The other night Tracks Pub in Olds venued a double-course serving of Canadiana in the form of Tim Hus and Johnny Don't. It was a splendid event with just one hitch.Johnny, hailing from Saskatoon, wanted to feel bilingual without actually being bilingual. He told us how it took him four months with a French-English dictionary to capture that feeling by writing a song in French. I don't know if Johnny got his grammar right but he got his song, which sounded just fine to me.Another local yokel in attendance must have felt otherwise if his shouts of ìno Frenchî expressed his genuine sentiments.If I witnessed actual bigotry that night I know it's not a Tracks Pub patrons problem but rather a Mountain View County problem. When I was at Trooper's stadium show in Olds last year, some of the crowd booed when Trooper mentioned the Quebec venues on its tour itinerary.This public behaviour indicates to me that Mountain View County has a severe cultural illiteracy problem. Cultural illiteracy becomes a severe problem only if it is prolonged, though instituting it makes it an absolute disaster. Cultural illiteracy isn't just another name for small-town stupids because big-city stupids show the same symptoms.It doesn't have to be this way. In fact, Mountain View County could become a leader in the ìDump CIî movement by recognizing its most recent celebrity exponent and recommending the inauguration of an International Imagine John Lennon Day. A Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Subsets of Humanity could help facilitate the logistics of that movement.There have been suggestions to make Oct. 9 ñ Lennon's birthday ñ an international holiday to honour the ex-Beatle and celebrate his memory into futurity. One municipality could get this ball rolling, urging its municipal neighbours and other levels of government to run with the idea. Why not Mountain View County?Ron LennoxOlds
