See this picture? This comes from a town in Canada where a 24 pack of water bottles is 104 dollars and formula milk for a baby is priced at 55 dollars a pack. What’s more, a pack of diapers is 95 dollars and one head of lettuce is 26 dollars. Inuit people are starving in a country known for it’s generosity.
If you don’t believe this is true, you can find more images like this here. This is the only grocery store these people have in their small towns, and many people are going hungry & elderly are dying faster.
You’ll send aid to foreign children that are starving, so why won’t you pay a little extra to feed the people in your own country who work hard & still can’t afford the prices for healthy food for their families?
Please reblog this photo to raise awareness that even in our own countries people are starving, join the movement and show the government that we won’t sit by and watch people starve.
Children in a first world country are getting sick & starving, and nobody is even aware it’s happening. You can let people know by reblogging and showing you care. People I am close to, my friends and future in-laws are going through this.
Love how little attention this post gets from my beach blog followers.
Signal boost.
I was expecting explanation as to WHY the prices are so high… o_o
Because government-mandated slow genocide.
Sister sings the truth.
It is so frustrating to be a Canadian. You are affected by USA politics nearly as much as as they are but have no say in the elections. It’s like being a Siamese twin to an angry self destructive alcoholic with a gun fetish.
Don’t worry Canada, the U.S. citizens don’t really have a say in U.S. politics either. It’s kind of like being the liver of an angry self-destructive alcoholic with a gun fetish and control issues.
Yeah but when it comes time for elections in Canada most Canadians just shrug and stay home, leaving our country with the most pathetic voter turnout numbers ever and a Harper government that politely dismantles all our social services and tramples the rights of oppressed groups. So it’s more like being the conjoined twin who feels superior to the gun-toting alcoholic while drinking on the sly and kicking the cat when nobody’s watching.
(Source: pizzaforpresident)
You are a credit to our country, sir.
(Source: trekgate)
Chinese Signs In Richmond: Should There Be A Limit?
Two B.C. women will be asking Richmond city council to consider a policy that would limit how much Chinese can be displayed on business signs.
Kerry Starchuk and Ann Merdinyan have collected a petition with more than 1,000 signatures and spent months taking photos in preparation for their presentation on Monday, reported The Richmond News.
Starchuk’s mission began with letters to the editor of local newspapers. The women say that store signs in Richmond have increasingly become Chinese-only, or have very little English on them.
Of the 200,000 people who live in the Vancouver suburb, 45 per cent are Chinese, the highest rate in Canada.
Signs dominated by languages other than English or French are allowed in B.C. In contrast, signs and posters in Quebec must be in French but another language is allowed as long as the official language is predominant.
The pair want city council to implement a policy like one adopted by Aberdeen Centre, an Asian-style mall in Richmond. Store signs in the mall must be two-thirds in English or French while the remaining one-third can be in the language of the retailer’s choice.
Joey Kwan, Aberdeen’s promotion and public relations manager, noted to The Vancouver Sun this year: “To our surprise, based on an internal research, 70 per cent of the existing tenants don’t even have a Chinese name on their signage.”
In January, Joe Greenholtz, an immigration consultant and member of the Richmond Intercultural Advisory Committee argued that Chinese-only signage had nothing to do with multiculturalism and everything to do with business. He wrote in The Richmond News:
“The store owners are making a statement about the clientele they hope to attract — most of the stores I’ve wandered into with Chinese-only signs sell products that have no appeal for me and that I often can’t even identify.It’s not about exclusionary practices, it’s a business decision about appealing to a defined demographic. Those who take offense at that, hiding behind the idea that it is somehow un-Canadian, or diminishes the capacity of immigrants to integrate, are feeling the pain of being irrelevant in their own backyards, for the first time.”
“This is not cultural harmony because I have no idea what these signs, advertising and the real estate papers are saying. We value Richmond and we value our Canadian identity and I hope that comes across with our presentation,” Starchuk told the Richmond newspaper on Friday.
In January, Vancouver Sun columnist Douglas Todd argued that English signs should prevail to “reduce the segregating effects caused by the rise of Canadian ethnic enclaves” and to encourages newcomers to learn English, which “contributes to their financial well-being.”
but i bet if all the signs were in English, these two would have zero issue with it. :/ like they’d even go into a chinese store anyway.
I motherfucking grew up in Richmond with English as my only language and have had so little trouble navigating shops and restaurants and anything I was interested in purchasing that if I ever WAS stymied by Chinese language signs, I don’t even remember it. If you can’t understand the signage, it probably ain’t for you. Deal with that for once in your privileged lives.
These two white women are just pissed that Richmond is so damn East Asian, just like white people in Surrey are pissed that it’s so damn South Asian. Well, guess what, assholes, them’s the fucking wages of colonialism and capitalism.
Seriously, Richmond experienced its major growth historically when First Nations and Japanese people worked the fisheries, and Chinese people built the railroad. So don’t fucking act like it’s some whitey-white enclave that’s been tainted by the Hong Kong Chinese immigrants.
Fuck, I would be madder about this except that “more than 1,000 signatures” is a pathetic amount for a city the size of Richmond. Keep whining, fools, and I’ll keep being happy that I can get the best Chinese food in all of BC from my hometown, and that the Chinese people there keep making the community awesome.
Nova Scotian Black Hockey Team, ca. 1910
The Coloured Hockey League of the Maritimes (1890s-1920s)
Nova Scotia is considered the place of origin of modern ice hockey. The quantity of natural ponds ideal for skating, combined with the British gaming tradition helped facilitate the geographic and social conditions necessary for the development and creation of the game now known as Canadian hockey.
The roots of Canadian hockey originated with the North American Indians but early African-Canadian players also helped shape the sport. By the mid-1890s, in an era when many believed blacks could not endure the cold, these African-Canadian athletes defied myths and developed a revolutionary style of hockey that was fast moving, tough, acrobatic, exciting, and entertaining.
During the late 1890s games between black club teams in Nova Scotian towns and cities were arranged by formal invitation. By 1900, however, the Coloured Hockey League of the Maritimes was created and was headquartered in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
The Colored Hockey League produced players and athletes comparable to any in Canada. These Black Nova Scotians changed this winter game from the primitive “gentleman’s past-time” of the nineteenth century to the modern fast moving game of today. Led by skilled and educated leadership, the Coloured League emerged as a premier force in Canadian hockey and supplied the resilience necessary to preserve a unique sports culture that still exists. Unfortunately, their contributions were ignored as hockey players copied elements of the black style and often took credit for black hockey innovations.
Some of these innovations important to the modern game of ice hockey included the “slap-shot” and the practice of goalies going down on the ice in order to stop the puck. Despite these and other important contributions to today’s game of hockey, there are no monuments to the Coloured Hockey League of the Maritimes.
Although the League continued to be prominent until the mid-1920s, racism, World War I, and dramatic changes in the Nova Scotian economy all played a part in the League’s demise. Nonetheless the Coloured Hockey League of the Maritimes changed the way hockey was seen and played in early Canada.
(via Black Past)
Historic.
Anonymous asked: Are Canadians really getting rid of the penny?
Yes we are! There’s signs in all the stores informing us in various unrepentant ways that the penny is on its way out. Good riddance, says the entirety of the country.
- Dallas Arcand from the Alexander (Kipohtakaw) Cree Nation, performing a hoop dance on “Canada’s Got Talent”
Watching this made me excited and angry and charmed and sad and excited again.
why i don’t think that mounties are adorable, part 2
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/02/23/bc-rcmp-conduct-hearing.html
An RCMP code of conduct hearing is recommending a female officer be reprimanded, docked 7 days pay, and continue counselling, after concluding she had consensual sex with her supervisor.Const. Susan Gastaldo claimed she was forced into the on-going affair with her boss — which included having sex in a police car — but the tribunal found it was consensual sex.
It ruled a dismissal might have been warranted, but her underlying anxiety was a mitigating factor and deemed Gastaldo “suitable for medical discharge”.
Her superior officer, Staff Sgt. Travis Pearson, has already been reprimanded and docked 10 days’ pay by the same panel after admitting to the affair and using a Blackberry to exchange suggestive emails.
But Gastaldo fought against the accusation and claimed she was coerced and sexually assaulted on more than one occasion.
The panel didn’t believe her and suggested her punishment should be harsher than Pearson’s because she denied the claim.
Let me just repeat that for you:
“The panel didn’t believe her and suggested her punishment should be harsher than Pearson’s because she denied the claim.”
I don’t even have the energy to break this one down; let’s just say, the rampant sexism and disdain for women — even those who are actually a part of the fucking RCMP — is not new. At all.
why i don’t think that mounties are adorable, part 1
They were created to police and subdue First Nations peoples. Or, as they put it on their website, they were:
“Born out of a need for a national police force to implement the law in Canada’s newly acquired western territories ….”
Newly acquired. What a bland, polite way to put it. Let’s see an example — again, from their OWN official web presence — of what this entailed:
http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/hist/ori-deb/debuts4-eng.htm
In 1875, the American authorities informed the Sioux that unless they settled on the reserves allocated to them, they would be considered enemies of the United States. The Sioux refused, and in the spring of 1876 the United States Army began a campaign to force them onto the reserves … The Sioux could not hope to defeat the large military forces now closing on them from all sides. Tired and hungry, they gradually retreated northward to seek refuge in Canadian Territory.
The Sioux’s arrival disturbed the peaceful relations which Canada was in the process of establishing with its own tribes. The Sioux were traditional enemies of many Canadian First Nations. Their presence would strain the already dwindling buffalo herds.
So while the Mounties were PEACEFULLY ESTABLISHING RELATIONS with Canadian native peoples, it was them other Indians who were stirring up trouble! I mean, according to the RCMP, Chief Crowfoot of the Siksika/Blackfoot had this to say when they signed Treaty 7:
“The advice given me and my people has proven to be very good. If the police had not come to this country, where would we all be now? Bad men and whiskey were killing us so fast that very few of us would have been left today. The Mounted Police have protected us as the feathers of the bird protect it from the frosts of winter.”
Nevermind that the Siksika were under the impression that the treaty was along the lines of current understandings with non-native people. They reasonably thought the treaty would allow use of their lands on an as-needed basis that would benefit all residents, not the wholesale signing over of their lands and rights and people into perpetuity. Let’s see how the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations sees the interactions with the benevolent peacekeeping RCMP, hmm?
http://www.justice.gov.sk.ca/justicereform/volume2/07section4.pdf
The role of the RCMP during the settlement of the Northwest in 1869-1870 was to implement the oppressive policies of the Federal Government upon First Nations. In fact, the RCMP carried out the orders of Indian agents, such as preventing people from leaving the boundaries of the reserve and confiscating sacred bundles and charging people for holding ceremonies.Historically, the “red coats” did not fulfill their duties to protect and respect Treaty. Leaders such as Big Bear and Poundmaker were fighting for basic human rights of their tribes; yet, the government, aided by the RCMP, treated them like criminals. History does not help with relations today because First Nations people believe that the RCMP continue to protect “white” people and not them.
Disconnect. That’s what Canada specializes in.
Pakistani-Canadian filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy won Pakistan’s first Oscar on Sunday, for her documentary Saving Face, which depicts the story of women disfigured by acid attacks.
Lesser-known on the impressive list of productions by the 33-year-old is Highway of Tears, which she made in 2006 about the aboriginal women who have gone missing along Highway 16, the famous stretch of road between Prince George and Prince Rupert in British Columbia.
Tellingly, Prime Minister Stephen Harper congratulated Christopher Plummer for his win as best supporting actor in Beginners, but his statement did not include a word about Obaid-Chinoy. He even congratulated the Canadian tech award winners.
The Huffington Post reports that Obaid-Chinoy could not get funding for Highway of Tears from any Canadian outfits. It was Al Jazeera that finally financed the documentary.
Harper dégage.
I don’t think there’s a gif to express how much harper disgusts me.
At this point I get rage blackouts if I even THINK about Stephen Harper. This country’s general voter apathy combined with a contingent of dedicated Conservative voters is fucking pathetic. We like to get distracted by how awful it is down in the States, because that way we don’t have to look at how Canada is full of insidious, creeping, “polite” corruption and oppression.
(Source: yarr-metis)
This is an excellent post.
i’ve been thinking,
and for once this is a good thing, ha.
i struggle to find a black culture like the one in the usa. we have different histories but we are connected in part through how we came here and became established. i watched the documentary about priceville this morning and it got me thinking -
what is it that has us rolling, holding our sides, crying laughing over something we do as black folk? what gets us deep into discussions of blackness?
i was telling someone one day. there isn’t really a name for us here. black-canadian. black-african canadian. african-caribbean canadian. afro-canadian. african-canadian. it’s something we don’t necessarily agree on. for the most part, people are cool with being called black. they are black. they say such things. but i wonder if there is a culture, something, some kind of fabric that we have.
i think because of the way histories have unfolded, but especially the covert way in which we have been treated as less than, there isn’t one. i don’t think i’m calling it by its right name.
what we bond over is the similarities between and across diasporas and cultures.
in canada, your heritage doesn’t go away. it gets mistaken. i have been called everything from jamaican (most popular) to haitian to senegalese to guyanese…to french. i am branded everywhere i go by these names and assumptions in addition to my blackness. i think that this is different from the usa where your blackness consumes everything else. i’m guessing and basing it off some posts i have read about those who can essentially “point to a map”.
jamaican is what i’m usually called. there is a dominance of jamaican cultures and west-indian cultures in general because that is the largest black population. naturally then, you are influenced by the lingo, by the food, by the people and by the stories. except for me, i didn’t really get the stories. i got everything else. i’d pick up some slang and bring it home to the dismay of my parents, because it was so radically different from how we speak. twi.
and i remember how i would talk with black folks. we would talk about our mothers and what they did. we would describe the same things, but they each had different names. i said beats and they said licks. i said planTAIN and they said PLANtain. i said heat and they said hot. and we always say
“that’s how we do over here!”
but we never meant it in blackness.
we’re all immigrant kids too. so we bonded over that. but there wasn’t something that we said made us all black. because we can’t separate that from where we come from. remember the dynamic of multiculturalism in this country, as well as hidden histories like how everyone and their mother “from elsewhere” help make this country what it is. so we don’t celebrate blackness. we celebrate our own black traditions in and out of home. we have an afro-fest. we have carnival. we have a street festival showcasing food that is from everywhere around the world. you always see someone in their traditional wear, no big deal (it actually isn’t this simple but for the purposes of explaining, let’s just say it is). you always hear at least five languages a day, no big deal. you always see a mix of people, no big deal. and we’re proud of that.
we hold onto that difference. and it actually divides us too sometimes. yet if you saw the categories on pieces of paper, we are always just ‘black’.
and some folks don’t want to be grouped together with other black people like that because it is erasure to them. some people don’t know where they fit in. because it’s not the canadian vs immigrant thing only,
it’s that we have to try and understand black american culture too. try to live it. because according to the black folk on TV, we had nothing to do with anything.
and that’s all we get here. we are proud of black american successes. we have black history month and celebrate the same black canadian individuals…and then go to black american histories and start jumping. it’s like, we actually don’t see ourselves on TV, at all. we don’t see ourselves on blogs, at all. because even though we’re seeing black women and men everywhere,
they aren’t really like us. and we can’t really relate to what they’re saying and how they’re saying it. because it’s one thing.
i’m looking for the jamaican, ghanaian, nigerian, panamanian, dominican, trini black characters. not the ‘black’ characters. everyday characters. i wonder if people remember barack obama is kenyan but that’s probably another story. i find it difficult to see myself in a canadian context because like i hammer home all day, some things just can’t apply here. and we get erased in that respect and in the respect of talking about western type shit. like, when you hear “the west”? canada doesn’t come up. it’s france, uk and us. that’s it. and i see a black woman on tv right? but i don’t see myself sometimes.
i’m not mad at the differences. i’m hashing out thoughts here because i read a lot about issues with regard to beauty, intersectionalities, blackness, erasure, sex and the like. but something always seems to be missing, i guess.
James Crawford, Media, Stereotypes and the Perpetuation of Racism in Canada
(via imbobswaget)
