For a long time I believed all the fairy tales about Canada. Now I know starting a blog or a journal post or a newspaper column like this is immediately looking to push away readers, for we all know the phrase “that doesn’t happen in Canada” is key to our enjoyment of the illusion that we are a special kindred soulful nation full of not racism, not sexism, not hatred, not violence, not what they have over there across the big blue seas, right? We are different because we are not them, because we are not terrorists, and most assuredly because we are not unusually cruel and because because because we do not censor each other at least via the governmental route as we all know even the Chinese do. So why are there blind homeless men begging for change on Yonge street in Canada while others in Lambourghinis and Porsches drive by not to mention women who spent $120 on eyelash extensions every weekend instead of helping each other? Is it typical normal run-of-the-mill spoiled rich democratic culture whereby we are having so much fun we failed to notice those whom weren’t and it’s not some big government-conspiracy-type-of-behind-closed-doors deal? Do we Canadians, like Tribe Called Quest said, do it all for the love, yo? Go Jays Go? All for the love, yo?
Right now as I write this I am also committing the biggest offence, a crime, of my life, it is so huge that I will probably be executed by a lethal injection. You see, I made vegetables with tofu and tuna, and in Canada, that is a sin! See, that’s what Canada is to me - a land where this is the worst thing any Canada can ever commit. Combining vegetarian food with meat? Who does that! Evil men, surely. And yet when I talked to my local food truck woman, or some local students at U of T, they laughed at me and thought I was nuts and silly and comedic when I said “yes, I am vegetarian, but I ordered a burger because I eat meat when I feel like it or when I’m poor, it’s called being a Flexitarian.” It is a real diet and from it I have a six pack almost without doing a single sit-up. Now if something as simple as this concept, tofu and tuna, blew your mind, imagine if similar things were happening with psychiatric, healthcare, and policing even in places where the best people should exist - downtown Toronto. Imagine if basic things weren’t taking place, if basic respect, courtesy and human rights were not being followed and even if United Nations rules of conduct of a democratic member were being ignored completely. Imagine if all of this took place in the heart of the GTA and none of you knew about it the same way most people do not even know that tofu and tuna are a part of Flexitarian diet, nor that it even existed. Look it up on Wikipedia and blow your own minds. Then understand that Canada violates human rights daily and not even United Nations is aware at all. In fact, they are so convinced in the falacy and fable via the fantastical thinking and marketing hype machine by the Government of Canada that there are never any stories of inspectors from the UN looking over the acts and their lack of in our lovely cannuckia nation, is there? When did you last read in the news or see on CBC that the UN inspected Canada thoroughly for Human Rights violations or for chemical weapons or for hidden nuclear sites and reactors with enriching facilities and that we as a nation passed? Oh that’s not needed, right, as we would never do those things so it is automatically implied and we have the United Nations’ full trust and so no inspections are needed, right? And we do not have to check washrooms as part of the Food Safety green sticker restaurant project in Toronto either because it is implied if the kitchen is inspected, and food is clean, so, too, must be the washroom - how else would the chef’s hands be clean, right? And how else would the food be clean if the washroom is filthy? And yet I was born blind and many times a week I am the one cleaning even tea shop toilets in Chinatown and not because I am picky, but because they have green and black on the white toilet paper after I’m done wiping the bowl. It takes me 30 seconds and so when the staff tell me “We are busy, too many orders” I know that the same thing is possibly taking place with all kinds of other things all over our lovely little village of T.
I did mention I was born blind but am not fully as a surgery gave much of it back, but nowhere near that the rest of you seem to have - I can’t see stars in the sky, nor drive a car, can’t ride a bicycle and can’t see a single letter of a book when it’s at nose length. But I can still appreciate how stunning beautiful all the women merely passing me by on Bay street are even if I’m not worthy, Wayne. The reason I mention this is that if I was forced to clean these bathrooms so I can urinate properly then why didn’t the rest of you with your non-disabled eyes? Why didn’t the owner who sat in front of the computer playing games the whole two hours I was there drinking tea and watching Netflix? Why didn’t any of the three female staff? The police headquarters are a mere 10 minute walk from the tea shop - why didn’t they do the first 50% of their vehicle’s stickers motto “Serve & Protect”, the serve part? Why didn’t the health inspectors see this problem? Why didn’t .... should I keep asking or do you get it yet?
Now how does this relate to psychiatry and police? Well the other day, like any blind man, I wanted to feel the rain on my skin. So I took off my t-shirt and walked down Yonge street. I am not a sight to look at, but still law is the law and not having a t-shirt isn’t exactly enticing a riot even if none of you dare to do this simple thing - and I know it’s not because you’re oppressed, because #thisisCanada, right? And so I crossed the street between BMO and Eaton’s and Shopper’s and Starbucks - that’s how we low vision people know the city, for I can’t read street signs either - and I nearly tripped over some dark dirt on the sidewalk. There was a lot of it, a small hill which I obviously didn’t see as Yonge street has a ton of shadows and let me tell you I wouldn’t wish partial sight on my worst enemy if I ever had one. You do not want to trip out on a mere shadow of a moving vehicle and it’s headlights. It’s a fun thing the rest of you never even consider, believe me. Anyway, right after I tripped a police vehicle paused behind me, and naturally I figured they were doing their usual thing and kept walking. But wouldn’t you know it, the stealthy evil looking black and white slick paint jobbed thing pulled slightly ahead of me, with lights, and a cop darted at me from the driver’s seat angrily asking “Hey, I’m talking to you, STOP! STOP!!!” And so I stopped and turned to my back and right. He approached me, a thin little pricky white thing, all toned and wearing a bullet proof vest, with a gun on his right, his right palm open and near it, and his left arm slightly raised and bent at the elbow. As I stared at him the other officer, the shotgun master himself, wobbled over by his right side facing me as well. He was short and fat and reminded me more of an obese-inducing ugly little Maple Leaf branded donut than a human being. The two of them rather looked like a comic duo from that show I watched ages ago as a child growing up in Belgrade in the ‘80s, and I think it was called “Stanlio I Olio”. A fat and thin guy hitting each other, just like the Three Stooges. And in fact, when all was said and done I waited for the cruiser to drive away and laughed as hard as I could because if this is how Toronto Police does their jobs, then it’s pretty clear why Chinatown tea shops are dirty and why even 9/11 happened. These people are brain dead if not entirely retarded and yet they have weapons with twelve bullets and a spare clip. And so there I was a nearly blind man armed with an Android 6.0 Skynet FutureJack 6foxtrot Timepiece (aka cell phone) with headphones blasting Tron (coincidentally) and the volume loud enough so that their voices would be barely audible. After all, if my heart rate is going through the roof, and I’m shaking somewhat from fear, and my whole body was as warm as in the shower from adrenaline due to excessive threats of two armed and combat trained officers who had more than Systema and MMA skills at their beck and peril, well, I better made sure I heard as much of my favourite MP3 just in case it was the last time I could press the volume up button, right? Daft Punk and Disney made the score so amazing, if I was going to go down, I wanted to go down thumping my foot. You think I’m joking, but try and close your eyes and imagine a man with low vision being stopped for no reason and approached this angrily - you know like in the show COPS when they are approaching a bike thief who was running? They darted at me with that amount of veracity, tension, and hatred.
So I asked them what’s up, being as cool as possible and here is what came out of their legally paid for and legally trained mouths. “Did you flip over that flower planter?”. At this point I swear to God I was waiting for the Derezers to slice me into two because I was almost laughing in my heart. I just slipped and nearly fell because you didn’t light the darkness, because you didn’t serve nor protect the sidewalk, and you’re asking a partially sighted man if he caused the problem? But here is the best part - I have no idea what he is talking about. “What flower planter?” I ask, as there are a ton on Yonge Street, and a ton all over Toronto and the phrase “flower planter” to me is a little flower pot my grandma keeps cactuses in hanging on our wall behind her sitting spot on the balcony. What the hell does that little cactus thing have to do with their guns, vests, and a God-damn shithole that downtown Yonge became? He looks at me as if I’m a joker and says “Don’t play with me, over there you see the dirt spilled?”. I look over where I just tripped, and realize “That wasn’t a garbage truck or a dump truck, that’s what he’s talking about”. I didn’t even see that flower planter ever in my whole life nor did I notice it until the next day when I walked up Yonge street to check what the heck he was on about. In that darkness, I didn’t even see the dirt on the sidewalk hence nearly tripping on it. So I say to him “I just walked for two hours up through Chinatown and down from Bloor, this is the first time I came by this part of the sidewalk and I nearly tripped on that stuff.” He doesn’t believe me so makes up an utter disrespectful lie and says “We had a call just now saying a suspect matching your exact description flipped the flower planter.” Remember I said I wanted to laugh? I was dying on the inside at this point and Tron was at least making my emotions something other than humorous preventing me from exploding with the giggles. How can you possibly claim I did it to my face while holding a gun on your hip while I can’t even see your facial expressions in the ugly Government-provided orange lights of the world’s longest street? Your authority regime is so proud of this street and yet you light it with orange ugly lights that make us all seem like an alien race. Maybe this is why the cops didn’t have a clue what they were doing - maybe they are indeed from Mars and thus why much of Toronto’s population is disrespected with orange lights? Isn’t orange a prison colour? Isn’t it hard to see when it’s all orange? Aren’t there a lot of war vets and elderly with poor eyes around? Is orange a way to curb joy of walking out at nights thus keeping the peace is made easier for the obese lords of doughnuts? What is it really that makes you all put a man on the moon and then lit our poorest neighbourhoods with orange while lighting the rich ones with white and even warm tones? Is Justin Trudeau’s entrance way covered with orange lights, too? I bet not. And strangely police headquarters lack orange lights, because for security reasons cameras are better for white lights, right five-oh? You gave yourselves nice non-orange and gave us “non-trusted civs” the other other colour, right? So I’m standing there beside myself because my Android 6.0 Skynet recalled a future model in case I get shot, and I answer the following line “You’re lying to me. Stop lying, I didn’t do it, there’s no way you got a suspect call with my exxxxaccctttt description. Why are you lying and harassing me?” The little doughnut man blinks a few times as if never did a man accuse him and as if he is the only Human-Activated-For-Accusations model of life on this God’s green Earth. So the thug, aka the tall tree built to kill looks at me and sternly states “He had a cap just like yours, no shirt, headphones just like yours and dark pants”. I look down at my Adidas and say “They are green”. Even I can see the colour in this darkness. He retorts to me “That’s irrelevant, it’s black”. I was about to burst into laughter - I can only contain my nuclear smile for so long - green ain’t black, I mean it might be if you get green via tax dollars and you lock up and butcher strangers until they are buried in the black Earth, but they are two different colours. But I figure on video in poorly lit streets under orange lights, even pink might look white, and even Nike might look like Adidas, but a black man is never white nor asian, right dear TPS, nor is he middle-eastern, eh? Is that why you all love orange lights? Plausible deniability? The evidence is moot, the video quality is such and such, if you want us to do a better job give us more money, militarize the police force, give us 8K video, give us more of what none of you have sufficiently of? This whole “we know what we are doing" attitude is always that of dictators and yet this is Canada, that’s what I started off with right?
So I laugh and say “No way, was it earbuds or headphones? Was it this exact baseball cap? Was he as tall as me?” and to all this the cop is stunned, as if his lie, his bluff, was called out. It’s as if he knocked the flower planter over himself when he saw me taking my t-shirt off at the BMO ATM through the invisible dark hand of justice without leaving his vehicle (agenda agents can do that, all it takes is a call) and then he wanted to pin it on me. So he says no more talking, I’m to give him my name and ID. Naturally I state the obvious, who the heck carries ID these days? Are you people stuck in the ‘50s? Is this post World War II? Why would I carry my ID ever around Toronto if you all are using big data analytics, deep data analysis, if none of you had mental illnesses and had cameras, and even consumers have 4K via Rogers cable, and if we all have cell phones with cameras that can see craters on the moon - and you expect me to carry a little high school embossed and plasticated piece of paper with a photo of me when I was fourteen? And he says “You either give me your full name or I’m taking you to the station”. Obviously a man as disabled visually as me panics at this point, anyone would. Imagine this behaviour erected like a giant tower aimed with a beaming light at a new immigrant? Imagine this from two white cops at a black man? Imagine this aimed at a fragile little homeless woman? Not a pretty statement, and I didn’t even do a thing! In fact, I am the victim here, I could have fallen and hit my head on one of those grey metal bike posts so properly labeled in the grey darkness on the grey sidewalk. Maybe this is why they are accusing me, you know, a pre-emptive and proactive strike? We accuse you before you can sue us for endangering your blind man walk, right? So I pull out my credit card, and say “Here officer, let me save you time, I have one of those European names, you can read it much clearer from my credit card”. And he takes it and walks away! He is gone for ten minutes, and I have no idea where my credit card is nor why it’s in his hands. The doughnut tard is talking to me and defending himself by saying “I am not hararssing you, this is normal we are just investigating a call, you are a suspect, you look the same as the description”. I tell him to look me in the eyes and see how they look in random directions and that I see so poorly that I don’t even play sports often with others let alone tip over big heavy planters. In fact, I didn’t even know how big the planter was until the next day! And boy, they put it all back together with a beautiful arrangement of red, yellow, and even some gold coloured leaves and flowers. I didn’t know flowers come in gold until a week later. Now every single time I pass by that corner all I recall is the fear stricken into me on that exact spot. And I even audible say “This is where police harmed me”, but not too quietly, for this is, after all, Canada, right?!
Ten minutes elapsed, and the thing machine Terminator of a cop walks back with my credit card from the flower planter direction - I didn’t even see him walking that way, only back to his vehicle so I don’t know how he went there. At this point I’m thinking did he use my credit card to buy a new planter? For he came from the building’s entrance where the flower planters are in front of! I have no idea what he did with my credit card, nor why he took ten minutes with it! Did he write the numbers down? My privacy I feel was violated so I have not used that card since! Thankfully us disabled men have lots of bank cards, because this is Canada and we are “that rich” in the words of non-disabled men, and yet all I have is debt on all of them. Anyway, he gives me back the card and says “thank you and have a good night”. Now mind you this is not a big deal nor a big incident, but here is the horrible part. In lesser nations, this type of thing is exactly what happens before the regime quietly makes a person disappear. When I visited Belgrade years ago this is exactly what happened. I walked politely and calmly, without even listening to music, and yes I had my t-shirt on, and two cops stopped me and asked me even the names of my high school friends in Toronto. Then on my way back from the market square, another two cops stopped me and verified the same things. As if they were tracking me. Then a few months later, a white van took me out of my bed and for months I was kept locked up against my best interests in a place I’d rather forget for no reason whatsoever. So when stuff like this happens to immigrants and disabled people who fled such places - it makes Canada stink with the same toilet stench as a Chinese tea shop uncleaned for days and days. I am sorry, I love China and tea, but you people are not doing things properly and neither are the popos. The fi-ohs. The whatever-cool-word-you-think-makes-you-elite group of people whom you were wronged by. Granted, they know what they’re doing, and I know what I never have done. But you boys have guns, are trained to kill and subdue, and I don’t even see well enough to read a book in your typical Tim Horton’s. And I didn’t even get to the best part, and I now won’t elaborate it because my favourite song came on preventing me from feeling the sad emotions that your grossly abusive leaders are pushing upon us. A few months before the flower planter incident, armed officers did come into my Toronto downtown apartment, and took me from my very bed in handcuffs, drove me an hour out of the city, and kept me locked up for two weeks, and then in a locked room a doctor yelled at me during many hour long sessions that “you are not disabled!”. The human rights violations I witnessed in that place aren’t like the Syrian basement video where men are stabbed a hundred times in the back until they collapse - but they are just as cruel, as after all, #thISIScanada, right? For example, an Ethiopian woman was confused and disoriented, and asked the nurses to help her to her room and a Spanish nurse came to her and said with a finger “your room there, go alone”. The Ehiopian woman asked three times and waited, and not one of the ten nurses offered any help, each time the female nurses said “Find it yourself, it’s there, you can do it”. At that point I smiled and offered my hand and walked her all of 20 steps to her room. She was frail, had a walker, and my worry was if she took a spill even once, even once, she’d break her hip or something. I might be blind, but you know, when your staff are playing with cell phones, watching YouTube videos, and there’s more of them than in a SWAT team with machine guns that rappelled down my downtown Toronto building, at least one of you people should have done what I did. And you didn’t. Let’s not talk about all the other things I witnessed, for if you don’t get the severity from this one example my limited time then is wasted, and besides, “River of Darkness” doesn’t play always on this radio station. And if I had a choice, I’d like to “slip away” from your Canadian dark waters and into the soft soothing sounds of Darkwave.
You people are bullies and are no better than those other other people across the deep blue ocean. If I had another Canada to live in, I would move this song and me there. But I don’t. So I await the next time the wonderfully pleasant and well trained officers who went entering my unit to handcuff me used “please” and “may we” make up another messed up scenario and accuse me of perhaps knocking over the CN Tower when I accidentally activated my remote J-mech. I don’t know what drugs you police officers, justices of the peace, and psychiatrists are on, but please, do not give any to me. Please, reward yourselves with a triple dose and spare me both the tax burden of suing you and the loss of the miserable time I have ahead of me after you all butchered and brutalized my dumb little irrelevant and worthless disabled life. I am a citizen and so are you all, but some of us seem to have more equal rights than others, don’t we? Where’s my cop-proof vest, God? Or maybe I can have an idiot-proof one instead, that way I can avoid both, the 45 wielders and the politicians who made it all happen this exact way. Anyway, when all’s said and done, nothing will change, and this will be just another worthless blog nobody will ever read. In fact, I’ll just post it and go back to remixing muddy waters into something more heavy that I can dance to. Lou Rolls is great and all but that’s not the right mood for Canada, don’t you all agree? Life in T.O. shouldn’t be a depressive jazz song about a guy who was so heart broken that he would rather die from poor water quality than watch his woman cheat on him. The fact that the song even exists, should tell you all why we have so many orange lights and so few good strong white halos above us. I just await the day someone will claim poor orange lights prevented terrorism. Then all my complaining will surely feel useless. Then.
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