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What do you want when someone wrongs you?

Do you not want acknowledgment from the wrong-doer that they have wronged you?

Do you not want remorse from the wrong-doer over the wrong that they have done you?

Do you not want compensation from the wrong-doer for the wrong that they have done you?

Across Canada, Catholic churches are going up in flames.

Is anyone surprised?

Let us be frank: the Roman Catholic church is—and has always been—premised on the destruction of traditional cultures.

First it worked to suppress and destroy the traditional cultures of Europe.

Alas, the destruction did not stop there.

The destruction of my ancestors' traditional culture took place so long ago that few even see it any more as a wrong, although it was.

Until shockingly recently, the Catholic church was complicit in the destruction of Indigenous Canadian cultures through the network of residential schools that tore First Nations children from their families and did its best to uproot Native language and culture from those children.

(“First they break your leg, then they offer to sell you a crutch,” says a priestess friend of mine.)

The recent discovery of the bodies of hundreds of those same children, dead of abuse and neglect, is rendered even more horrifying by the near-certainty that there are thousands more yet to be unearthed.

The anger over the death of George Floyd is not anger over the death of just one man, but over a systemic injustice. Here we see the same.

As pagans, we may not condone the actions of the church-burners, but we understand them, and we stand in solidarity with them.

Happy Canada Day!  I thought that it might be fun to celebrate Canada Day by sharing the meaning and magick behind a few of Canada's national symbols.

Maple

One of the most striking of Canada's national symbols is the maple leaf that adorns our flag.  Something that people come from all over the world to see is the beauty of our maple forests in Central Canada showing In the fall.  Though at this time of year, the leaves of the Canadian maple are still green.  This is one and the same with the famous maple tree that produces the sap that becomes maple syrup.

It's Election Day in Canada!  I awoke galvanized!  This election is different from any that I can remember in my lifetime.  I feel that the stakes have never been so high.  Really, it's about Canada's heart and soul.

For the past ten years, the Conservative Party has been in power.  They were elected on their campaign of "accountability" in the wake of the Liberal Party sponsorship scandal.  Since then, for the past several elections most of the country has been trying to remove them because they've dragged us through one scandal after another, one unconstitutional law after another, one restriction to our freedom after another. I have no words for how much I loathe them, and I have lots of reasons.  The reason why Canada has not succeeded in removing them is the odd way in which our electoral process works.

"Indigenous women are going missing and being murdered at a much higher rate than other women in Canada—a rate so high it constitutes nothing less than a national human rights crisis."--Amnesty International