election time

The local Liberal candidate dropped off an election flier with me. It listed the platform of the party. Lord, what a rare collection of Do-Dos they must be. Mind you, the Liberals might be the best; (I haven't had any other fliers yet to make comparisons).

It seems the Liberals feel our schools have to teach children how to live in the global economy. What a bunch of maroons! "Global economy" certainly sounds trendy. In fact, though, we have always lived in a global economy. Canada was settled by the French, then by the English as part of their efforts to control a global economy. The native Mohawks of the Montreal region were exporting ginseng on a large scale to China 300 years ago.

Atlantic fishermen carried on a busy trade from the start with Britain and the West Indies. That's why rum still sells so well in the Atlantic provinces. The outport sailors of the eighteenth and nineteenth century knew the streets of Cadiz and London and Singapore - probably better than they knew the woodland trails just a few miles from  home port. When the CPR finished building track over a hundred and twenty years ago, the next thing it did was to open a shipping line with Hong Kong a major port of call. That's why so many of the Canadian-Chinese up to the 1980s or so were from southern China. (In fact, the CPR had an office in Hong Kong BEFORE the railway was complete..)

This really is quite an election for impressive sounding terms like "education for a global economy" from people who don't know what the terms mean, and are ignorant of their own history.