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The ever-bold Dr. Charles McVety of the Institute for Canadian Values and President of Canada Christian College has now brought another hot button issue to the front.
He writes an article entitled: "Canada is now officially a homosexual country." And he bases this on a painting installed recently at Rideau Hall by the Governor General.
I think he would be better off using "androgynous" instead of "homosexual", following the title of the painting.
Governor General Michaelle Jean considers herself a patron of the arts. In fact, she loves art so much that she took it upon herself the arduous task of re-decorating Rideau Hall by removing paintings of seasoned British monarchs and Canadian leaders and replacing them with more contemporary art.
I have written before about Jean's insistence on bringing her own imagery (and pagan gods) to the Canadian visual landscape. And her redecoration of Rideau Hall is simply an extension of her initial project.
She has chosen now to decorate the back wall of the Rideau Hall Ballroom with the painting of Indian artist Norval Morrisseau entitled "Androgyny." Here is her quote explaining her choice:
The title itself, "Androgyny", is an invitation to dive into the vision [Morrisseau] had of the fusion of beings and elements, the harmony that exists between people, the complementarity of the meeting of civilizations. With "Androgyny", [Morrisseau] invites us to join the conversation and shows us that when One unites with Other, they become One.What irked Charles McVety was the "androgynous" part, and he quotes Michaelle Jean describing the Okanagan tribes concept of how a human being is formed where "finally as an elder you emerge as both male and female, a complete human, with all skills and capacities complete." He thinks this alludes to the melding of the sexes, and specifically in advocating homosexuality.
But Jean's choice of a painting is more insidious than that. She is advocating the merging of peoples, and not just of their sexuality. Of truly making the multicultural landscape of Canada into one people.
But this multicultural merging is now obviously one big myth. Even homosexuals are distinct from heterosexuals, just as much as Haitians are different from Ukrainians.
What Jean is doing is really making a public affirmation of the Policy of Multiculturalism Canada has upheld for decades. A concerted effort to make the Other into the One: the Filipino with the Somali with the Slovakian and the Ghanaian into the One Canadian. The dream project of multiculturalists.
But, like I said, the reality is very different, as is Jean's actual behavior. However many tableaus extolling androgyny she puts up in the Ballroom, people will continue to form niches of their own kind - Somali with Somali, Filipino with Filipino, and a Haitian immigrant clearly attached to Haitian symbols.