Misc

Are you Canadian?  I have a question for you.

During the Peacemaker conference we were at, we had a session on cross cultural conflict.  Unfortunately, our speaker only had material on two cultures in particular – Mexican and American (USA).

 But I figured about 20% of the audience was neither Mexican nor American.  So as Canadians, we were able to sit back and listen to all the data on Americans and think,”Yes, exactly!  That’s the whole problem with those Americans!“

We shouldn’t have gotten off so easy.

I talked with one of the speakers afterward about this, and agreed to see if I could find some material on conflict in Canada.  I already have some ideas, but I would like your suggestions.

So here’s the basic question.  What are barriers to peacemaking in the Canadian culture?  What is it that keeps Canadians from resolving things – either with other Canadians, or with people from other cultures?  Or are there specific things that tend to spark conflict, just because of the way our culture is?  What do Canadians do, or how do they think, that makes resolving conflict difficult?

We call our soldiers “peacemakers” – and we have the slogan – peace, order and good government for our constitution.  But all is not always well in the true north strong and free.  Why do you think that is?

We had made plans to take Hannah and Nathanael over to a friend’s house, so that we could load up the trailer.  It was Friday now, and we were a little behind where we wanted to be with the whole packing thing.  But I dropped off the kids just before supper and hurried back to Cochrane.  We gulped down a quick supper and then went over to the storage locker to get everything out.  But we were in for a surprise.

The locker was locked – not just with our lock, but with another lock.  You know, the kind they use when you haven’t paid and they’re locking up your stuff until you do.  Except, we had paid.  We had paid three weeks ago.

We went home and called the owner – every phone number we had, and email too.  Everything marked urgent.  No answer, no calls.  And nothing to pack.  Just before bed, Frank called and said there had been a mistake, he had our cheque, and he would be at the locker at 10am the next morning to remove the lock.

Fortunately, Hannah and Nathanael were having a sleep over, so we still had part of the next day to pack.  We arrived at the storage locker the next morning at about 10 after 10.  No Frank.  No one knew where he was.  We went home and called him.  He said he was still 40 minutes away.

In the end, it was after lunch before we were even able to access our belongings.  So now the weekend continued in a mad dash to try to catch up.  We didn’t exactly catch up – we left a little late.  And a surprise snowfall on Sunday almost kept us from church and meant we finished loading in the slush and snow.  But we did leave – Tuesday, as planned.  Leaving an empty (and nicely swept) storage locker behind.

I commented to Shari that Murphy (you know, of Murphy’s Law fame) should be getting a time-and-a-half this weekend.  But it wasn’t all bad.  Those of you who were praying will be glad to hear we got our medical insurance issue worked out – and yes, we are insured.  It took some phone calls and some work (and money of course) on our part and on the part of our friend Jayme at the CAM Canada office.  But it’s all taken care of.  And we have arrived safely in the USA…

Nathanael had a gecko theme at his 2nd birthday party. He loves geckos – in fact, gecko was one of his first words. I'll try to upload some photos soon that will show a few more geckos, but here's an overview of the party…