A few days ago, while walking our
family dog through a middle-class neighborhood, I noticed a new lawn sign in
front of some houses. The trilingual sign in English, French and Arabic reads:
No matter where you are from, we are glad that
you are our neighbours.
Now let us be honest; regardless
where they are from, would you be glad
to have a neighbours you know nothing about?
Or, would you simply accept their
presence, as a matter of fact and hope for the best; find out from the people who are moving out as much as
you can about the new tenants or owners, and based on the information received decide how
you are going to approach the new neighbours as and when they move in?
I should think the latter is the
case.
Since the sign is also in Arabic,
the chances are that the folks we are glad to be our neighbours hail from the
Middle-East.
If that is the case, in that part
of the world, as in almost all of the pricey urban middle class neighbourhoods
across the inhabited continents, property owners are not glad to have
neighbours about whom they know nothing.
As a matter of fact, I think that
Middle-Easterners who back home are proudly possessive of their good neighbourhood
and are seen to be rightly so by those who aspire or wish to be able to afford
to live in such a neighborhood, would find it very strange, if not unfathomable,
that this would not be the case here.
And judging from the small number
of houses whose owners agreed to have the sign on their lawns, I very much
doubt that the neighbourhood as a whole shares the sentiment expressed on the
sign.
What is it about Canadians? Are we so insatiably anxious to be always
seen as good, kind and hospitable people of virtue and insatiably in need of
compliments to validate that, we are willing to go to the ridiculous length of
putting up a sign that is on the one hand less than truthful, while on the
other hand, would surely make the newcomers wonder about our intelligence or
mental health or both?
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