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We're Not in Squamish Any More (11.24.06)
As the rain comes down and the entrance to Valleycliffe is washed away, I can’t help but think it’s just mother nature helping with our great cleansing. Sure, the starting gun of change was fired when we got the Olympics™, but now the race is truly on as we make national news on a monthly basis. Unfortunately some of those write-ups have been downright embarrassing. Like the ill-informed article insinuating Squamish was a backwoods town nicknamed Swampish until this latest batch of scenesters arrived. If I may, good people have always been here and if anyone took the time to ask you’d know our nicknames were actually Squampton, Squish, Squeamish (thanks to spell check) and of course, the McDonald’s on the way to Whistler. That last one is actually a biggie now that there’s another arches inside a store that truly marks the new phase of our town’s image.
Thousands moved here and literally thousands more envied us for many reasons. Not least of which was that we were a town without a Mal-Wart. Don’t get me wrong, the shopping opportunities here forced many to drive to Vancouver. So I’ll be the first to say thank God we have a department store, thank Satan it’s a Mal-Wart.
Sure they buy huge adds telling us they’re a team player but one look at our new intersection on the highway will tell you differently. Our arena and ball fields have gone years without highway access, but now the Province bends to make another intersection just meters from a current one where it was absolutely unnecessary? Monumentally horrific planning like that leads me to truly hope the person(s) responsible were either fired or given a dump truck of cash. Creating such a bottleneck on our main artery is truly a slap in the face of Squamish.
Not to say Mal-Wart is the only devilish corporate player but they’re certainly a biggie. Although it would appear Mal-Wart’s religious wing-nut fan base is wavering with them recently joining the National Gay Chamber of Commerce. In fact there are protests organized this weekend by savewalmart.com to “Save Wal-Mart from the radical homosexual agenda.” They’re worried that Mal-Wart will become “…the world's largest promoter of homosexual sodomy!” Why is it always anal sex with these people? Moreover, why is it always about hate? With Mal-Wart’s truly appalling human rights record exploiting the poor and perpetuating the poverty cycle, you’d think god-fairing-shoppers would be more concerned about helping the poor than hating gays? Apparently not.
If nothing else, we can place our bets for when Mal-Wart will be unionized. Not if, when. Some mock that we had the first ever McDonalds union for only a year and a half, but when you think the average turnover is three months, that’s amazing. And just for the record, I’m not as much anti-corporation as I am anti-bastards and sometimes it takes a union to make employers play fair. We shut down Saan, Ricky’s and Exra Foods for mistreating workers and we’ll do it again. So game on, and good luck.
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