Oh! Canada...
What is it with British Colmbians and their provincialism?
Reflections on my recent viaje to western Canada...
The abandoned blond 4 year-old, standing in a shopping cart, stared out from the front page of the Vancouver Province newspaper. Apparently his mother, distraught over having to care for him with his disability and all, simply left him in a shopping cart in a supermarket in Calgary, Alberta, where she correctly assumed that someone would find and care for him.
I have no judgement to make on the mother; I don't know if she was really depressed (how depressed do you have to be to leave a 4 year old behind), crazy or taking amphetamines. What I just loved was how the public just ate up this story! This was the main item of news on all fronts during three weeks, overshadowing the ongoing Russian submarine drama, while the police investigated and finally located, the mother. There were interviews with the police sargeants in charge of the investigation in Alberta, in Vancouver and in the U.S.; interviews with the broken-english-speaking Vietnamese lady who "remember the lady and her boy come in for dinner about once a month" in Victoria - in short, everyone got their 15 minutes of fame.
Here in Merida, I have often complained that the newspapers are too political, too local and too religious. Yet you can open a Diario de Yucatan and read about national politics, world events and yes, what the church (catholic of course) is doing today. The Por Esto on the other end of the political spectrum will comment on whatever the Diario commented on, criticizing it to no end and yet still offering more of an international picture. Either one is the Wall Street Journal if compared to the trashy and sensationalistic Vancouver Province.
In Vancouver, on the other hand, the media, and that includes newspapers, television and radio, is filled with little microcosmic 'human drama' stories like the aforementioned abandoned boy; the little girl that was molested by her stepfather; the burn victim; a thousand little stories that, while probably important to the people directly involved, hardly constitute a NEWS story! In the 30 days that I spent in what the United Nations ranks number ONE in it's 'world's best countries to live in" list (and no, this distinction is not paid for by the Canadian Government à la Merida and the 1999 Cultural Capital of the Americas award ), there was little or no obvious coverage of anything in the world except for the Kursk, a natural disaster or maybe an outbreak of war.
As a matter of fact, while writing this, and visiting their website to borrow their logo for the link below, the Vancouver Province's 'top' story was the grandfather that jumped in a river to save his grandson and drowned. The story that followed you ask? Surely something more substantial for a cosmopolitan city like Vancouver... Worker falls 23 floors! was the second headline.
So, dear readers of Merida newspapers, when you're feeling
that the Diario or the Por Esto aren't up to snuff, take all that seemingly
trivial and over-analyzed local political coverage in stride, always read
both papers to balance out the rhetoric to get at the true story, and thank
the God of Printed News Media that the sensationalistic journalism that
has corrupted the minds of the citizens of Vancouver has not yet arrived
here in the formerly white city and Cultural Capital of the Americas.
Links - read for yourself...
