Maybe I'm just beginning to get an ego or something, but I'm starting to believe that I'm one of the few people in this town who actually has a sense of decency.

Let me explain myself...
Wednesday was Canada Day, and while I'm not entirely sure what our country was celebrating (Peaceful separation from England? Multiculturalism? Tim Hortons?), I'm fairly certain that most people didn't give it much thought in between cracking open a fresh beer and lighting explosives. I got the impression that the freedom to drink beer all day in the middle of the week was what was actually being celebrated. Of course, everyone is free to drink beer all day in the middle of the week if they like, but on Wednesday it was considered socially acceptable.
Now, I know that part of me is just bitter about the fact that I was one of five people in the entire city who had to work on Canada Day (no beer for me), but I think I have a legitimate point. Tuesday was my day off, and I happily planned to spend that day in a cemetery, not drinking beer.

No, I'm not goth, and I definitely haven't preformed any seances since I was at least 14, but this graveyard visit was something I'd been wanting to do for ages. You see, a man named George Loveless is buried just on the outskirts of London, and he was a pretty remarkable guy. George was the inspiration behind a society which protested the unlivable, ever-reduced wages paid to the villagers of Tolpuddle, England. Trade Unions were just in the preliminary stages back then in the 1830s, and though they were no longer illegal, some members of the society were arrested via a loophole in the system and shipped off to Australia as an example. There was a public outcry over this, thus George Loveless and five others became known as the Tolpuddle Martyrs. They were released after serving only two years of their seven year sentence, but that was two years too many, and most of the Tolpuddle Martyrs emigrated to London, Ontario after their release.

Though George Loveless and his companions were not Canadian, I thought that my Canada Day celebration should involve honoring someone who was willing to risk it all in order to protect the rights of the people. Standing in the little cemetery trying to read the weather-worn words on his tombstone, I was a bit distressed. The deeds of those like the Tolpuddle Martyrs are just as faded in our collective memory as the words on George Loveless' tombstone. Aren't days like Canada Day meant to remind us of how much we've grown as a nation? Take our friend George's story; he moved to Canada because his government severely wronged him. We're lucky to have a government that will stand up for us if we're mistreated in the work-place. And if we're thinking along those lines, why shouldn't we take it further and be a bit critical of ourselves as well? What would George think if he could see how we live today? We manipulate the systems people like George suffered to create, to get absolutely everything we can out of them. Not to say that the systems themselves are not corrupt, but how many people stop to think that they might be contributing to that corruption? It really is no wonder that Canada has an identity problem: everything is take, take, take. We live everyday for ourselves. Nationalism is on it's way out, along with community, and family. What would George say?

Along the riverbank amongst the crowds in the rain on Wednesday night, I listened to the echoes the fireworks made and felt thankful that the resonating crashes were part of an aesthetic display put on by our city. In other places they hear the same sounds, but wouldn't dare rush outside to look.