— Musings —10.01.2022 09:54 PM
Gret jobb, teem
She wants to be mayor of Brampton. And she can’t spell Brampton. You can’t make this stuff up.#brampton #topoli #onpoli #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/m8PfGPWwki
— Warren Kinsella (@kinsellawarren) October 2, 2022
Nothing quite like running for mayore now is it.
My City mailed out thousands of voting cards…. with the wrong date… Bra… vo…
Sigh….I recently went to my local credit union to make a withdrawal of twenty dollars. I asked the teller for a ten, a five, two toonies, and a loony. The teller had to write my request down. I struggled with Math in high school, but I was even shocked at the lack of basic arithmetic. Soylent Green is becoming a more appealing option as I totter off into antiquity.
Brampton Ontario is named after Brampton in the UK.
Perhaps, as a rejection of colonialism, it’s time to change the name. But to avoid too much confusion, just changing the spelling might also work.
I choose this entry spot for the renaming of Swastika in Puslinch. Full disclosure, I have roots in the Waterloo/Wellington area and am of German descent.
I don’t KNOW FOR CERTAIN the origins of the swastika but, I fully acknowledge that regardless of those origins, the nazi’s were ‘successful’ in rebranding this symbol as their own.
Somewhere on most issues there is a line that one shouldn’t cross, I am damn sure that use of the word Swastika is way across the line on the wrong side of resistance to change.
When places like Plantation Road in my town get ink because a young white girl is offended by allegations of this being a racist glorification of where black were enslaved we have maybe gone a little too far? I don’t know I have spent 30 years walking out into a place I called my plantation. There was no slave labour establishing my family’s home, it was a sense of pride of what an individual and his wife were able to do to create a place of peace for our family.
You can make the case for virtually any naming to be objectionable. To that end, I am the most anti-monarch person I know, my views are simply that as an adult nation, we should have an adult relationship with the world vis a vis our OWN (not shared) sovereign head.
With that the possibly tongue in cheek idea of renaming Brampton/Bramton I come down strongly on the no side. I have no dispute about the impact of colonization on natives, here and elsewhere.
I believe we need to cool the rhetoric and spend more time looking forward than backward.
There was a city that held a referendum to determine the fate of it’s name. An army contingent was prominent in harassing the ethnic population into vote for change or if not challenging their right to vote and even scaring that population from voting. There was certainly accusations of a racial and pre-judicial nature against this ethnic group.
Voter turnout was low but the result was to favour changing that city’s name. A second lower turnout vote, to choose a new name awarded honour to a man whose record in war was that of expanding concentration camps and employing scorched earth strategies to secure victory, he later showed no remorse for pushing his own men into what has been described as a sausage factory.
The story above was not some war-torn conflict in a far away land it was the renaming of Berlin to Kitchener, right here in Ontario in 1916.
I am not advocating a return to the name Berlin, I am only saying an outcome was orchestrated and an ethnic group was made to feel shame for it’s ethnicity . To my point there is a line somewhere for EVERY challenge to naming something. There is often also a justifiable offense to some group.
While I applaud US states finally toppling statues to civil war figures who fought to keep blacks enslaved, and while I applaud the removal of the rebel battle rag from any public place, I am not so sure that renaming Ryerson, McDonald and Roosevelt schools here in London will be the hallmark of success for equality in a world where scenes like that of the wartime renaming of Berlin to Kitchener are being played-out today with ever more evil intent.
I am bemused by the misspelling of the city one wishes to be mayor of but I am more impressed that Nikki Kaur’s sign highlights diversity (wish the four different coloured hands were not clenched as fists) .
In truth I don’t know one damn thing about Nikki Kaur but I felt this a great place to ask where we draw lines and who gets to draw them?
The raised fist is always a good sign of pragmatism and conciliation.
I like the fists of fury. She must be angry.
But…but… she has fists! And multi-colored fists at that! So she must be a Serious Candidate who will Fight For The Marginalized and who is Brave… etc etc…
Sadly, this is what passes for political qualifications these days. Take the usual woke nonsense, wrap it up with some standard clipart du jour that shows how woke you are, and present yourself to the electorate. Doesn’t matter if you are actually an intelligent or thoughtful person – just be sure you tick all the right P.C. boxes, and you’re in.
Hunner S Thomson would be mused.