(Image: Actor Christian Bale sports brown hair but he has a red beard, proof how just how complex genetics can get | Shutterstock)
Lots of chatter this week about going to the polls.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper could ask the governor general to drop the writ any day to officially kick off campaigning for the next election, but we shouldn’t speculate. Judging by the number of government spending announcements flooding into Business in Vancouver’s inbox the past few weeks, it would seem the dropping of the writ is imminent.
While the next election date is fixed for October 19, new rules mean there’s no limit on how long the official campaign can last. This could in fact benefit the cash-rich Conservatives who can afford to outspend many of their opponents if a campaign goes on for months.
We Canadians love to gawk at the antics of our neighbours south of the border as American presidential candidates come out of the woodwork more than a year before their elections. But I say be thankful our elections are relatively short.
Otherwise we may have to hear Justin Trudeau talk about why Capt. Picard is a Liberal. Canadian William Shatner, who claims he can’t vote in the U.S despite being a naturalized American citizen, doesn’t agree, by the way.
Speaking of Canadians in the U.S., a University of Toronto graduate is suing her former American employer for “origin discrimination.”
Canadian Laurie Samuel, who is also black, alleges she was pushed aside for job opportunities at the Washington Washington D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department.
Apparently, she was “too Canadian and not black enough.”
I’m not a minority, so I can’t compare my experiences with Samuel’s but I did live in the U.S. for years. Constant remarks about being Canadian could certainly get under one’s skin but I have to say: we Canadians target our American friends with jokes and jibes way more than they do us. We’re simply not on the minds of most Americans.
As for workplace discrimination — it sucks.
But should “navigating the terrain of white people” be a phenomenon in this day? Even in liberal Hollywood, it’s something minorities are still struggling with.
If you wish to ponder that in solitude, you may be an introvert. But those who discuss these big topics in public aren’t necessarily extroverts: you could be an ambivert. It’s my new word of the week…it sums me up quite well.
Another recognizable trait of mine? That beard I’ve been sporting the past few years. While the beard matches my hair colour (that is, when I don’t keep my head cleanly shaven, as it is right now), I just discovered why some guys can have ginger beards without being a redhead. Now my (slightly) older colleague tells me he wants to get to the bottom of why some men are cursed with dark hair and grey beards.
