By JOE WARMINGTON
2007-09-29
Toronto Sun
The Canadian flag is flying upside down.
They may have had some good points to make on why uranium should not be mined there, but I could not get past the deplorable act.
"It's not meant to be an insult but a distress call," activist and protester David Bate said at the occupied would-be mining location in Sharbot Lake -- just off Hwy. 7, an hour and 15 minutes east of Peterborough.
He and other native protesters have taken over an old mining site and say they won't allow further testing to see how much uranium is there and whether it could sustain a mine.
They seem like nice enough fellas and are certainly raising important issues of pollution, etc.
It's all worth examining -- but this business of flying the Canadian flag upside down disgusts me.
BEYOND THE PALE
This country doesn't deserve that. You see the flag-draped coffin of a Canadian soldier and it makes you realize there are people who would die for this country. And lots have.
Disrespecting the flag like that over something like this is beyond the pale.
"A lot of settlers support us," one of the protesters said.
These so-called settlers pay more than $8 billion in taxpayers' money a year to the department that handles native issues, and while there are problems to talk about, respecting our flag costs nothing.
As NHL coach and native leader Ted Nolan once told me about a fellow native leader not standing for the national anthem: "How can you get people to respect your traditions if you don't respect theirs?"
He's right. Turn the flag around down there. And then we can talk about uranium.