Easter 2025 Musings

This Easter was very reflective for me. This Easter Vigil was the first time I went to Easter Mass at the new church here in our new town.

The church was old, and looked like a giant barn from the 1960s, not exactly similar to the beautiful cathedrals of downtown Toronto. But it was absolutely packed full of people. I was very lucky and got one of the last seats in the house, though I was prepared to stand the whole two hours.

The readings this Easter were about Moses taking the people out of Egypt, and through the Red Sea. This famous passage is something I always take something different from.  

 What stood out to me was the tambourine and the column of fire and smoke.  The joy of the woman Miriam, the prophetess, and the wife of Aaron, takes up the tambourine at the joy of their emancipation. The very real joy of the present moment, not tarnished by the future upcoming, of which there would be many tears, nor the sadness of the past, but only the joy of victory.

And this passage in particular in Exodus:

And in the morning watch the Lord in the pillar of fire and of cloud looked down on the Egyptian forces and threw the Egyptian forces into a panic, ²⁵ clogging^[c] their chariot wheels so that they drove heavily. And the Egyptians said, “Let us flee from before Israel, for the Lord fights for them against the Egyptians.”

In our version it was called 'the pillar of fire and smoke' and I just thought about that, about the fear of something great that can extinguish all life, but instead is leading people away from a life of slavery.  But it was a symbol of great power, of something mysterious and luminous, that defies the natural order of men and kings and armies.  

I also found it mildly amusing that their chariot wheels got clogged.

In the face of great inevitable power, what are we? We are only someone trying to flee the wrath of nature and the man or woman who is our enemy.  And there's no promise of an easy life once we've left a life of oppression. There are only questions, and a sort of natural human nagging and annoyance that we traded a safe life under oppression for a life in the wilderness and the desert.

But I found the two images kind of arrested me: the tambourine, the pillar of smoke and fire. The overwhelming sheer power, the joy and freedom.  Joy and dancing, beside that which is mysterious to us.

 

   

 

Goodbye, to my old college program

Today I went to a farewell party for my old PR program, which is shutting down after many, many years being a program for young professionals to grow.

Many people I knew over the last 10-12 years have done really well for themselves, and I've followed their career fairly closely.  They've been doing really well as directors, managers and coordinators of communications, public relations and marketing. They are hardworking, incredibly smart, dedicated individuals. They've succeeded.

But the Ontario education system has not. Ontario colleges, to fill the gap in funding they took it from international students, which then turned into a housing crisis. which then turned off the international student tap, which then meant colleges are now closing and struggling.

When I started in my program there was maybe 1 or 2 international students.  When the program ended, the mandate for the programs was to bring in as many international students as possible. (Slightly differently worded, but the same outcome for my college program and many similar programs.)

And we can't train only local resident Canadians because then the government shoulders the cost of education at the post-secondary level.   And the cost of real, practical post-secondary education is a problem no government wants to solve or pay for, federal or provincial.

It's expensive to train people. It's expensive to give them a world class education. We are beyond lucky we have the good teachers and good educational systems built into Canadian values.

But the creative programs that're being cut from Ontario's colleges will, eventually, have negative effects.

Where will we train young people before they get into the workforce? Are we going to be returning to unpaid internships and a never ending promise to pay younger employees?

Training costs money. You can't avoid that. And if the government won't address the educational gap that will eventually exist, what kind of quality of work will we have in Canada, which is known as a country of experts and highly skilled and highly trained individuals?  

I'm not all doom and gloom, but it's telling that a full program of students can still shut down because the funding does not exist for what is an extremely modest program with mostly part-time staff and very little corporate costs other than a nearly run-down Degrassi set and some stationary.

It's college programs that will continue to make Canada a great nation; it's great teachers and great ideals that produce the kind of workforce Canadians can be proud of.