And this diddy........Multiculturalism, government books, using phrases like “Canadian mosaic” with a straight face, hailing the ability to say “CanLit” with a straight face as a virtue in and of itself . . . These are all excellent answers. But David Rakoff, “the author, most recently, of Don’t Get Too Comfortable,” cut to the chase:
“There is no contest about what I miss most about Canada. It is universal medical coverage. Just thinking about it, and its absence here, can send me into complete despair.”
Well, the natural reaction is just to roll one’s eyes. But don’t try that at home, kids: the wait time for eye-roll dislocation-correction surgery is up to two years at the Royal Victoria. So Colby Cosh, a rare non-expat Canadian, chose instead a hoot of derision, paraphrasing Mr. Rakoff thus:
“Yeah, I got so upset I almost thought about packing my shit and going home so I wouldn’t be in complete despair anymore.”
Canada has done everything David Rakoff, Sarah McNally and Melissa Auf der Maur want—not least in their own fields. It taxes convenience-store clerks to subsidize books and writing and publishing and that wonderful “national conversation about literature like a big book club” in which everyone’s membership dues are automatically deducted from your bank account whether you go to the meetings or not. And still Mr. Rakoff and Ms. McNally and Ms. Auf der Maur leave. They applaud the creation of a “just” and “equitable” society, and then, like almost all the members of the Order of Canada you’ve actually heard of, they move out. Despite commending the virtues of a social “safety net” for you and everyone else, they personally can only fulfill their potential somewhere else, without one. Usually in a country beginning with “Great” and ending in “Satan.”
Read the whole thing...........
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