Greed has been in the news a lot lately, and for good reason. Profiting by the extremely wealthy, at others' expense, even to the point of ruining the weakest of us, has been a favoured blood sport on acid lately.
Let's go back to the Irish famine of the 1840s. Abandoned by their own colonial overlords, the British, millions of Irish set sail in the “coffin ships”, so named because many of the passengers died en route to North America.
But luckily some got to Canada, and Canada has never done nasty things to profit on the misery of others. Well, guess what – many of the Irish refugees lived long enough to make it all the way to the infant city of Toronto. But in 1847 it was only a town, with a population just over 20,000. Over 40,000 Irish ended up here – twice the native population. After some time there was put in place a process of funds to save those who could be saved, and treating the sick in the way thought best at the time, quarantine. So many who have survived the coffin ships, and the screening process in Quebec, died in Toronto. Some of the funds were used to purchase coffins – even back then disposal of the dead was known to be a good idea.
Some of the fine people involved in organizing the burials, pocketed half the money and buried two people to a coffin .
People have always sucked: AIG and folks are not doing anything new, they just had the means to do it on a massive scale.
Tom
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I only use my English degree under two circumstances: only when I read something, or think something.
1 comment:
I think you could probably find some aboriginal people who would disagree with your statement that Canada hasn't profited by being nasty to others.
I would also point out that Protestant British Upper Canada was not very welcoming to all those Irish Catholics.
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