Tag: education

Watch “American Reacts to Amazing Places to Visit in Canada” on YouTube

So I’ve been following this guy’s YouTube channel for a few weeks now and I have to recommend it highly, especially if you’re into learning about Canada 🇨🇦. Over the past few weeks this self professed average American has been reacting to videos on YouTube about various aspects of Canada as a country and I, as a Canadian fully approve.

However I do have a bit of advice for this fellow. Please stop introducing yourself as a typical American because it isn’t true. The average American doesn’t generally want to learn about other countries and certainly has little to no interest in Canada until they meet someone who is Canadian and show them just how little they know or care about their northern neighbor. Which I know personally as I, a Canadian woman, lived in the USA for just under 20 years.

I realize that the subject of Canada is boring to most Americans and the reason for this is that Canada isn’t as skilled as the USA is when it comes to creating hype. I’ve long said that hype is the only thing America still successfully creates. In Canada, on the other hand the only real hype that we’ve created is around the sport of hockey. So much so that regardless of the outcome of a hockey game half the audience will riot over it.

Thankfully our politics are pretty boring, because we have more than two political parties involved we don’t have the same political division. Don’t get me wrong there is some division, but it’s not like we’re heading towards a civil war or anything like that. As a matter of fact, we have 5 political parties in Canada and two official languages in which to agree or disagree . Et c’est vres!

Another reason Canada is so boring is that we have quite a bit of elbow room. With just one tenth of the population of the USA, and much more land, we are free to enjoy our personal space far more than countries with denser populations, and can stay out of each other’s way. Of course there is still violence that exists here,but after our last massacre we took a much harder stance on guns, which has saved us from having daily mass shootings like they have south of the border.

Kudos to this young man for his curiosity about his northern neighbor, his eagerness to learn and his honesty when he doesn’t know something because it’s just very refreshing to see from way up here.

What about the Children?

Will the stupidity never end? This week a “News Story” broke about a retired porn star, Sasha Grey reading to grade school children. Read what happened here http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/11/sasha-grey-porn-star-read_n_1088017.html

In this blog I will make the argument that the folks on ALL sides of this event are showing their stupidity. Let me begin with the aforementioned Ms. Grey. It should be noted that I am not anti porn in any way. I consider myself a sex positive feminist, from the old school of feminism that believes a woman should embrace her sexuality, not be vilified for it. I do not judge Ms. Grey for her former profession, only for her behavior in this instance. As a former porn star she should know that society will not want her in direct contact with children unless they are her own. While I applaud her wanting to volunteer for a worthy cause, she picked the wrong one. If, however, she had gone into that classroom, read the story and left without feeling the need to be validated through tweeting about her good deed, chances are, we and the children’s parents never would have heard about this situation. But, then Ms. Grey would not have had the publicity she so sorely desires. I am so sick of women playing the victim, especially when it’s obvious that they cast themselves in the role. Oh, look at the poor former porn star, she’s not allowed to do anything good without being reminded of all the bad she’s done. It was stupid of her to tweet about reading to elementary school children under her performing name to all of her porn fans (and TMZ). What I really want to know is who took the pictures of her in the classroom? Can you say Publicist?

Then there’s the school who claimed, when pressed, that Ms. Grey was never there. Could it be because she was there under her non-porn name and they just didn’t put two and two together (not EVERYONE watches porn after all)? Could it be because they wanted to avoid the inevitable shit-storm from the parents? Or maybe they thought that if they denied it, no one could ever possibly prove otherwise. Enter Twitter and TMZ. Denial was possibly the most stupid route to take in this drama. Who do they think they are, politicians?

Now to the outraged parents. The collective complaint here seems to be that their innocent little angels were subjected to the horror that is being in the same room with a lady who read to them. Let’s face facts, in the moment, all these kids were aware of was that some lady was reading to them. It’s the parents who have made this an issue that they now have to explain to their kids, by voicing their outrage. And we all know how parents hate having to talk to their kids about sex. How do you explain pornography to a 6-year-old? This is a question the parents should have asked themselves before reacting emotionally. If they had just left well enough alone, then these little children would not have had to know the meaning of the word pornography and why the pretty lady with the long brown hair was a bad person. These parents in their stupidity are just breeding more hate and playing right into the hands of Ms. Grey and her quest for fame (or, in this case, infamy) through victimization.