This is my last column in 2025, and although I still hear the occasion complaint about how things were so restricting during the Covid-10 pandemic, I’m starting to feel “hopeful” that in spite of people griping about grocery prices and less cash to spend on Christmas goodies, our family still managed to check off all of the kids for gifts, and here on New Year’ Eve, we’ll be going out to celebrate the New Year’s arrival instead of just popping a bottle of wine before retiring for the rest of the night.
It’s been a long time since I’ve even felt some measure of positivity just before this consumer-orientated “holiday”, where after it is over, people don’t seem to be happy at all. Maybe it was the way things started out in that first teaching job when I decided to bring our family to Saskatchewan in 1979, and reacquaint myself with my province of birth. After being an Air Force brat moving around every 24 months or so, it was becoming boring, and upon entering this new town for the first time, I hoped it’d be my last “move” in a long time. In hindsight, maybe I should have taken the “hint” embellished on the first bulletin board we encountered turning off Highway 1: the town had over 20 “houses of worship” available for its rather meagre 2,300 souls – NONE of them with an “other” religion such as Jewish, Muslim, or even Mormon.
The school board had arranged for us to rent a temporary home, so we quickly unpacked, then decided to go “uptown” to find out what businesses were available and get a closer lay of the land. At the time my daughter was barely eight months old, so when we decided to walk around a bit, I tucked her into a bunny pack I wore on my chest. Wed barely gone a block down the main street of town when the suddenly we heard someone “gunning” a half-ton’s engine, followed by the standard squealing tires one expects to hear whenever a teenager just got to drive the family vehicle in front of friends. Turning around, I immediately had to duck as a medium sized green apple struck my shoulder where two seconds earlier had been my daughter’s head. Sticking his head out the window of the vehicle, a 13-year-old yelled, “Get out of town, Squaw Man…”
Our “introduction” to cattle country in no way resembled the experiences we’d previously enjoyed when visiting relatives in the Canora-Yorkton area. Simply put, if your family hadn’t “settled” there in 1918 or earlier, you were a “newcomer” – an insult to the local Indigenous community members, none of whom would bother to show up for entertainment after the sun went down. Even in school, the religious “divide” was palpable; for instance, if you had a young man in your class who was constantly despondent, already an alcoholic in Grade 10, and constantly thinking about committing suicide, his parents were most likely to be fundamentalist “Christians”. To their sisters, their defense is one of becoming a fatalist with a sense of humor; why else plunk yourself in my Physics class because Darwin’s theories are heretical, graduate with honours, yet know full well that in about 10 months Mom and Dad are going to take you on a thousand kilometer journey where you will meet your future husband, have lots of kids, that is unless you like the regular visits of a church Elder searching your home for contraceptive devices, and never again be able to attend a learning institution to seek betterment in your intellect and future outlook?
It’s not as if the behaviour of the “main stream Christians” was any different. Their teenage kids all drove way too fast, often drunk through purchase of liquor in Alberta, and stood a good chance that they’d end up being traffic casualties. As for their parents, when the father of one of my Grade 9 students unexpectedly died in mid-year, I went to the United Church funeral service to show support and give comfort for his passing. The following Monday a fellow teacher suggested that this might not have been a good idea, as some of the mothers were complaining of my having never been at one of their regular church services before that event.
Forty-five years later, I’ve found myself in a better place, and the only moving I’ll now do is either try to visit my kids more often, or spend eight months of the year teaching in Indigenous schools where both my male and female students tolerate my teaching math or science because I also coach basketball. Living in Indigenous communities, however, has reawakened my early recollections of relatives of all shapes and sizes would sit around a relative’s living room on some Sunday, and passing the time waiting for the turkey to be done by arguing about politics – which is the main reason why I continue to write these columns, still hoping that they’ll understand that I write longish pieces because in order to understand what it is that I’m saying, you first have to know the facts that led me to take such an opinion.
What may yet end up putting a wet blanket over my semi-optimistic views of the future, however, still remain those same two sentiments that I endured when I returned here: racial prejudice and self-entitlement being expressed by those who have little to complain about, and whose thinking has been dulled by our political masters collectively moaning that if only nothing changed, we’d be so much better off, particularly if we could only join “the greatest nation on Earth” turning itself into the Crackpot Jungle under the leadership of President Pumpkin.
As for racism’s continuing stain upon our society, it’s about time that both the sons and daughters of our colonialist nations who’ve thrived on racially charged economic activities and the Indigenous leaders who won’t tell their young men that becoming a gang member doesn’t mean you’re “helping” your people by putting your sisters out as “working girls” or burning down your home cooking up a new batch of crystal meth.
Grow the Hell up. Right now there are only two politicians in Canada who practice this approach: Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew and Prime Minister Mark Carney. Works for them, what’s wrong with the rest of us?
Come 2026, we need a new direction in which to head, governmentally speaking, particularly as it pertains to economic activity and providing opportunity for everyone.
Smile; the New Year offers us opportunity beyond all belief; we as individuals just have to start believing this may well be true.
Ken McDougall is a retired teacher and former candidate for the federal NDP.
