Things have changed so radically since my wife and I arrived here as immigrants, especially over the last few years - Canada is sometimes hardly recognizable as the country we came to proudly call our own.
Just take our nation's recent belligerent role in the NATO-led assault to bring about regime change in Libya; the dictator may well be dead, but that country is in total chaos as the first baby-steps of socalled democracy have stumbled into deeper violence in Benghazi.
Thanks to the overt stubbornness of much-maligned then-prime minister Jean Chrétien, we didn't play an overt role in the Iraq war to oust Saddam Hussein. Surely NATO should have learned a lesson from seeing how drastically things turned out in Baghdad.
Now our government cuts all diplomatic ties with Iran, and exudes delight when Israel's President Shimon Perez calls Canada his country's best friend. The two prime ministers, Stephen Harper and Benjamin Netanyahu, are forever-soulmates, and seem very much at ease swaying to war drums beating an all-too-familiar tune in the Persian Gulf.
As if all this bellicose war talk isn't enough, we have spent $28 million promoting the War of 1812.
Like the current brouhaha about a relatively new member of the Royal Family getting photographed wearing only her bikini bottoms, this extravagant bicentennial bun-fest seems much ado about nothing.
Bernie Smith
Parksville
