As we often hear in our classes, one of the biggest risk factors for a variety of chronic, debilitating diseases, from diabetes to ADHD, is low socioeconomic status. Sadly, even in a country like Canada, in the year 2012, we see that socioeconomic status continues to be a vicious cycle that entraps its victims in a web of dis-empowerment when it comes to issues concerning health.
While studying at the Lazy Daisy Cafe in Toronto’s east end with some classmates, I came across this inspiring poster in front of the washrooms:
The first thing I notice about Bogotá, when descending the rickety stairs of the airplane, is the smell: a strange mixture of damp clay, lush green vegetation and diesel smoke. The altitude provides a lightheaded feeling of well-being and forceful palpitations of your abdominal aorta begin somewhere between your sternum and navel.
I am pleased and excited to announce that I have been nominated for my second blog award!
On Canada Day, Sunday, July 1, both temperatures and spirits were high as millions of Torontonians joined together to celebrate the biggest celebration of LGBT rights in North America: the Toronto Pride Parade!
I am a huge fan of the theatre. With one outlier in mind, there has never been a live performance that I didn’t completely enjoy (the exception happened to be a 3-hour monologue about Simon Bolívar). Every other experience, no matter what the production budget is, has been excellent.
Dear Dalton McGuinty, premier of Ontario
Can you spare me $50,000?
I swear to you that my reasons for asking for it are pure; I just want to heal people. You see, I am studying to be a naturopathic doctor. I want to cure disease and make the world a better place, but in order to do that, I’ll need some cash.
Sure, you guys, the Ontario Government, supply me with a loan of about $11,000 a year. That’s great, thanks for that. However, my tuition alone is more than $20,000 a year and, having to study in Toronto, I also need money for rent and living expenses. Sadly, with the condo market the way it is right now, opportunities for squatting in abandoned factories are slim. Rent prices are a serious matter these days and having to study for 8 years will put my graduating age at 28 (some of my colleagues will be even older) so I unfortunately can’t live with my parents forever. They’ve been paying taxes for a long time and they want to retire in peace one day too.
I would hit the streets banging pots and pans in protest, like my colleagues in Quebec, however with times the way they are right now I barely have enough for a pot to pee in, let alone bang on. My time is precious as well – I commute 3 hours a day (due to the living-with-parents thing) and study for about 8. When I come home I have to eat, work on assignments, walk the dog, do some exercise and eventually sleep. I need to take care of my body a little; I am going to be a naturopath, after all.
I can work in the summer but unfortunately 4 months of work won’t pay the tuition for 4 years of school. I can’t work during the school year for the reasons outlined above and, oh yeah, during the summer I have board exams to study for and preceptor hours to accumulate so my time is precious during those months too. I wish things were like they were back in the ’80’s when a summer of work could easily make enough money for tuition for the following year but, as Bob Dylan says, “The times they are a-changin'”.
Perhaps we could put some of our tax dollars to work. I hear we spend a lot on our military. Could we maybe spare some funds there? I know it may sound crazy at first, but other countries (Costa Rica, Switzerland) have managed to do it. I may not have much training in the realm of politics besides a first year political philosophy course I took as an elective in university, but I’m sure that would help balance the federal budget. I know you’re the premier of Ontario and defense is not really a provincial expense, but maybe you could forward this on to PM Stevie H. for me. I’m positive that Canadians would feel better knowing that the money is going towards supporting our economy and training healthcare practitioners. After all, isn’t heart disease a much greater threat to the lives of Canadians than the possibility of terrorist attacks? What’s more, I always thought that the ritual of spending billions of dollars to murder foreigners would be something we’d have long let go of by now. One would hope that that kind of irrational nationalist BS would have ended back in the early 1940’s. Sigh, I guess we were wrong and it looks like Flower Power still has a ways to go. Maybe one day.
If you don’t like that option, I’m sure there are others. Marketing for the LCBO to get people to drink more alcohol is surely a fluff expense. Last time I checked people didn’t need to be told to drink (in fact we have organizations that help them not do that, but we can discuss that another time) and since when does a monopoly need to advertise anyways?
Ok. Well, I hear that Cuban medical students can sign a contract agreeing to work in rural areas and in doing so receive free medical education. Cuba is a poor country, and a socialist one at that. If they can afford to pay for medical education (not only for their citizens but for the citizens of other developing countries as well) then surely Canada, one of the world’s richest countries, can too. I know that I’ve heard criticism likening this system to a kind of “modern day slavery” – having students sign away a few years of their lives in order to study. However, I also know that “slavery” can be a loose term and, to be fair, I think that the definition of “modern day slavery” should be expanded to include the shackles of student debt. You see, I would rather spend my life providing much-needed medicine to a rural community than forced to pay back my debt by providing acupuncture for facial rejuvenation to the rich. I entered this field to heal people from disease and, according to my textbooks, wrinkles aren’t really a disease, no matter how unsightly we tell ourselves they are.
So, in short, Mr. McGuinty, can you spare me the $50,000? I’ll pay you back one day provided I open a successful practice (I’ll need some money for that too, if you don’t mind) and my patients can afford to see me. You see, times are tough for everyone and I’m assuming my patients will be paying off their student debt as well.
I’ll accept cash, check or credit. I’m not picky.
Thanks a bundle.
Sincerely,
Talia Marcheggiani, BSc(Hons), ND candidate 2014
I used to play in the laneway behind Clinton and Bloor, in Toronto’s west end. The laneway marked the arteries of my childhood world, directing me to the shops on Bloor, Honest Ed’s and Christie Pits park.
Canada is an interesting country. The people are careful in our friendliness and things are often left to understanding and not words. Kind gestures extend as part of conscious guilt and an aversion to making waves: please, thank you, sorry, sorry, sorry. A kind smile and awkward chit-chat about hockey.
We stand inside our pristine brick fortresses, in quiet neighbourhoods that are walking distance from good schools and we fill our flesh to prove to ourselves that our houses are not too big for us, that we really do need all the space. Things are bigger, but social circles are not. In our quiet surroundings, in our inhibited social reserve, we are sterile, septic and retracted, like the weather we endure for so many months of the year.
Driving through Cuba, the Canadians eyed 7 x 10 metered shacks, held up by a neighbour’s nails, holes welcome in the sea breeze as families lean against the front stoop. Freshly washed laundry waves in the breeze, flags symbolizing an uprising and then a plateau. Locals watch us as they expand into a chair, concentrating on the faint tickle of breeze on sticky hot skin, or lean against the door frame, casually eyeing this common trespass of foreigners. The Canadians watch the endless scene, house after house, an endless train of clothes lines, with a twist of fascinated guilt. Flesh memories of the softness of their beds, the gourmet food heavy in their stomachs fill their hearts with the dull burdensome ache of privilege, but their minds assure them of their powerlessness to change any of it.
“In Cuba, when someone has nice clothes, we know that they are brought here from AFUERA!” Jokes G, a Cuban and fast-friend I met on the beach. “The clothes and goods here in Cuba are, to put it politely, not very nice. But in your country, in Canada, everything is made to last, everything looks beautiful.” To the Cubans, afuera, or outside (of Cuba), is synonymous with quality.
Hearing this, I self-consciously bury my hands in the pockets of the the made-in-China shorts I got at H&M, which were a snap purchase, and will probably barely make it through the summer. Behind the friendly jokes and the toothy Cuban smile, I feel accused of splurging on silk robes while walking around in a land where everyone wears rags. Of course, with some of the best healthcare and education in the Caribbean, the downside of the revolution may be mostly a lack of material goods, Materialism, who despite her spiritual worthlessness is the god we pray to.
However, there is something stickier than materialism that seems to inject a certain joy and spirit of community into the hearts of Cuban socialists. Music, laughter, kind words and off-handed claps on the shoulder, as interpersonal connections blossom, characterize the Caribbean style of communication. Deep bonds are formed between strangers and hugs are tossed around with a reckless abandon that can at first can be threatening to the frigid, but kind, Canadian. And as I observe my fellow foreigners in the midst of this, and then our lives after we’ve returned home, I realized how impoverished our country has become. We lap up the warm smiles and friendly waves with the delirious fever of an abandoned castaway presented with cool spring water. At home, while we may be able to splurge our credit allocations on cheap plastic shit, we seem to be missing a key piece in the Great Happiness Puzzle—a sense of community and connection to each other.
Perhaps the large houses and the lifeless goods we’ve spent generations accumulating and built up around ourselves is only hindering our ability to survive. We pump music into our ears, shade our vision with Chanel lenses and calm our blood with the newest slow-release antidepressant. We keep ourselves contained in our invisible personal pods of comfort and thus we never fully live or learn the limits to our expansion.
We don’t have warm crystal-clear seawater, hot weather that melts our flesh into the atoms that surround it and merengue beats pumping the blood in our veins, but we do possess that same genetic code that deems possible the expansion of our selves.
From young adulthood we’ve been trying to find the answer to our desperate cry to fit in. Maybe, just maybe, buying the right clothes, listening to the right music or doing the right drugs will help me meld into those around me, will give me a sense of belonging and purpose. However, perhaps what the media tries to sell us is in fact a lie, no matter how maxed out our credit cards, the answer is simple: a smile, kind words, laughter and a friendly clap on the shoulder of a stranger as we begin to break through the icy pods that keep us separate from one another.