To me, it was torture. Utter torture..Going to church on Sundays, with my parents and brother, Jim. Having to dress up, in my Sunday best. Ukrainian Orthodox, of course, at St. Vladimir and Olga’s, in Windsor, ON..Listening to those Ukrainian masses, feeling guilt. Horrible, depressing funerial dirges in deep voices. Terrible paintings on the walls that I didn't understand..God was good, we were bad. Get on your knees, you bastard, and pray..Pray for good things to happen. Pray for your salvation. Pray for anything and everything.. Ukrainian religious artWriter Dave Makichuk found Ukrainian Orthodox painfully obscure he says, but identifies that congregation with hard-working values that built the Canada that the Trudeau Liberals seem intent on taking apart. .Make your decision, for Christ!.I could not wait to get out of there, even though, I did feel renewed and somewhat reinvigorated, afterward..I had suffered through it and hopefully was better for it. But thank God, there was a silver lining. My parents would take us to a good restaurant afterward, usually the House of Lee for Chinese or the Harmony Grill..And Dad, who was a hard-working man, one of, if not the best, mechanics at Dan Kane Chevrolet, was all holy, for 24 hours. Swearing off the booze (he never did) and promising to be a better, churched-up man..It was a weekly routine in a blue collar town..All great stuff, right? A bunch of detriments, like us, who built Canada. Built it strong. Worked hard and never looked back or asked for a handout..Today, things have changed, fallen through the cracks, become distorted..Under the Trudeau regime, our country is a stumbling, helter-skelter disgrace. A shadow of what it once was and heading downhill fast. He is killing everything that we held so proud. A master of disaster..There was a time I was proud to say 'I am Canadian.' Not anymore..Our leaders seem weak and incapable. Nothing ever seems to get done, the wheels turning low and slow..A Western Standard reader, named Lorne, emailed me recently, with this comment..“This is not Canada anymore.”.That comment really threw me, because it was so accurate and true. He’s right, this is not Canada anymore. I totally agree..At least, not the Canada we knew. It is gone. It is nothing. We are a shambles..It has become a splintered, tumultuous land of hate and polar opposites, provincial feuds and top-down federal policies that threaten the livelihoods of Canadian families, struggling to survive under a regime of cold indifference..Make no mistake, under Justin we are a fractured nation. Our very way of life, under attack. In effect, fertile ground for CIA manipulation..Case in point, eco-radical environment minister Steven Guilbeault. Or Gibo, as he is now known..This guy is the least qualified, least objective and without question the worst choice to hold this position and make decisions that will impact Canada's future..But, par for the course, for the current PMO..And now, Gibo is heading to China, to make nice with the Chinese Communist Government, to discuss Liberal policies on the oil and gas sector and the carbon tax..It goes without saying, Xi Jinping and the PRC will play him like a cheap fiddle. And so they should. Wouldn’t you?.Imagine, Liberal fools selling us out, to China, to give credence to their green polices, which could potentially destroy our economy..Do you think any prime minister, Stephen Harper, Paul Martin, Jean Chretien, et al, would do such a thing?.Seeking weak-kneed consultations with a country that has aligned itself with the malevolent Vladimir Putin and the Russians against Ukraine — against democracy and freedom..They hate us, they want to kill us, and destroy us. My God..So what is Canada now? What are we and what do we stand for?.Do we even exist anymore? Is it now largely irrelevant on the world stage, as some have said? A laughing stock in diplomatic circles..Hiding from our responsibilities with NATO while the PMO plays the big shot at the G8 and other high-level talks..Meantime, we have been left out of new security pacts such as AUKUS. A kick in the teeth for the Trudeau government, which attempted to play it down..Folks, the world doesn’t trust us, anymore..Even worse, there is a rumour circulating around Ottawa, that should Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives get into power, they will face a daunting task — having to chop an incredible $70 billion from the budget..Clearly, we have squandered the potential of our grand democracy..Dragged it into the gutter like a Shakespearean tragedy, for the aggrandizement of a “Golden Boy.”.To quote, the great Mordecai Richler: “The truth is Canada is a cloud-cuckoo-land, an insufferably rich country governed by idiots, its self-made problems offering comic relief to the ills of the real world out there, where famine and racial strife and vandals in office are the unhappy rule.”.Are we, as Lucien Bouchard once said, not a real country?.A client state of the US, dependent upon and enthralled by it, while pretending we are sovereign?.And if so, why bother any longer with this charade?
