By Bob Groeneveld
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Like nearly all Canadian children of Dutch immigrants, I grew up with the pre-Christmas tradition of Sinterklaas.
It鈥檚 early to be talking about Christmas, but hang with me a bit. The election figures in my tale.
Canadians of Dutch heritage reading this are already cringing, because they know where I鈥檓 headed.
English-speaking Canadians are more likely to know Sinterklaas as Santa Claus.
But there are differences between them.
Like our benevolent Santa, Sinterklaas rewards good little boys and girls with toys and goodies.
Santa makes his deliveries via a magical sleigh ride on Christmas Eve. Sinterklaas hands out candies and oranges from horseback as he rides through town on Dec. 6.
Both traditions are aimed at keeping children in line. Santa has no gifts for 鈥渂ad鈥� kids.
And Sinterklaas is followed by Zwarte Piet, who in the version my parents related, gives 鈥渂ad鈥� children a lump of coal, but in a harsher version of the tradition, Sinterklaas鈥檚 sidekick stuffs bad kids into a sack and takes them away to suffer eternal punishment.
Zwarte Piet 鈥� or Black Peter, in English 鈥� is a slow-witted black dwarf or child, usually portrayed in parades and celebrations by a person in blackface. Sinterklaas is always white as the driven snow, sporting a white beard, and even his horse is always snow white.
When the Lower Mainland鈥檚 annual Sinterklaas Parade was moved to 91原创 in 2012, because New Westminster, the parade鈥檚 host for decades, decided it was racist, my first thought was, 鈥淩acist? Nonsense! What could possibly be racist about a tradition in which a cool white guy rewards good and nice children with candies and parties, while the bad children are left to be mistreated by a nasty little gnarled black鈥� oh, wait鈥� maybe New West has something there.鈥�
I like to believe that my eyes were opened a bit, and that I grew a little.
I don鈥檛 believe people are bad when they unwittingly do bad things, like buy into the cultural racism of the Zwarte Piet insult.
But it鈥檚 still bad, and I believe I鈥檓 a better person now that I know and have divorced myself from that tradition.
People are saying that Trudeau made his brown- and blackface transgressions at a time when most Canadians were less aware of the damage. Canada has grown since then, and gotten a little (certainly not enough yet) better.
From his actions 鈥� and his immediate and effusive apologies 鈥� Trudeau appears to have grown with his country.
Meanwhile, as of this writing, days after revelation of her association with a black-face Zwarte Piet event 鈥� many years more recent that any of Trudeau鈥檚 transgressions 鈥� neither a Cloverdale-91原创 Conservative candidate nor her party leader have apologized or even disavowed that racist tradition.
There are bigger fish to fry in the upcoming election 鈥� like whether or not there will be fish for my grandchildren鈥檚 children to fry.
Still, I鈥檇 just like to see evidence that all of our leaders can grow.
