater tolerance for differences here and a lesser reverence for The Way It’s Always Been.
And then today, I read this piece in our local paper.
A piece that is not news, nor is it even opinion. A piece that literally preaches an inflammatory an intolerant view of events practiced only by a certain (albeit majority) population here. A redactive piece that successfully maintains and encourages a sense of ‘other.’ A piece that moves this community backwards.
This is not the voice I want speaking for me or for this community. This is not the pedagogy I want my children to be exposed to in public forums like school or a newspaper. Printing sermons on the front page of the local newspaper is not the way to build an inclusive, culturally rich and culturally tolerant town.
You cannot force affirmative action on a town. I don’t want to. I want to live somewhere where nobody cares, because nobody thinks that being THIS way or THAT way is the most important, righteous way to be.
It is a disappointment. Not the first that I’ve encountered here, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.
So what can I do?
I’ve written the editor and publisher of the newspaper, and if I fail to hear back from them, I will write the parent company’s ombudsman and if necessary, the Ontario Press Council.
And I will raise my kids in a respectful Judeo/Christian home where we will celebrate Passover and Easter in the same week, and where I will teach them that both holidays are about strength and miracles and renewal and giving thanks and being with family.
Not about hate and blame and following any doctrine that vilifies another.
And I will go back to our next two cooking classes where six families speak five different languages, and where we can sit together, eat together, speak together and live together. And where I don't feel like an 'other.'
And hope that soon, a-change is gonna come.
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