Roger Varley has been in the news business almost 40 years with The Canadian Press/Broadcast News, Uxbnridge Times-Journal, Richmond Hill Liberal and Uxbridge Cosmos. Co-winner with two others of CCNA national feature writing award. In Scout movement over 30 years, almost 25 as a leader. Took Uxbridge youths to World Jamboree in Holland. Involved in community theatre for 20 years as actor, director, playwright, stage manager etc. Born in England, came to Canada at 16, lived most of life north and east of Toronto with a five-year period in B.C.
When nstiness strikes close to home
On occasion, I use this column to talk of personal things. It usually happens when I'm trying to come to terms with something in my life. This is one of those occasions.
My eldest granddaughter, Autumn Cheyenne, is 17 years old.
Autumn Cheyenne's maternal grandmother is an Algonquin and her maternal grandfather was French-Canadian. Her paternal grandmother is Canadian and her paternal grandfather (me) is English.
This remarkable young woman honours all of the cultures, races, heritages, call them what you will, that go into making her the person she is.
To honour her paternal grandparents, she speaks English as her language of choice. Of course, living in the heart of Ontario, that's pretty much the best way to get along in the daily routine.
To honour her maternal grandfather, she enrolled in French immersion throughout her school career and is fluent in that language.
To honour her maternal grandmother, she has learned native dances and participated in pow-wow ceremonies, delved into her native culture and studied, albeit with difficulty, the Algonquin language. She even spent a couple of summers at Sainte Marie Among The Hurons - (where her parents met, fell in love and were married) - as a “native resident” interpreter.
And when my entire family gathered in Uxbridge a couple of years ago to celebrate the 50 years since my parents, my brother, my sister and I arrived in Canada, Autumn and her sister, Maya Elora, honoured us by donning their fabulous native dance costumes and performing one of their dances for us.
Autumn Cheyenne has just been accepted into the Canada World Youth program, has received early acceptance at the University of Ottawa and has passed her G2 driver's licence. And to top it all off, she is becoming fluent in Spanish.
Not bad for a beautiful, bright young girl of 17. Life must be good.
But it's not all good. My granddaughter, in my eyes, is what might be called the stereotypical beautiful Indian princess of Hollywood westerns. And that causes the problems. Racist remarks.
I don't see my granddaughters anywhere as much as I would like, so when we do get together, as we did briefly at Christmas, I like to get each of them alone for as long as possible - (it's never long enough) - to have a chat, catch up on their lives and talk about boys, dreams and possibilities. So it rather hit me by surprise when Autumn told me during our chat that she has often had racist remarks made to her and they weren't subtle either.
Obviously, I must be quite naive, because it never occurred to me that anyone in my family would be subjected to such ignorance, ridicule, hate, whatever it is that promotes racist remarks. It took more than a few seconds for her revelation to sink in. And when she related some of the remarks and a couple of incidents I don't want to go into, I sat with my jaw gaping. Not just because of what I was hearing and not just because it happened to my granddaughter. It was also because I don't understand how or why some people reach the point that they have to lash out at others they deem to be different.
What can possibly motivate them? Is it because they are lacking a sense of identity in their own lives that they have to attack someone else's identity? Or is it something as simple, but equally condemnable, as stupidity? What benefit do they derive from such behaviour? Some misguided sense of superiority? Some weird sense of power?
And those racist remarks made to my granddaughter didn't just hurt her. Now they have hurt me. And although it might be unkind of me to say so, I hope they hurt you, too. Because if they do, it means you also are offended by racism.
Autumn Cheyenne might smile if she reads this. She gets on with her life as a somewhat typical Canadian teenager. She's had a boyfriend, talks about bands I've never heard of, rides horses and she has a small piercing in her nose. She shrugged off the incidents as something that she likely will have to expect at times in her life. She doesn't dwell on them.
Unfortunately, I find it hard to shrug off. But then again, it's probably like most of the ills in the world: we tend to ignore them until they strike close to home.
Tell me, am I wrong?
