Jim Leech, the Chancellor of Queen’s University, is a classmate of mine from Royal Military College of Canada. An engineering physics graduate with a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from Queen’s, Jim is one of the brightest people I have met. Not that long ago, in a Facebook exchange, Jim asserted that I had “white privilege”. Really?
Before dealing with my “white privilege” I think it useful to review some statistical and demographic data on Canada. Canada has one of the best educated populations on Earth. Over 90% of Canadians over 25 years of age have completed high school.
30% of Canadians have a post-secondary degree and 13.1% have post-graduate degrees. Immigrants to Canada are twice as likely to have a university degree than native born Canadians and four times as likely to have post graduate degrees.
Canada has a diverse population, only 32% of which identify as “Canadian”. 13.6% say they are French; 18% English; 13.4% Irish; 9.6% German; 5.1% Chinese; 4.6% Italian, and 4.0% East Indian while First Nations make up 4.4% of Canada’s population. Our Liberal leaders describe many of these “groups” as “marginalized” in an ever increasing attempt to class Canadians as “oppressed” or “oppressors”.
Only 10.1% of Canadians are officially “impoverished” and 22.3% are colored.
My family came to Canada from Ireland in 1790 and have been here since. I am one of the people who identifies as Canadian having rarely been to Ireland. I grew up in abject poverty with a schizophrenic mother and a dysfunctional family no one of which (including my extended family of many aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, and so on) had ever attended university. There were many times during my childhood when we had no food and we lacked indoor plumbing and relied on an outdoor well for water for many years. I have fond memories of my trips to the outhouse during Winnipeg winters.
I am white. I am still looking for the “privilege” part of this history.
At Royal Military College I took advantage of the opportunity to learn and studied mathematics, physics, chemistry and eventually literature and history, graduating first in the faculty of Arts with the History Medal. I achieved that result the old-fashioned way - work.
After serving 6 years as a fighter pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force, I completed a Master’s Degree in Business Administration at University of Western Ontario. I paid my own tuition, books and living expenses and graduated on the Dean’s Honor’s List through - you guessed it - work.
My career post graduation included McKinsey & Company, Inc., Canadian General Electric Company Limited (where I was elected a Vice President), and companies I founded including The Enfield Corporation Limited and Rexall Drug Stores. No one gave me anything. I became wealthy the old-fashioned way - I earned my money.
A student of History, I fear that Canada is changing into a “woke” community of leftists who prefer to be “victims” than to look after themselves and their families. Universities no longer encourage debate but actively suppress it, almost demanding allegiance to left wing ideology. Indoctrination has replaced education.
My namesake, Eric Blair (writing under the name George Orwell) saw this coming in his classic book “1984”. Up is down, War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.
The parallels under the Trudeau Liberals are concerning. Efforts are underway to compel certain speech and censor other speech. Each time Parliament meets another piece of our freedom is taken away. Yet, much like the Austrians who voted to have Hitler’s Germany annex Austria in 1938, Canada has a love affair with Trudeau. History books have been rewritten to claim Hitler annexed Austria with force, an absurd claim given the 98% of the Austrian people voting in favor of the union in the April 1938 referendum.
As Orwell wrote: “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past”.
I make no bones about it. “White Privilege” is left wing rhetoric intent on dividing Canada into tribes and pitting those tribes against one another.