YORKTON - Have you ever noticed, perhaps a random comment overheard at a coffee shop, or a post on social media, people lamenting for the good old days?
It’s an idyllic vision of some point in the past that just doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
We as a community and a nation are in our best place today.
A key example of that was National Day for Truth and Reconciliation held Monday.
The day only became an official statutory holiday in recent years – now across a half dozen provinces and territories although Saskatchewan lags behind on this, and was born as Orange Shirt Day just over a decade ago.
That the day exists is a massive step forward as a nation.
For First Nations it is a day that focuses on the harms caused by Indian Residential Schools -- a chance to tell their stories, to share their pain and to begin a path to healing.
For the non-aboriginal it is a day we have to look in the mirror and understand those who came before us did terrible things – things we were taught in schools only a decade or two ago, and those hurts have to be acknowledged, understood as we work together to move forward.
The day is just one of the signs we are in our best place today.
In Yorkton we went through a series of cultural Thursday evenings thanks to YBID and are currently in the midst of Culture Days, such events drawing attention to growing mosaic that is our community culturally.
Certainly Canada as a whole has generally been about being a place immigrants looked to for a better life. There have of course been times we’ve failed in being that place – incarcerations of particular groups through two great wars, the chasing of the Doukhobors from Saskatchewan with unfair regulations and others, but we are today doing generally better.
And for those looking to the past as better, Remembrance Day is upcoming. The day reminds we lost the 1910s to a devastating war, then fell into that same terrible trap in the 1940s, the Dirty Thirties sandwiched in between, and then trooped off to another war in Korea in the 1950s.
Continue to look at our city today and you will see electric vehicle charging stations – a testament to a growing awareness and concern about fossil fuel consumption.
The stations are also entwined in the discussion of climate change. Even if one is a naysayer – having a discussion that is science-based is never a bad thing.
So the Yorkton of today is the best version of the city, because it is built on a history that has had its bumps and missteps we have learned from.
And that is particularly positive because it should mean if we collectively work at it the future will be better still.
