Lucky, lucky

My dear Dad used to say, with a twist of his thin lips, "If it weren't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all." On the other side of the flipped coin, I have a friend whose favourite phrase is, "The harder I work, the luckier I get!"

I've been thinking about luck a lot lately, after hearing from another friend about the big inheritance she has coming. She was lucky enough to be born into a wealthy family. The money's not coming any time soon, but someday, and she figures there's enough of it that she doesn't have to worry about paying off her line of credit or her mortgage while she takes trips all over the world.

I think about her and then I think about the thousands of people moving to Canada from refugee camps in Turkey and Lebanon over the next month - the lucky ones.

The people in the refugee camps were lucky enough to be able and know how to pay the necessary bribes to get to those camps when the bombs came raining down on their homes and their neighbours and relatives were murdered.

They were lucky enough to survive years in the camp; lucky to have a metabolism that can survive on about 500 calories a day, and now, they have won the lottery and get to come to Canada.

They are lucky to have the chance to come to a safe but cold country where they don't speak the language and the food will be very, very weird. They have lost their families, their homes, everything, likely including any inheritance, and definitely their dignity, but they're the lucky ones, the ones who survived, who got out and get a lucky chance to start again.

All from the luck of where and to whom they were born.

Merit, Shmerit: fooling no one

I must admit to a certain amount of confusion and upset concerning the federal cabinet unveiled this week in Ottawa.

I'm heartened so many people gave some thought to the choices made, but discouraged how many people say gender parity automatically means less-qualified people running the joint.

Where was all this concern about merit in the last cabinet?
Or the one before that?
Or the one before that?
Not a peep about merit when Julian Fantino and Pierre Pollievre were added to the cabinet and we saw how that turned out. Or consider the meritorious Helena Guergis and her equally awesome cabinet-sitting husband. I don't recall anyone asking questions about merit when those two were close to power. Until they weren't.

Merit is another dog whistle for closeted racists and sexists. They know darn well they cannot say out loud, "I'm afraid of women running things," so they hide behind the word 'merit', ignoring the fact of masses of unqualified white guys getting most of the good stuff in our society for centuries.

If you worry about the qualified white boys losing out on what you see as their god-given right to better opportunities than other people, perhaps you can seek some counsel from the parents of qualified brown and black and yellow girls denied their fair share of chances for, well, forever. They might have some coping strategies you can employ.

And take heart, the finance minister is a white Bay Street insider who's sitting on an estimated personal fortune of 26 million dollars, so even if there were some broads in skirts sworn in this week, nothing at Parliament Hill has really changed.