I'm appalled. Riding home this afternoon, I turned down the main road that leads into my community to find a group of demonstrators with placards protesting the arrival of a Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka.
They were waving a British Empire-era ensign flag and a handful of placards with slogans like "Canada is Closed", "Tamils = Trouble" and so on. There weren't many of them - ten at most.
While I have reservations about the arrival of these people, the fact is that they're here and each of them has a story. Given that Sri Lanka is just emerging from a civil war, and the Tamils are on the losing side of that war, it seems entirely conceivable to me that many may well rightly fear for their safety.
It's a sad statement that the knuckle-dragging crowd out there sees fit to wave their ignorance and xenophobia in public in response to a group of people arriving who they apparently fear.
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