ROTHENBURGER – Canceling Canada Day won’t solve what ails our country
Watching opening ceremonies at a previous Canada Day in Riverside Park. (Image: Mel Rothenburger)
EACH JULY 1, we traditionally celebrate the diversity of our community and of our country.
The usual celebrations at Riverside Park won’t happen this year, cancelled again by COVID.
A couple of weeks ago, I was thinking that maybe it’s not such a bad thing, that maybe, this year, there’s not much to celebrate.
But I’ve changed my mind about that. I’m with Kukpi7 Rosanne Casimir and Mayor Ken Christian, who say we need to acknowledge Canada Day and to use it as an opportunity to learn. They’ve worked together on virtual Canada Day events for us to enjoy as a replacement for what COVID took away.
When I was having doubts about marking Canada Day at all, a young man had just driven a pickup truck onto a sidewalk in London, Ont., killing four members of a Muslim family and seriously injuring a fifth, a nine-year-old child.
Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.
We need to celebrate our unique ability to diversity because for the most part we have, up to this point. But there is a tendency to overcompensate and that is dangerous and the overcompensating is generally coming from the media, which keep playing it up rather than playing it down.