Jubilee Garden Mississauga Civic Centre
Photo By KPA
December 2018
Dear Friends of Western Civilization,
I aim to publish a book on Mississauga, to demonstrate how far the city has come from the original vision of Bruce McLaughlin , who aimed to establish a city independent from Toronto from an already existing back-water small town. He built Mississauga from the ground up, literally.
I also have two other books which are almost completed. One a memoir-type book which recounts my journey through countries and ideas, which I have titled "Apprenticeship in Beauty" starting from the most important moment of my life when my family and I had to move to Paris because of an encroaching revolution in my birth country Ethiopia, when I was only nine years old. I celebrated my sign post tenth year a month after we arrived in Paris. Another book is long-term project on an academic investigation of beauty and Western Civilization: Reclaiming Beauty: Saving Our Western Civilization. I have a publisher interested in this book but I need to provide a completed manuscript, which is about 75% there.
Through UNESCO funds, the Paris-based international organization where my father was stationed after leaving Ethiopia, and various school scholarships, I was able to attend primary and secondary boarding schools in England: in the beautiful Kent countryside, and in Dover, city of the White Cliffs. My Western loyalties were formed through these formative years.
Now, after several years in Toronto, I reside in the suburban city of Mississauga, Ontario, where I have been diligently keeping track of the state of affairs in the Western World from my Mississauga outpost, documenting news, events, and my impressions for about five years in my blog Reclaiming Beauty.
It was never my intention to move to Canada. I always presumed I would be an American, having completed college and graduate studies in the east coast. But life's circumstances placed me here, now a Canadian. I moved from Toronto to Mississauga about five years ago, and in many ways it was a blessing in disguise. I realize now that I have inadvertently stumbled upon a gold mine. It brought into sharp focus all the themes and ideas l had been studying and writing about for about twelve years now, starting my blog Camera Lucida in 2005, and starting my blog Reclaiming Beauty in 2011. In 2014, I presented a paper Reclaiming Beauty: Saving Our Western Civilization at a conference titled: The Power of Beauty at the Franciscan University, in Steubenville Ohio.
The pseudo-suburban city of Mississauga has a downtown which consists of a giant mall and a city square consisting of the City Centre buildings including a library, a City Hall/Civic Centre, and a hidden, "Jubilee" Garden. The garden was built to commemorate Queen Elizabeth's 50-year reign in 1987, and inaugurated wth the visit of the Duke and Duchess of York in Mississauga in July 1987, who were also present at the opening of the Art Gallery of Mississauga.
Is that what constitutes a City Centre?
Nonetheless the library is a world class learning and research centre, run by accomplished librarians, the AGM obtains millions of dollars in grant money, and the Jubilee Garden is maintained by dedicated and knowledgeable gardeners who keep the garden alive all year round - Winter, Summer, Spring and Fall. Rain, shine or snowstorm.
Mississauga's history originates as a "new city" built around the 1970s, as an ambitious vision by a white Canadian, Bruce McLaughlin, to separate this already existing small town from the influences of Toronto, and to build a self-sufficient and independent city. Immigration, and non-Canadian residents, were far from his, and his colleagues' minds. And the AGM itself was established in 1987, as a separate gallery, independent from big-city influences, or even the encroaching multiculturalism.
There was something exciting and fresh about Mississauga when it started out as a city built from the ground up - literally.
About a year ago, I asked one too many controversial question at an AGM gallery event about the lack of Western art on display at the gallery, and subsequently, I received an email from the gallery's (still current) director, Mandy Slater, a white woman, to cease my "antagonistic" behavior and not to frequent gallery any more, with my name submitted to the Peel Region Police and the Mississauga Security division, should I not comply. I believe I was targeted because she felt I could obstruct the her long term vision of transforming the gallery into a venue for "alternate" exhibitions by of non-white and multicultural artists. Indigenous and homosexual artists have also been added to her exhibition and programming agenda as "underrepresented" groups. I haven't entered the gallery since then. But the AGM's prolific website provides me with all the information I require on the gallery's exhibitions and programming to follow and monitor their activities. As well, most of the staff post photographs and commentary on their various social media sites.
And the contemporary realty of Mississauga is far from the independent city that McLaughlin envisioned. It is now more than 60% non-White, with a plethora of "nationalities" and Chinese and Indians dominating. Rather than an independent city, separate from big-city Toronto, Mississauga is held captive by multiculturalism. Indians, Chinese, Filipino, Arab Christians, and a conglomerate of Middle Eastern Muslims influence key political and socio-cultural decisions in favour of multiculturalism, and specifically their own cultures. Nowhere is this more visible than at Celebration Square in the Civic Centre's large esplanade. Every summer, each of these cultures presents a full weekend of activities ranging from food stalls to Movie Nights to "celebrate" their culture. A mood of nostalgia and "old country" dominates these festivals. The City of Mississauga is the major funder for these, mostly free, programs.
The reality of Mississauga , though, is far from this exuberant multiculturalism. Mississauga has some of the highest poverty rates in Ontario, most of them recorded in the city's non-white ethnic neighbourhoods, and a non-existent "mosaic" of mixed multiculturalism, with an increasingly self-segregating population separating itself by race, ethnicity and religion. And the various socio-ethnic groups do not work together, in art or other cultural and social programs, especially where their "identities" are involved, and some are even antagonistic towards each other (Indian Hindu and Muslims, for example).
I will present all this material in my book on how a once confident city, with confident citizens, now has devolved into this multicultural outpost, which is diligently restructuring society and culture, and serving as an example for other Canadian cities to follow.