 |
The above photo is of a side street in the downtown core of Toronto, right next to a big supermarket. I had to rush to get my camera out to get the shot. It is pretty straightforward. The small church in the foreground gives a focal point for pedestrians and cars. Nearby is one of the many buildings that are rising up in the Toronto landscape. In this case, it competes with the little church. There are satellite dishes on the balconies of this high rise, and one is prominent in the photo. These dishes bring programs from around the world, mostly from Asia (India) and the Middle East. People these days don't even have to bother with watching English program television.
There's a Russian comedian (I can't remember his name now) who joked that he learned English by watching TV. Of course, he watched the action-packed detective series, and ended up talking like a thug or a cop. His other joke was that he also started speaking in Spanish, since some of the stations he could get without paying cable fees were in Spanish.
Still, he lived to joke about it, in English. I doubt these satellite renting immigrants of our brave new world would be able to (or want to) tell similar jokes a few years down the road.
Back to the photo. What struck me in a fraction of a second was the juxtaposition of the small hijabed woman, the tall man walking in front of her, the large contemporary high rise and of course the little traditional church.
It is unheard of in previous eras to find hijabed Muslims nonchalantly walking down our streets. The tall man in front is so oblivious to these changes that he barely sees the woman just a few steps behind him. The church, although attractive and prominent, is actually spiritually dead. Inner city high rises in Toronto have become immigrants enclaves (with many immigrants receiving government subsidies to live in such places, and rent out satellite dishes). So, religion and culture have no clout now to combat one of the most virulent invaders of Western and Christian societies: Islam, and its twin supporters: immigration and multiculturalism.
Small hijabed women walk around city streets as symbols of this danger (or this invasion) and no-one as much as glances at them. In fact, they have become a protected group, they and their Muslim families, in the wonderful world of Canadian multiculturalism, where everyone is accepted, and no-one can say or do anything about that.
I should add that tall, white men are becoming a rarity in the downtown core, unless one travels further down to the banking and commercial area several blocks down (about a 45 minute walk from this street). Most of these men live with their families in affluent suburbs in the northern peripheries of the city. They simply travel to their offices by train, with the train station having direct links to an underground network of paths that take them to their buildings, they eat their meals in the smart restaurants in the area, they can shop for gifts (perhaps for a wedding anniversary) at the nearby Bay department store, meet their wives for dinner and a show at the theater district just a few steps away, then their day is done.
Who cares what is simmering beneath this pleasant surface?