Hi friends,
Today is Canada Day! :-)) Canada is 137 years old today. There will be many celebrations across the country. We think about our beloved country, who we are, what we are accomplishing and where we are going in this world of nations. It is a beautiful, hot day of blue skies and fluffy clouds.
Two days ago we held our federal elections. The federal elections must be held every four years, or when the party in power calls them. The outcome was surprising to everybody, as polsters who, continually asked small and representative segments of the populace about their intentions, had forecast other outcomes.
We have a minority Liberal government with the new Conservatives as "Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition". The minority Liberals (centrist and slightly right of centre,) will need to be friends with others, especially the more left of centreNew Democratic Party and the one independent candidate, to have enough support to get bills passed in parliament. Some think this can be an excellent prescription for progress.
There has been much discussion and debate about the outcome of the election. Part of the reason is that two former parties, one quite a new one, called The NewAlliance party, and the other, a hoary old one since the beginning of the country 137 years ago, called The Progressive Conservatives, also known as "The Tories" melded together recently to "unite the right" to form the new Conservative Party.
Many people felt that the new party was unknown, and had no parliamentry experience, so they were worried it would get in with a majority. Also, many people were angry with a couple of provincial parties that had the same names. The results were a compromise that appeared in the voting. It will probably work, at least for awhile. It is going to be interesting to watch the outcome of this unusual set of circumstances.
Some say there will be another election within two years as the governing Liberals try to attain a majority. However, this election cost a lot of money for0 each party, and many of the public are election-weary, including me. So I hope this government will be able to carry on well enough without it.
All this "election fever" has been keeping us quite busy here lately.
Here are the words to our national anthem.
Oh Canada, our home and native landTrue patriot love from all of us command.With glowing hearts we see thee riseThe true north, strong and freeFrom far and wide oh CanadaWe stand on guard for thee.God keep our land glorious and freeOh Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
The words to the anthem have been changed a few times recently. For instance it used to be, "from all thy sons command," but to be more inclusive of women it was changed to "from all of us", I believe. I hope I haven't missed any other changes. Any changes are always only to make the anthem more inclusive of all of us. We are growing to be a very mixed populace of peoples and beliefs. :-))
With friendly greetings, Mary
