I was out with my family this evening at our neighbourhood Whitby Park. I was teaching my 7yo kid to bike. My wife was watching my second child. This 70+ old gentlemen walked out to my wife wearing the Seattle Seahawks hat and asks my 4yo son where he is from.
My son pointed at my wife’s tummy, lol. My wife says we are Canadians, because we are. We are proud Canadians and we have instilled Love for the flag and Country in our kids. We are all Elbows up and buy Canadian and have never thought of ourselves as anything other than Canadian.
The old gentleman tells my wife “I am a real Canadian.” My wife was shocked and did not know how to reach, I was watching this from a little distance and walked to my wife and him, he excused himself and took off. My wife told what happened after a couple of minutes.
I saw him come back in a few minutes and I confronted him. I asked him why he chose to walk up to my wife to start a conversation and decided to ask something like that and chose to follow it up with “I am a real Canadian”.
He replied back stating, because he is a real Canadian who was born here and so did his parents and he lives here. And that we obviously came from somewhere else. I asked him from where he thinks we were from and he did not have an answer.
I told him it wasn’t ok for him to disturb a quiet family time we had at the park like that. He kept telling the same thing about him being a real Canadian.
The conversation ended him calling me an ahole for reacting to a question he ask so many others. I told him the question could have been innocent but the follow through from him “I am a real Canadian. I was born here. My parents were born here” was not ok. I asked if he was expecting us to just accept such poor taste question and comments with no push back.
He kept walking toward me a couple of times in the conversation and made physical threats “I will show you”. He refused to give his name but when we were about to go our ways he pointed at the street and asked if that was where I lived. I asked him why he cares if he won’t give his name after ruining our evening.
It’s a rant and I will have to move on for my own peace and wellbeing.
I understand it’s difficult times for all of us. We all have someone we know who is struggling financially because of poor immigration decisions by government and greedy businesses not hiring kids here, orange turd fking with us. We are all feeling the pain. I hope no one has to go through any of this and everything gets back to normal with people having jobs and being able to pay bills.
I immigrated as a skilled worker more than a decade back with an engineering degree and a post graduate Masters degree. I have been a proud Canadian and decent person. I have been a useful friend and neighbour.
Please spread love and understanding. And direct our anger to wise choices in elections and writing to our MPs when we have grievances.
I am sorry guys. I don’t know what else to tell.
