Good timing, eh? Just as First Nations people and their supporters are fasting and drumming and dancing and generally raising long-overdue hell, this gorgeous image:
is replaced by this militaristic bullshit.
When we succeed in throwing these CONtemptuous incompetents out, we've got a lot to do to restore Canada. We can start with putting Bill Reid's glorious work back on the 20.
7 comments:
They are trying to replace our actual history and culture, to a more homogeneous US glory of war history and culture.
All that 1812 stuff they have been bleating about and wasting tax money on is just another example.
They want an all white christian in name only, male dominated, war hawk country, with corporatist values.
and another thing about that new $20? The queen looks more like Laurier on the $5. Maybe the queen looked too feminine.
"We can start with putting Bill Reid's glorious work back on the 20." Hear, hear!
OMG, that bill. I mean even leaving out the subject material, it doesn't hold a candle to the design of the old 20.
And with Haida Gwaii, I could whip out the old 20 with foreigners and they'd Ooh and Aah.
I thought and made the same exact comment when I saw my first new $20 bill last week. More war bullshit and no more FN culture.
While I think the Harper government does use our history as a tool, that doesn't mean the history itself is irrelevant or politicized. War of 1812 was a significant moment in Canada's history, but I have a problem with the way his government frames it.
The most important point is that regular people, iroquois and other first nations, blacks and whites stood against ideologues and hypocrites. They weren't fighting for grand ideas or Canada, or Britain, or multiculturalism--but just for a place to live, a home. This is a fundamental theme found throughout Canadian history and culture.
In Harper's ideological symbolism, I feel he's failed to find this real message.
That being said I like the new 20, and I don't think theres anything wrong with the memorial to dead troops which included many from our first nations. However, I feel the significance of their (and other minority) contributions could be greater emphasized in this greater narrative.
Missed this post when it came out, along with any controversy about the introduction of the new $20 bill last year, but your comment about replacing Bill Reid with the Vimy Ridge monument caught my eye so I looked it up at the Bank of Canada website.
Holy crap. The entire first third of their own vid introducing the bill is all Vimy Ridge footage, before they ever around to talking about anything else.
The new $20 note
Holy crap indeed. It's like we all moved to Bizzaro Canada.
Side note: lore in sweetie's family is that his grandmother and a couple of great-aunts were models for the maquette of the monument. Dunno if it's true.
Post a Comment