To the Editor,
What follows is an open letter sent today to Canada's Governor General.
You seem to be such a warm and wonderful person, that I feel I can address you as informally as I have done. I have always liked you as our Governor General. You are doing a great job. You are an immigrant as I am. You seem very smart and capable and being so pretty helps too, of course.
Today I write to congratulate you on the courage that you have shown in Nunavut. I come from a background that understands and appreciates the role and importance of primary industries. I had to help with the slaughter of pigs for the family table, when I was only five years old. It is important for someone like you, in your position, to remind that segment of our Canadian urban population, which no longer can identify with the realities of "living off the land" and of primary food production, that eating means killing. Everyone likes to eat. Pretending that everything just magically appears on the supermarket shelves is so artificial. Yet that artificiality translates with so many into a state of superior detachment, which then degenerates into disdain and criticism of the primary producers and processors.
Your example in Rankin Inlet is not just about seals. It is about our dependence on nature, our inter-relationship with animals and the realities of the food-chain, in which the human species participates.
You are being criticized by some but I believe there are many of us who constitute the silent majority and who support the symbolism of your behaviour in our Canadian North. Again, thank you and congratulations.
Morris J. Haugg, Q.C., Amherst
