In the ’60s and ’70s, young Canadians who travelled through Europe — a pretty common thing to do in those days — routinely sewed little Canadian flags onto their backpacks or jackets. It wasn’t because they were patriotic, for the most part. Instead, it was because Canadians on the whole had a good reputation. We were respectful of others, not pushy about our beliefs and non-judgmental. And we were polite. Truth be told, we also didn’t want to be identified as Americans, that being the Vietnam War era and all.
I wonder how we are perceived in Europe and around the world today? If news at home is an indication, our reputation has taken a beating.
Take the holiday incident at Edmonton International Airport, where not only did security personnel fail to prevent a 19-year-old from getting on a plane after they discovered he had a pipe bomb in his camera bag, they tried to give the bomb back to him before he boarded. With every new report last week about the incident, I began to think Canadians had suddenly become the stupidest people in the world.
As I understand it, the young man got together with a buddy to make the bomb — a six-inch length of pipe stuffed with gunpowder with the end of a nine-foot length of fuse inserted into the business end of the device — so that they could blow up a shed and video the explosion. They didn’t pursue the plan though and he stuffed the bomb into his camera bag, completely forgetting about it when he grabbed the bag and headed off to the airport with his parents for a trip to Mexico.
Dumb, meet dumber. When the pipe glowed bright white on the X-ray as the family attempted to clear security, the bright lights at the facility whipped into action. Test this for drugs, a supervisor ordered, apparently because drug smugglers’ preferred camouflage for their contraband is explosives. Nope, it’s not drugs, they concluded. You can have your pipe bomb back, they offered. The kid refused the generous offer and was soon jetting southward for a week of fun in the sun. Four days later, a security worker got tired of looking at the bomb, which had been tossed into a bin fully visible to the public. No one had noticed, probably because they were too busy dragging anti-aircraft guns and CANDU nuclear reactors along with their half-dozen other pieces of carry-on baggage. Call the RCMP, he decided. They’ll know what to do with it.
And there we were, Canada, a country that once had the respect of the world, suddenly home to the dumbest people on the planet.
Not that the world was completely unprepared for that little bit of knowledge, though. Over the past decade, Canada has abandoned any pretense of being a responsible world citizen, running away from environmental issues to the point that we were recently recognized as the world’s worst when it comes to polluting. The Government of Canada, as Prime Minister Harper likes to refer to himself, has turned our diplomats into shills for corporations, manipulated a senate scandal that would have brought down previous governments, dismantled research efforts on any number of subjects, muzzled scientists and recently embarked on a mission to destroy scientific research on water.
The latter might not have been as showy as when the followers of Savonarola burned art works and other material possessions in an effort to put a halt to the Italian Renaissance more than 500 years ago, but hey, we’re a modern society, right? Who needs a fire when we can just contract a private firm to haul off and destroy information that might prove embarrassing as we go about our avowed mission to supply the world with natural resources, come hell or high, uh, water?
I don’t watch television news, but I’m guessing that Steve didn’t have a Canadian flag sewn onto his Vuitton bags as he traveled to Israel, where he travelled to pump the tires of Netanyahu and his dubious policies. When he and we are abroad these days, we can no longer assume that when we tell a joke that our audience is laughing with us.
Lorne Eckersley is the publisher of the Creston Valley Advance.