Reading your story about declining high school enrolment, takes me back approximately five decades, back when Canada's population was under 20 million people. It was back in the time before MasterCard, Visa, or American Express were even heard of.
Myself, being raised in small town in BC, I can remember how much smaller the economy was. But, for the basic reason of brotherhood, and the principle of love thy neighbor, people seemed much happier. Whereas, compared to today, where those basic principles have been lost, and material values rule.
It has now become more important that everybody owns a new car, (there was only one in my town in 1962), as well as credit cards, and an iPhone. I believe there is an important lesson to be learned here, especially if we want to remain a sovereign country.
For whatever reason, and I believe it's economic, we stopped, at least compared to today, producing children. The majority of today's population, the baby boomers, are well over 50 years of age. When I read that a fairly large community like Mission is down to 400 senior high school students, you know the pendulum has swung too far to the other side. Surely, we must realize, that we are in serious trouble if we want to stay in control of our destinies.
There's no possible way that we can continue to expand the economy without importing foreign labor and expertise. Otherwise, in another 30 years, if not sooner, the few Canadian-born children we do have, and the rest of our current young people, will lose their identities, and become the minority.
If we continue this policy into the future, we will lose our country to those we import to run it for us. Why did we stop having children? Personally, I was raised in poverty, and somehow I was sold on the idea of the "buck stops here". Because of the idea it was all about showcasing the good life, where it was your personal responsibility to "keep up to the Joneses', and outdo all those around you, otherwise you were looked down upon as less, a bum or a piece of crap.
Instead of cherishing all those around you for their own uniqueness, it became more important to idolize only those who rose high in material value and appearance. So to attain these great heights of expectation, raising personal wealth became more important than raising families. It is this falsification of unreal hopes and dreams that has led us into this self-serving lie of personal gratification and will prove to be the eventual destruction of our Nation.
If I could do it all over again, I would throw all my wealth out the window, and raise as many children as God would allow me to have. But, because of what I have done, and what we all have done, looking after ourselves, our pension plans, and our future, we've basically, "sold the farm".
Our only hope of remaining a sovereign Nation is to shrink our economy back to the 1960's, and stop exporting our future, and raise our family values above material wealth. We must start living for tomorrow instead of today. Already, the less noticeable numbers of young people on our streets is alarming. In thirty years there will be nobody around to sustain this incredible wealth that we have amassed, unless we import human population,and this will be at the expense of our current youth.
What happens now when these 400 Grads decide Mission has no future or value for them, and decide to move to Fort MacMurray to carry on the tradition of self serving wealth and prosperity, at the expense of Nation building, and Planetary destruction in general.
I suggest we all take a good look around, because in the not so distant future, there won't be one!
Art Green, Hope