Davids Tea and A Summer Filled with Delicious Teas

To whom it may concern,

I am a frequent shopper (and visitor) at the Square One, Mississauga Davids Tea.

I am an avid coffee drinker but Davids Tea's delicious and abundant teas have made me into a tea-convert.

I have introduced DT to friends near and far.

And recently I informed sales people in Square One (Walmart and Whole Foods) of DT's promotions and sales items when they commented on the lovely blue DT bag with my Alpine Punch Tea.

I will always remain a loyal and eager customer. But it is with regret that I have to report a saleswoman who consistently behaves contrary to DT's first class employees that provide me with great service.

The saleswoman is at the Square One Davids Tea. Her Employee Number is 10006670, which I obtained from a receipt of our latest interaction, which was today, 7/20/2018, around 10:25 am (Transaction: #0000364983, Store: #00097, Terminal: #00097-R1). This is the third unpleasant incident I have had with her, which all boil down to her unwillingness to provide me with proper service and attention as I shop in your store.

I was planning to buy an ice tea pitcher on a 1/3 off sale ($28 to $19). I had seen it yesterday and stopped by to pick it up today.

I walked to the front of the store to look for it. But couldn't find it. While I was searching, 10006670 called out "Good morning" from the back. I wasn't paying attention and continued looking. The employee then shouted out in a more aggressive manner as though demanding my attention "Good morning!" I smiled, turned around and replied "Good morning," and continued searching.

Then I went to the back of the store where the employee was located. She was going through some kind of book which looked like she was doing inventory or bookkeeping. I waited a while, then asked her if there was any tea to sample for today. She gave me a cold tea but I asked what was the hot tea. Again she reluctantly looked up from her task and said something like "What can I do for you?"

By this time, I was angry and said that I have been repeating myself all this time.

We went back and forth for a while. Then I said "Are you going to keep this up? Is this customer service?"

"Employee are people too!" she said rudely and nonchalantly.

"I don't know about that," I rebutted.

At which point the woman has tears in her eyes and says: " I take offence at that!"

Another saleswoman had come in by that time, perhaps hearing our interaction and to relieve the woman now in tears. This second woman is Asian, who I am sorry to say had provided me with a similar distracted service just the day before and had in fact misinformed me about the pitcher sales until I put some pressure on her for more concrete information.

By then I had paid for my pitcher, and as the first saleswoman handed me my receipt, I simply walked out of the store.

Davids Tea is a great place. I am reporting these two incidents because I believe they are isolated. I hope the company can resolve them if indeed I have made the correct assessment and that there was some deficiency in customer service, at least towards me.

Thank you for your attention. And I look forward to a summer filled with your delicious teas.

Sincerely,

Kidist Paulos Asrat

The Third World Liberal: A Conservative at Heart

The basic characteristics of all liberals and liberalism are the same. But there is an added nefariousness to the foreigner, Third World, liberal.

An American (or a Canadian) liberal is after civil disruption and maybe even civil war. But he is an American or a Canadian first, and has that legacy of the history, culture, ancestry, heritage etc. of the country, and might at some point be convinced to conserve his country, especially as he sees it being destroyed and transformed by immigration and Third World foreigners.

A Third World foreigner "liberal" comes to invade. He has no regard for the country's history, culture, ancestry or heritage.

The Third World foreigner "liberal" comes to destroy, although his initial approach is parasitical by living off the host country's riches.

He hates his host country (eventually, if not at his arrival) for a variety of reasons: envy, inferiority complex, inability to live at the same level as the host's cultural sophistication.

His ire translates to destroying what is before him, which he then replaces with what he knows: his own culture, his own religion, his own way of life.

He is a conservative at heart.

But this replacement has no cultural anchor or cohesiveness within the national context of his "new" country. Somali immigrants are VERY different from Ethiopian immigrants.

I don't think this was the case between say German and Irish immigrants. There is some unified European culture. This is not the case with Africa or Asia (or even Latin America, despite the language).

Wherever Third World foreigners congregate in large enough numbers, there is a sense of emptiness. There is no attempt to develop their neighbourhoods, with flowers and gardens, trees on the sidewalks, etc. An Indian restaurant next to an Ethiopian coffee house does not add diversity and interest, but rather a hodgepodge of unrelated elements with no aesthetic cohesiveness.

A Third World foreigner, although he comes to stay, is always referring to his native country. His activities, his choices, his lifestyle, deeply reflect this native country. He may have come to find better shores but his heart and his imagination are with the homeland he left behind. He has no desire to reconstruct and to rebuild a new home, and instead lives in perpetual upheaval with his suitcase, metaphorically, left unpacked even after decades and generations of habitation.

This temporality continues down the generations. Immigrants' children and grandchildren have a nostalgia for the country their families left. This manifests itself with their persistent references and adhesions to this far-away land: through their cultural choices, their earnest attempts to meld their cultural and personal lives with the country left behind, and eventually with their loyalties in politics and other social ties given to those which best represent this homeland.

They have never really left home.

And they have a latent anger, unfocused and diffused, at this difficult life of divided loyalties they are forced to live. And when made to chose a culprit for target, instead of directing their wrath at their families, which pulled them across nations to this land of apparent opportunity, they glare at the country itself, calling it "racist" and "discriminatory" and "hateful."

But they are the ones who hate, or learn to hate, this land which they believe only pretends to give them everything as it curtails all their potentials.

They lose hope and optimism. They become grudgeful and dangerous citizens. Rather than generic liberals, they become far-left leftists who hold their fists up in revolutionary fury.

"Me Too!" they cry out with raging anguish.

Forest Heritage: Stewards of the Land

Image Source: Ontario Forest Industries Association

The Ontario Forest Industries Association asks this on its website:

When will Ontario harvest its last tree?

And answers:

Never.

More from the website:

As stewards of Ontario’s forests, OFIA’s members are committed to the sustainable, responsible use of this amazing resource. Close to 90% of Ontario’s forests are publicly owned and known as Crown lands. 44% of these Crown lands are managed forests. By sustainably using less than one percent of our Crown trees annually, Ontario’s forest sector is able to generate real prosperity and support over 170,000 families across the province. That is a very awesome return on a renewable crop.

Sustainable forest management is a way of using and caring for forests in order to maintain environmental, social and economic values over time. According to the Minister of Natural Resources and Forestry (MNRF), sustainable forest management helps Ontario’s forests:

Remain healthy and productive.
Support a strong forest industry and provide people with jobs and forest products.
Conserve biodiversity, enhance or protect wildlife habitat, watersheds, and other values, and help adapt and mitigate to climate change.
Support Ontario communities, provide recreational opportunities, and provide a healthy living environment.

Steve Paiken of Television Ontario had a panel on "The North" last night, where the main topic of the agenda was the forestry legacy of northern Ontario.

The panelists all agreed that the Ontario forests were abundant and healthy for the most part. But "stewardship" is necessary to maintain these forests.

TVO says this about the topic:

The people who cut down trees and turn that wood into the items we use every day have an expression: "forestry builds communities." The Agenda discusses Ontario's forest industry with panel representing Ontario's 170,000 people whose livelihoods depend on a thriving forestry sector.

Marking shows location of McRae Lumber Company, near Algonquin Provincial Park


Jamie McRae (Left) and his uncle John McCrae

In the early 1900s, John Duncan McRae, the son of Scottish immigrants, was the first family member to be involved in the forest industry. Today, one of his great, great grandsons is following in his footsteps and the footsteps of three other generations of McRaes that have made their living from the forest. Jamie McRae, who is in his early 30s, says he basically “grew up in the business” with his father Robert and his uncle, another John McRae, passing on the 30 years of knowledge and experience they have each acquired during their shared leadership role at McRae Lumber.

“It all started when my great, great grandfather operated a sawmill, a grist mill, and a power utility on the Bonnechere River in Eganville, Ontario,” Jamie says. “He used the river water for power until a major fire in 1911 destroyed half the town, including the power utility.”

It was John Duncan’s son and Jamie’s great grandfather, John Stanley Lothian (JSL) McRae, who continued the family tradition, making the 80-kilometre trek west from Eganville to the southern reaches of Algonquin Park, near Whitney. He started out as a jobber, cutting pine for the Mickle & Dyment Lumber Co., but when the pine started to run short, he bought the Mickle & Dyment mill and began to cut and saw hardwood. [Source: Family Ties, Wood Business, 2009]

Steve Paiken asks Jamie Mcrae on the panel, who is fifth generation in his family forestry business, McRae Lumber Company near Algonquin Park:

Paiken: What's a change in policy that you would love to see?

MCrae: What we're hopping for in forestry is that we see a general shift n the way that policy is applied to the industry...Maybe we're not known as widely as some of the sectors in southern Ontario. There's a chance that we're not as top of mind.

Paiken: Can you give me an example of one regulation that you think is ridiculous and they ought to cut it out.

MCrae: Well there s a lot of talk with harmonizing different..Endangered Species Act with the Crown force its Sustainability Act...

Paiken: Can I cut to the chase on that? That means that the folks at Queens Park are more worried about baby elk than about your livelihood.

MCrae: Well, don't forget we're worried about the species too. Because, as one of the things I always to point out is the fact that we've been in forestry for a long time, we all have. We've been here for generations all of us, and we're still dong a good job on the landscape. We're stewards of the land, that's what we like to say. We're the people you want looking out for the species. We live n the forest. We live right beside where we harvest. We live there full-time. So I think that we're generally pretty good stewards of the land. And I think that sometimes that's a little bit forgotten at Queen's Park.

Below is the video of the 1/2 hour panel discussion:






Riverwood Conservancy, with the Credit River, June 2016
Photo By: [KPA]