Love Local

It's almost ridiculous, but an ISIS sympathizer in Strathroy has been killed by police in Strathroy, Ontario after detonating "a device".  Where? Well you may ask.

Strathroy is a tiny town near London, Ontario in what I call farm country. The ISIS sympathizer was named Aaron Driver; I would not be surprised to discover men on both sides of his family fought for Canada in the First and Second World Wars. I would also not be surprised to find out that half his ancestors were from Holland, because I associate Strathroy with ollie balls, not freaking ISIS.

Strathroy is a fair distance from my native Toronto, but I had a friend from there in my university days (the maker of the ollie balls) who had come to the Big Smoke to work for IBM. In the 1990s, working for IBM carried the caché of working for Google now, but I digress.

I'm really thinking about living and loving locally, which may sound rich coming from me, an expat who married a Scot and relies greatly on the internet to make and sustain relationships. However, when people are so into the internet that they heed voices that come out of it telling them to kill their actually physically near neighbours, there is definitely a problem.

No doubt journalists in Canada will find out exactly WHY an Anglo-named Canadian from the sticks was attracted to a violent form of Islam. I shall read with interest. I understand that there is a lot of boredom (and therefore drugs) in farm country nowadays, but surely the neighbours think of interesting things to do outdoors in their spare time?

After reading this news, I went to the nearest  proper supermarket which is a mile away and across a river. I took the time to have a proper look at who else was at Tesco before noon. Not surprisingly, they were mostly elderly people and mums with prams. I recognized a cabbie from the local taxi company helping an old wifie with her bags. I tend to be a daydreamer when I walk, but this time I really wanted to focus on who my neighbours were.

On the way back, I popped into the Historical Coffee Shop to have a wee bit of a blether in Polish with the Polish server, who is literally the Pole closest to me, being only metres away from the Historical House. Then I went into the HH to put away the groceries, say hello to my mother, and work on learning a Polish song about the Vistula (Wisła) River.

The song is very sweet, and its proud conclusion is that Poland will last as long as the Wisła flows, and I was delighted that the Polish composers and singers of the song identify so much with something physical, something local, something in the landscape that came before them, something so many Poles live near, as it flows from the mountains to the south to the Baltic Sea in the north. I wish I knew a song about my local river here in Scotland.