"When they arrived, the enveloping wilderness frightened them. In response, their main ways of knowing it were mowing it down, shooting it if it moved, taming it and simplifying it in their minds." David Suzuki.
"They" are the Europeans, deemed heroes in the history books of Canada.
Good people are like the wilderness. They don't arrive with a marching band, not usually the ones who win high praise on the front page of a newspaper.
In fact good people may spell death for the tabloids, looking for salacious stories of bad behaviour, that cast suspicion on celebrities and politicians without checking the facts. The slander against Princess Di, John Lennon, Jeremy Corbyn makes 'journalists' look like dragons scratching for anything that might turn a person into a villain.
Then there are the stories of folks in high positions who have been charged with sexual assault by their staff or students yet get off free while their victims must hide from threats of attack by people they don't know.
There are those who report corruption in high places, then tortured in prison for speaking out.
I have noticed brave souls who speak truth to power in their communities and then expelled.
Missing and murdered women who are forgotten after the forces in place designed to protect them turn away and do nothing.
Why is the wilderness so scary? Why is doing the right thing for the sake of the hungry and needy so ridiculed and shamed?
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