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The ominous face of multiculturalism

By Ian Robinson
Back when Yugoslavia fell into genocidal civil war, I worked with a young Croatian kid. He was built like a full-sized pickup, but he was a sensitive soul, a painter in his spare time. And what his lifelong friends had become was torturing him.

He told me these Canadian-born kids, barely into their 20s, mocked him because he refused to join their secular jihad to the fragmented Yugoslavia, to fight for the culture their parents or grandparents left behind. They called his manhood into question. They went. He stayed. When they returned, some were unalterably changed. They drank more. Lots more. When the bottle got down to the bottom couple of inches, they talked of atrocity. Not the atrocities they witnessed. The atrocities they committed.

Nice, decent, polite Canadian boys, raised on hockey rinks, maple syrup, Don Cherry, O Canada, the Tim Hortons double-double and the liberal culture of acceptance had placed the reticule of a telescopic rifle sight on civilian women and pulled the trigger. They had shot indiscriminately into occupied houses and burned villages. They hinted at darker secrets, such as mass rape.

Even after listening to these tales of soul-killing horror, my young friend felt guilty for remaining behind. At the time, an eastern paper published a feature in which one "soldier" recounted how his Yugoslavia-born mother wept and begged him not go, saying this was not his war. His reply was if she didn't want him to feel such a strong connection to the old country, she should not have sent him to a cultural school several times a week, steeping him in the language, culture and, yes, resentments of the past.

Such is the ominous and hidden face of Canadian multiculturalism. We confront it yet again today. Only this time, 17 Canadian-born or Canadian-raised men and boys stand accused of plotting a terrorist attack on Canadian soil.