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Its been several months since the Governor General, our representative of the Queen, was "inaugurated". Amid months of controversy over videos of her with Quebec’s separatists, she still got the post.
But, here is an even more insidious sign. Her coat of arms displays a deep-rooted inability to conform to Canadian traditions.
It shows voodoo female gods on either side, broken chains and conches referring to a Haitian national symbols (a runaway slave), an incongruent palm tree at the bottome left, and an ambiguous sand dollar in the middle.
The only indication (hard pressed even to see that) that we’re in Canada is a diminutive pine tree (bottom right), and an equally inconspicuous Royal Crown.
But this "tradition" of personal representation at the expense of the general culture has been building up for quite a while.
Romeo Lablanc’s coat of arms celebrates his "French" heritage for this very English of Canada’s appointments (representative of the Queen!).
And Adrienne Clarkson was all about Chinese.
But Jean is the most dangerous of them all. She has not only kept out any clear traditional Canadian elements, we are forced to look at a voodoo incantation of two female gods.
No sign of a cross to counterbalance that.
"Let there be no traitors in our ranks!" An apt line from the Haitian national anthem.