canada's 7 wonders?

ok. so they did it. three non-descript people ~ a musician from the 70s, a WASPy columnist from the globe and mail, and the token aboriginal~a woman (they killed 2 birds with one stone here, lol) who doesn't at all look like she's native. they decided on a fucking prairie sky as a wonder of canada at the expense of haida gwaii!

hey, JUDGES? F@CK YOU!

i have lived in the prairies, under those prairie skies for most of my life. there ain't nuthin' wondrous about open sky that stretches out as far as the eye can see ... that makes you feel like you're in the middle of fucking, ugly and insignificant nowhere! WTF's so canadian about a fucking sky, anyhow? there's expansive prairie/planes skies in the usa and africa that would dwarf ours.

so ...what gives? you're honestly telling me you think a fucking prairie sky has more canadian identity than haida gwaii? you're lying if ya say 'yes.' coz the impassioned plea for prairie sky as a choice, not the actual quality or meaning of said prairie sky, led you to make the choice you did. fuck that patronizing bullshit.

that's the thing - i believe - that makes canadians so wishy-washy in the eyes of our american friends ~ that whole patronizing-passive-compromise routine. its so fucking lame. we water down the guts of an issue just so we can get everyone to agree. agree on what? if all the contention's got removed ... then what's to agree on? grrrrrrrr. removing the heart and soul of and issue makes the issue a dead one. and it makes agreement meaningless. agreement on nuthin = no agreement.

that's what pisses me off about the whole 7 wonders of canada affair. the compromise ~ the great canadian compromise. they - the organizers @ CBC - call it another wonder of canada. they say compromise; i read, giving up what's in your guts to make things smell nicer. and who cares of the end result does not really accurately reflect reality? its peace we're after, not accuracy of truth. really? me dunno if me likes that. me does know that me won't apologize for my refusal to sanction here the choices made through that flawed process.

haida gwaii belongs on that list. for that matter, the gulf islands do too. canada's all about juxtaposing the untamed, untapped wild and natural resources with urban existence. forests, meadows, green spaces, waterways. there's a fucking expanse of rain forest in canada - even a patch of one that resides right inside one of canada's largest, and certainly canada's loveliest city - and none of it even make the final cut. and that speaks volumes. the list and how we settled upon said list ... they speak volumes about the culture of this country. about how we differ from our american friends. about how we, as canadians, feel so strongly about keeping the peace, that we would gladly dilute reality to get and keep said peace. does that mean we would gladly sacrifice our principles just to keep the peace? i suppose ... this seems to imply that many of us would.

i'm not sure how i feel about that.

ok. here's the thing. sometimes ... we need compromise ... sometimes ... compromise works. as in, perhaps, the recent G8 summit. managing climate change and the environment cannot occur without china and the usa at the world table. i grant that. those compromises - of which angela merkel cannot be too pleased - seemed necessary to get to two, messiest and most aggregiously spoiled children to even sit at the table to discuss the issue of carbon emissions, greenhouse gases and the like. to hear dubya finally even admit there's a environmental problem ... i suppose that's a sort of victory.

sorry, but~i love this picture~

~even tho its got nuthin to do with this post~

but ... how much compromise = too much compromise. how much can we dilute the crux of any issue before we've just hashed it into some twisted notion? when does getting everyone to agree on an issue render that issue meaningless? i really wonder. perhaps i shouldn't, though. or should i?

for the record, here's the official, wishy-washy canada's 7 wonders list: (1) niagara falls, (2) the rocky mts, (3) the igloo, (4) the canoe, (5) prairie skies, (6) old quebec city, (7) pier 21. personally, i would lose the prairie skies from the list in exchange for haida gwaii. and while i appreciate the symbolism of placing canoe on the list ... once again, its not exclusively canadian. a brief [online] historical reseaching of canoe tells me that indigenous people in other parts of the globe used this mode of transport - i.e. the amazon. i would lose the canoe from this list, since the contents of the list must reflect the title 7 wonders of CANADA. and so, pacific rim national park seems more quintessentially canadian than does a fucking boat. IMHO. not that anyone's askin' ... lol.

so. in the final analysis, i guess this all boils down to the fact that sometimes, some issues we need to 'fight' for ... and other times, we can dilute other issues to achieve a compromised resolution. no one can have everything all of the time ~ life's all about give and take. exchange ... equilibrium ... balance ... life's multidimensional and dynamic. just like the human entity. however, i REFUSE to put reality and truth up for grabs in exchange for some contrived and poorly carved out mythical peace. it's false. simply false.