Toronto Pearson Airport: a microcosm of eroding Canadian values?
We Canadians are a complex lot. A rich mix of ethnicities connected through shared ideals and core values. Values such as politeness. “You Canadians! You are so nice!” Being honest with ourselves, we know that our values are laced with an underlying passive aggressiveness. Our ‘PA nature’ if you will. Kept in check, a little PA is all good; merely a counter-point to our politeness and friendliness, giving it a bit of spice. Left unchecked, it is a caustic soda that eats away at the very fabric of who we are. In my recent travels through Pearson Airport, I stepped into puddle after puddle of caustic soda, eating at the very ‘souls’ of my shoes. Little things. It wasn’t the lineup through security. It was security’s complete disinterest in simply grabbing the backlog of empty X-ray trays to help travellers from tripping over each other in the pile up. It wasn’t the brutally slow Tim Horton’s Express Line. It was the dawn-of-the-living-dead look behind the