Canada The Great?

I'm heading to Ottawa with Jenn and the boys for a Canada Day weekend blast. However, I got to thinking the other day. We celebrate how great this country is, but on some points we haven't come as far as we should. Our justice system is a joke. I was reading an article the other day about a Japanese lady who came to Canada about 20 years ago and started her own little bar/coffee shop. She was so thankful to Canada for giving her the life she always wanted, but then a strange incident happened. She was hit by a driver who got out of his car, checked to see if there was any damage done to his automobile, and drove off. Leaving the elderly Japanese woman on the street to die. What was his sentence you ask? A 90 dollar fine. A 90 dollar fine? Have we lost our minds? To this day she (even shockingly to me) still thanks this "wonderful" country for giving her the chance to be who she wanted to be. As a Canadian born in this country I am disgusted that we have let it come to this. Don't you think we could do a little better?

Though it's not as bad as in some countries where they are persecuted for their beliefs, the gay community still gets knocked around quite a bit. Yeah, it was nice being at the pride parade this past weekend and seeing everyone celebrating so proudly from all over the world but the haters are still out there. I'm proud Canada has come so far in realizing that everyone in this world has the right to love another person. Is it wrong to love? I was raised in a Catholic household, where we were told to "love everyone" but when it came time for me to question why being gay was wrong all of a sudden I was a bad Catholic for questioning my religion. Odd. I may be going off on a tangent here still I think we're doing better than most but we have a long way to go. Our home and native land indeed.

From a guy who's straight but not narrow...Happy Canada Day