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Lest We Forget, Eh

DOWNTOWN CANADA--Canada is a nation rich in heritage, but are our young Canadians forgetting about our roots? Are our children spending too much time floating in the pop culture flotsam that drifts through our country, that even the most common historical Canadian facts are washed away on a wave of cultural apathy? What does it say about the sorry state of our education system when seven out of ten children cannot even name the Canadian president? When 95% of our kids are able to recognize Pamela Anderson, while less than 10% can identify the face of Sir Lanny MacDonald, it is a sure sign that we are losing the ties to our strong Canadian past.

Not many of our children recognize the face of Sir Lanny A MacDonald on our Canadian currency.

What does it say about our teaching priorities when thirty percent of our children are unable to identify the man who sits at the top of Parliament Mountain--the man who makes the decisions that control the fate of our nation and its three million citizens?

I know that I would be upset if my children were not able to recite the names of our nineteen provinces, nor name the heroes from the Great Canadian War. Hell, it makes me mad that most kids are unaware that Oshawa is our nation's capital.

Now I wouldn't expect every kid to tell me the name of the explorer who appears on our three-dollar bills, nor would I berate the youth who is unable to recite the words from Woah Canada. However, I would think that every child would at least be able to tell me the name of the first King of Canada, or the name the river that traverses the breadth of our great country.

Teachers need to focus more on teaching our children about our unique heritage--the important facts in Canadian history--rather than encouraging them to idolize American pop culture icons like Tiffany Spears or Justin Timberboat. If our kids grow up without knowing about the decimation of the mammoth herds in the early 1930's, or the bombing of the Métis city of Moose Jaw, history is doomed to repeat itself.

I want my children to be able to speak fluent Canadian. I want them to sing songs about the Canadian discovery of Europe; I want them to be able to tell their children the stories about how Canada sold Washington and Idaho to the United States, and how Paul Henderson defeated the communist Russian ruler Vladislav Tretiak at the Summit in 1972.

The president of Canada needs to realize that the children are our future, because if the next generation doesn't know anything about the Canadian Royal Family, the Conquest of Saskatoon, or the ocean upon which Winnipeg is located, we're going to lose our cultural distinction, and we will all be the poorer for it.

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