Today, I Wear Orange.
I normally enjoy a relatively quiet Canada Day, but today I am reflective and sad. I feel that Canada is like the popular girl at school. The one who everyone loves and invites to all the parties. But she is also the one that is the bully. The one who picks on the weaker kids in a way that often goes unnoticed by the adults because she's so sweet and cute. The one who's victims look at her with fear and distrust. I have always known about Canada's darker side. I grew up hearing about how the Canadian government turned away a ship of European Jews fleeing the horrors of the Holocaust, sending them to their death. Growing up in Vancouver, with parents who studied and worked with both Indigenous and minority cultures, I knew all about the Chinese Head Tax, the injustices and internment of the Japanese Canadians in World War 2, as well as to our First Nations and the Residential school history. I knew at a young age that the Reserves were racist and that the poverty w