For the fourth time in a year I have, as an immigrant Scotsman to the Fraser Valley, experienced nasty, disparaging and downright rude remarks from white, middle-class British Columbians.
What kind of sheer ignorance do the people of the Lower Mainland perpetuate to feel that such behaviour is acceptable, warranted or justified? What kind of outlandish nonsense does this community hold as true of the Scottish nation, its culture, heritage and most important to their own Canadian history, its legacy?
From accusations of being somehow ethnically violent as a race, sideways glances, inappropriate parodies of speech, accent and “Groundskeeper Willie” whiskey-drinking stereotyping, I have never in my 45 years on this good green Earth met such a bunch of ignorant and downright rude morons.
I came to this province believing it to be a sane, westernized, democratic, diplomatic capitalist community. I expected its people to have been educated in the philosophies of these highly held pillars of our western society, and at least to some small degree be appreciative of the considerable contribution the Scottish nation has made to them, and to the foundation of their great state.
Instead, I am find myself among socially graceless knuckle-draggers who think the world was forged this way and the Scottish nation just happened to be where your red-headed, incoherent, drunkard of a great-great-oat-eating-grandfather was born.
No wonder China is kicking the west’s backside economically –the American continent seems to have forgotten everything the Scots taught them!
John Campbell
Abbotsford
