All is not well in Anne’s land

The recent incident in Tignish where a Sikh patron was told to remove his religious head covering at the local Canadian Legion post was more than an embarrassment, it put all our dirty little secrets out there for the world to see. We Islanders can be a complacent, smug, and judgmental lot.

We view ourselves as friendly and neighbourly, but in reality all too many people here are small-minded and are afraid of change. Often disparaging towards outsiders, especially those who aren’t native Islanders and come from away. We have lived in our cloistered world far too long. Our self-righteous siege mentality, and narrow world view, have become barriers to adapting to the global changes that have been thrust upon us. Anne my have lived in a small, closed, isolated, rural world, we do not. Time to grow up. The racist incident that transpired in Tignish was considerably more than a mere “unfortunate incident” requiring “sensitivity training” or an apology to rectify it. And many people will be tempted to give it the mushroom treatment and ignore what happened. But what happened in Tignish identifies the soft and ugly underbelly of Island values. As an old Pogo cartoon said, “We have seen the enemy and they are us.”

The Tignish incident exposed the underlying intolerance, racism, and hypocrisy that exists and subtlety permeates Island life. The veneer of welcoming openness and civility is all too thin and is a mirage – We’ll take your tourist dollar, now move on.

All too many people will want to ignore what happened, after all it does not reflect well on us.

The following observations will make me few friends. First, it must be said that when we scratch the surface here there is little to differentiate us from the yahoos in the American south who are claiming racial entitlements based on white nationalism.

The remarks on the old newspaper electronic comment boards attest to this.

Here, just below the surface, there is the same simmering anger, and the need to feel superior to someone else by putting their foot on the back of someone’s neck. Until recently the history of P.E.I. was in many ways similar to that of Northern Ireland, with its ugly religious disputes. But now it is easier for Islanders to identify an outsider by the colour of their skin, language, or dress code.

But what happened in Tignish is not a matter of political correctness. It is a matter of common sense and decency. In Canada and the U.S., immigrants were used as cheap labour to track the CPR (Chinese) or build the Rideau Canal (Irish). But now immigrants are uppity and have more doctorates and grad degrees, according to the recent census, than do most locals; as well, they have a higher incidence of home ownership.

And immigrants do something the locals have forgotten to do: they work hard to get ahead, and put in the hours necessary studying. Immigrants value education and work hard to succeed. So it’s easy to resent them in subtle and not so subtle ways.

In terms of Island culture it is quite telling, based on the video, that the other patrons at the Canadian Legion saw nothing wrong in what was happening. In other words, what happened was accepted behaviour directed at outsiders. The other message that was implicitly given off was that outsiders, especially if they are “foreigners,” have no business in the Legion hall.

Lastly, as the dust settles, we are entitled to ask: Where are our political, community, and religious leaders in all this? Where is Premier MacLauchlan, where is Bishop Grecco, and where are the local MP and mayor in condemning this type of behaviour and promoting tolerance? What leadership or understanding have they provided to the public in all this? And if all the Canadian Legion can do is provide cheap beer for big mouth, racist punks, maybe they have outlived their organizational usefulness, because it is painfully clear that they don’t understand why their members fought and died in our wars for democracy.