Political correctness getting out of hand
LETTERS
Re: Political correctness and attacks on Sen Beyak.
So the establishment does not agree with Sen. Beyak. Her point is that it is possible, even probable, not every individual in the residential school system was an abuser. If one paints with a similar brush, because some school teachers are being charged with child pornography, it follows that all teachers are guilty. Quite ridiculous.
If one goes back to the end of the Victorian age, my late wife’s grandmother and a sister were born in Scotland. Their mother died, father remarried and on his death the stepmother placed the two girls in an orphanage in Glasgow. The British government of the day was not interested in supporting orphan children so they were shipped off to Canada and Australia. Girls about 11 years of age went to families who wanted a free kitchen maid, while most of the boys went to farms (but took advantage of First World War to join the Canadian Army and escape servitude).
It is conceivable that the 11-year-old girls were abused mentally, physically and sexually — my wife was never told. How did things improve? The suffragettes suffered abuse and death to secure the vote for women age 30 and older in 1918. In the 1930s my mother-in-law (married to a Mounties detachment commander) had the holding cells in the back of their house and she was required to feed and care for the prisoners — at the cost of bruises and scratches.
Forward to 1952, women are needed in the RCAF, that is until they marry and then must resign. The same for airline stewardesses — RN training a pre-requisite — but out on marrying. Where are we today? Repeated stories of women being abused in some way in the armed forces, police departments and even told how to dress in business (high heels required).
It is time politicians stopped trying to avoid issues with political correctness, which is clearly rubbish. It might help, too, if they remembered “Let he without sin throw the first stone.”
Graham R. (Gerry) Hunn
Lethbridge