Amid the benign feel good cheer of Canada Day (July 1) here in Vancouver, a "police incident" snarled bridge traffic for six hours, preventing people from getting to their Canada Day destinations. I spent my Canada Day stuck on a sweaty, overcrowded bus for almost two hours while it slowly inched along in traffic to cross over the other main bridge where traffic was diverted. The inconvenience of being caught up in the sweltering gridlock on a holiday no less, aroused the ire and indignation of many -- and I belonged to those ranks.
I usually make a weekly pilgrimage across the water to visit my father who is in a care home with the late stages of Parkinson's and dementia. My objective was to get over to see him in time to feed him his dinner - knowing how special this day was to him in better times. What occurred to me after the fact was how selfish and apathetic we are as a nation. Although the reasons that would compel a person to hurl themselves over a bridge are manifold, and my heart goes out to someone who is in so much pain that they would attempt this, the distraught "would be suicide" victim inadvertently made a resoundingly selfish statement by choosing such a day to threaten to end it all. Maybe that was the point -- to piss off as many strangers as possible in order to defiantly tell the world to "screw itself." I don't think that it was that calculated though. As much as I surprised myself at feeling more anger than sympathy, I think that my reserves of compassion weren't as tapped out as those of others judging from the blogsopheres I visited afterwards.
I read alot of threads about the bridge closure incident and most of the people who posted their two-cents worth proudly indulged in the most callous and mean-spirited remarks about the "jumper." While I initially found myself drifting towards the consensus, I soon after realized that I had become an eager, sadistic participant in this spectacle of the jeering, resentful mob.
The anger at the delay was legitimate, but the comments on various blogs after the fact revealed a sick and cruel public mentality that has unfortunately become the norm here in Canada. It revealed the increasingly hostile and ugly interior that hides beneath the celebratory exterior of our national holiday.
The spate of tasteless and offensive comments about the would-be suicide jumper is yet another wearying testament to the brute insensitivity that is pervading our public discourse (if we can even call it "discourse"). It seems the web technology is the modern day bathroom stall --- where anyone can anonymously scrawl the most hateful garbage and get away with it. I realize I have a tendency to avoid the rose coloured glasses syndrome, but I sincerely sense that Canadians are not the enlightened, pleasant, tolerant people that we brag about being. We are in fact, becoming crass, short-sighted, amoral and self-centered. Another perfect example of this mass psychosis is the public's outrage at having to pay the carbon tax here. Some SUV-driving, smug-asshole feels violated by having to pay a bit extra at the pumps in order to offset the CO2 that his guzzling hulk emits and he gets all up in arms and cries foul. We don't want to sacrifice anything in order to do what's necessary for the long term. We are a nation of spoiled, impatient, self-interested whiners with an arrogant sense of entitlement and an addiction to the quick-fix.
It is no surprise that the people who were legitimately celebrating Canada Day --- who really embodied the meaning and tradition of this country -- were the new Canadians who were out in full force, proudly waving their flags, humble and hopeful.
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