It was fun today taking a friend from a tropical country for a long walk in the snow. It is something new for him and for me refreshing seeing the beauty of this white wonder through his eyes. It's raining now. The snow will be gone within a day or two, leaving a mess of slush and flooding that we are all going curse bitterly before everything becomes the familiar green and grey again. Some people don't like snow. A lot of people dislike the rain. Some hate both. Then there are those that hate...Everything? Freshly fallen snow provides some of those moments of rare beauty in our lives. We appreciated together, my Peruvian friend and I, the lovely white negative space adorning the trees, the grass, the rooftops of old houses. The magical soft brilliance of it all. The joy on the faces not only of children but of jaded adults, and the various snowmen, some sitting on benches or at picnic tables.
It is raining now, which is part of the traditional pattern of snow here on the Pacific coast. It will get cold and for a few days everything will freeze. Then it will warm up a bit, cloud over and snow. Sometimes it will freeze again for another few days. Then it will begin to warm again, snow will arrive and as the mercury rises so comes the rain, only to wash it all away.
It is rather a curious experience reading the long range weather report online. For the following two weeks the temperatures are going to be back around seasonal norms: around five degrees. It never snows when it's five degrees but it does rain a lot. However, on this silly long range forecast they have illustrated swollen fluffy looking snowflakes to indicate that it is going to go on snowing for the next two weeks, which it is not.
This isn't to say that I wish to begrudge everyone the three d giant Christmas card joy of a white Christmas. I love white Christmases and so much the more because they occur so rarely here. But I still enjoy our green Christmases, even with the likelihood of rain and dark grey skies. Many people find this depressing but for me it behooves a meditative, contemplative journey that encourages us to go inward and touch our interior tranquility. I also love the gleaming green moss and ferns that festoon the tree trucks during our mild rainy winters with their suggestive promise of the coming spring.
I also wonder what the indigenous experience was like here, centuries before this country was colonized by white Europeans, of how they coped with the rain and the dark skies and what their thoughts were about the rare snowfall, if it was seen as a blessing or a nuisance. Did their children play in the snow? Did they make snowmen and snow angels? There is so much lost to us of the ancient traditions and cultures of our First Peoples here. I sometimes have to remind myself that where I live was once primeval forest and that there were nearby villages and towns that went back thousands of years, towns of which scarcely a trace still lingers.
I was listening to a program this evening on the CBC about the experience of many First Nations people in hospital emergency. Here is my response:
Interesting program. I appreciate hearing the First Nations' experience in hospital emergency and how awful it must be to have to slalom around negative stereotypes that are still ignorantly held about aboriginal persons. Where I get a bit uncomfortable is with the assumption that by being white I am going to be somehow well off and successful. Well, I live in poverty, in social housing and I am a white sixty year old male. By the same token I can't help but bridle a little when I feel targeted with the traditional stereotype that by being white I should be a successful upper middle class professional.
I also would not feel comfortable referring to myself as a white settler, for the simple reason that I did not settle in this country. My paternal grandparents settled here as children as did my maternal great grandparents. However, having been born here, I have just as much, and no more, entitlement to be here as my First Nations brothers and sisters. I think that if we are going to have a respectful and productive conversation then we are going to need to get past the blame and guilt and the negative (and positive) stereotypes and work harder at living together here in Canada. This does nothing to negate the huge legacy and the oppression that the native peoples here have suffered from, but we need to move on past grudges, blame and guilt and find something that more resembles real reconciliation. This is a strong issue with me because, as a poor person myself I also know something about social oppression and having been born here I feel no participation in a sense of collective responsibility for the oppression of First Nations people. On the other hand I do want to understand better what they experience, as individuals, and participate more in a positive sense with them of community building.
thanks
Aaron
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