Mark's rant for September 2017

Following up on last months “RANT” about Tom Thomson and the fact that our education system tends to completely ignore teaching and sharing our really captivating Canadian history, I am putting this on hold to express my thoughts on the horrendous destruction and catastrophic damage caused by Hurricane Irma in the Caribbean last week! We have friends on the beautiful island of St. Martin/Sint Maarten that lost everything! Yes I mean everything! The majority of residents have been seriously affected and have been left in a most precarious & most insecure situation. Many tourists were stranded and had no way of getting home. Canadian tourists were left completely on their own while our Prime Minister was taking “selfies” at TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) among other “self promotion” opportunities while the U.S., Dutch and French (among other nations) flew aid and support along with evacuating women & children to safety from the looting and violence to a safe situation in Guadeloupe. Did our Prime Minister not recognize the extreme danger our citizens were in? What happened to our governments responsibility to serve its citizens in a desperate and grave time of need? In fact, it took private enterprise to respond long before our Prime Minister was finished with his fraternising at TIFF! West Jet flew their planes down to Sint Maarten with much needed supplies and flew many of our stranded citizens home! THANK YOU WEST JET!