britbrat
Posts: 3299
Joined: 6/15/2004
From: Deep River, ON, CANADA
Status: offline
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I was born overseas as a Canadian citizen. My parents were both Canadians, but my mother had never actually set foot in Canada at the time of my birth (she was also born overseas). Both my mother & I hold dual citizenships & we each have two different passports (although in her mid/late-eighties she doesn't flit around the globe much anymore. Despite technically being "immigrants" by some definitions, we were already Canadians when we finally set foot here. While I don't carry much birth-land baggage with me, my mother certainly does, yet she is wholeheartedly Canadian.
Ethnically we are an amazing mix. My father's family are an amalgam of German & Irish -- with the German family being divided into three branches, distributed in Austria, Czechoslovakia and Bavaria. The Irish were originally Clan Orr in Scotland, but the particular family was deported to Ireland in the 1600's for changing sides too frequently in the Scottish-English border wars.
My mother is English/Welsh, with her father's family also being English/Welsh.
Politically, we are divided. My father's mother was an Irish terrorist, with a price on her head. She and her sister fled to Canada, where they were sheltered by the Catholic Church & introduced to nice Austro-German immigrant Catholic boys.
My mother's father was in the British army, & following being gassed in Franch during WWI, he was repatriated to England to help hunt Irish terrorists.
My father & his brothers were in the Canadian army during WWII & my father was seriously wounded. During that time my grandfather's non-Germanic neighbours tried to have my grandfather interned as an enemy alien, & have their debts to him cancelled.
I joined the RCAF in 1960 & flew air-defence missions.
Despite that wild background, I am a Canadian to the core. I suspect that there are tens of thousands of other Canadian families with similarly tangled histories, who are every bit as Canadian as I am.
The question "What is a Canadian?" is impossible to answer. It is in your heart, or you just aren't there as a real citizen, regardless of where you were born. There are a$$holes born in Toronto, Montreal, Hallfax, Winnipeg, Vancouver etc, etc, who despite their birthright, simply aren't real Canadians. There are others who were born in Mongolia who are Canadians in their hearts.
Real Canadians want to be just that. The others are $hit, despite being born in Canada, or elsewhere.
< Message edited by britbrat -- 8/17/2005 10:08:00 PM >
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All Forums >> RC Airplanes >> M.A.A.C. >> RE: Not modelling but...... "To Kill an American" 
RE: Not modelling but...... "To Kill an American&... - 
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