X Marks the Spot

PHOTO: Scottish poet Robbie Burns. Burns suppers will be held across Canada on Friday, despite the fact that he's not Canadian. For reasons incomprehensible to at least one reader, us immigrants just won't let go of our history and adopt the customs of our new country.

Reader D. Rowlison writes: "In letting in so many immigrants over the years, they need to adopt to OUR land - NOT the other way around." (Emphasis in original.)

If that's the logic we're going by, then when the British and the French arrived in Canada, instead of importing our own religions and customs, we should have simply conformed to those already followed by the people who lived here, the people we now refer to as the aboriginal people.

Also, if D. Rowlison is correct, I, as an immigrant who moved here at the age of one, should leave behind the customs of my old country. I should not, this Friday, drink whisky, eat haggis, and listen to burly men with near-incomprehensible accents recite poetry, all as a part of Robbie Burns Day, celebrating the life and work of the greatest Scottish poet.

I apologize to D. Rowlison for my unwillingness to drop Robbie Burns for Al Purdy (though I do love Al Purdy), and for wearing the traditional dress of my people, the kilt, to several events in the past. Us immigrants, I now understand, should certainly have adopted the customs of this land.