h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm about halfway through The Jade Peony right now (part of my annual Canada Reads party) and, as I often do, I've given into my weakness for the Biographical Fallacy (http://faculty.goucher.edu/eng215/biographical_fallacy.htm) and googled the old boy and I was quite moved by this piece from Quill & Quire by Sandra Martin http://www.quillandquire.com/authors/profile.cfm?article_id=1418 , not least for this passage:

'on a recent warm spring Sunday afternoon, I have been thinking about signs and trying to find meaning in the fact that I am late for our interview because a river of orange is flowing between his side of town and mine. Men in tangerine turbans and women in apricot saris are marching down Yonge Street on their way to the Skydome for a massive celebration of the 300th anniversary of the Khalsa-Sikh faith. Worlds within worlds, I think, marvelling both at the number of faithful and the stunning transformation in white-bread Canadian society since Choy was born more than half a century ago in Vancouver’s Chinatown.'

Although Choy is about two decades my senior, this change that Martin describes is a change that I've witnessed as well, and it is a change that I celebrate (as I expect anyone who reads this already knows.). I feel so fortunate to have been born into a place that has *chosen* to be a peaceful and happy place in which, for example:


a gay Chinese man who grew up adopted in the poverty of Chinatown becomes a university professor and an award winning novelist, who's novel is defended by a white woman (a doctor, virtually unheard of when I was a child) in a nationally broadcast contest moderated by an Iranian pop-star wannabe against novels

by a Quebecois (defended by a Quebecois, in English),
by a lesbian actor (defended by a black Olympian),
by a white woman who didn't have to use a male pseudonym (defended by a south Asian woman),
and
by a grumpy white guy (defended by a twenty-something black rapper who's a bloody poet laureate)



and it's also a place where a river of orange flows down Yonge Street and it's a celebration of one of Canada's cultures, not a juvenile internecine provocation pretending to be a commemoration of some stupid seventeenth century street fight, and where the Orange Hall in my neighbourhood http://www.rewedmonton.ca/content_view2?CONTENT_ID=456 is for the vast majority of people a rustic place to go and take in intimate musical performances and enjoy a shot of single malt between sets in the basement with the musicians (it's been a long time since I did this with Dougy MacLean) not a place to yell about the bloody Papists

and it's also a place where the closest thing to religiously driven immolation is the annual Canada Day BBQ (open to everyone) at the Mosque over by the 7-11 just east of 75th street.

I know this isn't the only place where people get along fairly well, but why don't they get along fairly well everywhere? Why do bitter memories in so much of the world last longer than the longest life span?


Why would anyone, ever put explosives in their underwear?

I like your Canada. I must visit it some day.

TRiG.

Please do!