Fort McMurray

Quotation du jour ~ Justin Trudeau: Canada has always been there to help people who need it.
 
I am inordinately proud of the country i live in atm.

As probably many will know, the city of Fort McMurray, in northern Alberta, was recently devastated by wildfires. There was a mandatory evacuation order and 88,000 people fled. There was no human injury but the losses and stress of the relocation must have been, well, something worse than i can possibly imagine. And i have a tenuous connection to Fort McMurray: i have a friend who moved there a couple of years ago.

When she posted (to Facebook) that she was safe, i felt such a feeling of relief. I also went to the Canadian Red Cross website and donated a whole heap of money. (I don't really want to talk about my charitable donations, it smacks too much of self-aggrandizement, but in this context it's okay, i think.)

And then, almost immediately, everywhere i went, there were donation boxes for Fort McMurray. and they were full. Not just with coins, but with ten and twenty dollar bills. (OK, i know that pic shows a jar full of American money, but you get the idea....)

Canada is often thought, globally, to be a pretty nice place where nothing much ever happens, and Canadians are generally a nice bunch of folks although not particularly dynamic. This isn't always true, of course. When there's a crisis, we don't fuck around. Would anyone care to help? Go here: http://www.redcross.ca/about-us/newsroom/news-releases/latest-news/red-cross-distributes--30-million-to-evacuees-in-just-one-day