If a hint is needed for why the 1940s immigration happened, folks all over western cities are spray painting logos right now to remind us all.

Link below is to my tiny province's capital, but it's hard to find cities that aren't seeing it swastika's popping up all over. The left is suddenly all soft though now on the punch a nazi policy...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/anti-semitic-graffiti-removed-from-pedestrian-underpass-1.7023036

@drradon: I agree with you 100% on teaching both and teaching basic arithmetic first and then leading on to proper math once that foundation is established.

@dannym3141,

I was first blindsided by it when my kids came home with multiplication homework and were adamant they couldn't answer it the way I was showing them because it would be marked wrong, it was the wrong way to do multiplication.

The link to the full Manitoba math curriculum is below. The worst sections are under 'Mental Math' with the idea being that you should be able to add/subtract/multiply/divide all numbers in your head with a dozen pages worth of tricks. The tricks being what newtboy was calling 'proofs'. Our curriculum calls them 'techniques' though and I've included an example from the Grade 3 curriculum verbatim after of how it is supposed to be 'taught'.

Overall Math curriculum:
http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/cur/math/index.html

Grade 3 example:
http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/cur/math/support_gr3/number.pdf

From page 56:
Describe a mental mathematics strategy that could be used to determine a given basic fact, such as
-doubles (e.g., for 6 + 8, think 7 + 7)
-doubles plus one (e.g., for 6 + 7, think 6 + 6 + 1)
-doubles take away one (e.g., for 6 + 7, think 7 + 7 – 1)
-doubles plus two (e.g., for 6 + 8, think 6 + 6 + 2)
-doubles take away two (e.g., for 6 + 8, think 8 + 8 – 2)
-making 10 (e.g., for 6 + 8, think 6 + 4 + 4 or 8 + 2 + 4)
-commutative property (e.g., for 3 + 9, think 9 + 3)
-addition to subtraction (e.g., for 13 – 7, think 7 + ? = 13)."

Now before you think me and observe there's nothing wrong with showing kids some extra tricks to help them, that is NOT how this is supposed to be used. If you read further, students are REQUIRED to "explore" multiple methods of calculating answers and must demonstrate they know and can use all these 'tricks'. So instead of providing assistance for difficult calculations as it should be, it's used to make ALL calculations difficult, and create extra work, AND makes kids just learning the concept completely overwhelmed with everything you MUST know to get a right answer to 2+2=4.

And here's the link to the Grade 11 review of the basic arithmetic:
http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/cur/math/ess_mm_gr11/full_doc.pdf

And for the Grade 11 students and teaching them to add/subtract/multiply and divide, the teacher's guide describes this like a subjective discovery process with quotes like this:
"Consequently, mental calculation activities should include periods for thought and discussion.
During these periods, the teacher should encourage students to
-suggest a variety of possible solutions to the same problem
-explain the different methods used to come to the correct answer and their
effectiveness
-explain the thought process that led to an incorrect answer"

An important note is we are not talking about solving complex word problems here or anything, but specifically for calculating a basic arithmetic operation with the different methods being those described from back in Grade 3 already outlined above.

I've basically been doing remedial home schooling in addition to our curriculum.

The results of our provincial math curriculum are so clear cut that our results on standardised testing like PISA have steadily dropped since it came in. Not to worry though, the standardised test is at fault and our province is working to stop taking the test. You know, as following the data and fixing the curriculum clearly couldn't be the answer...

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/student-assessment-pisa-oecd-manitoba-1.3883344

They play this like it's a hypothetical future when up here in my part of Canada it's actually more historical.

A teacher in Edmonton was fired for giving student's a zero on assignments they didn't hand in:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/edmonton-teacher-suspended-for-giving-0s-1.1131453

After a few years in court he's won on appeal but yet to be seen if that's going to be the end of it. In my province of Manitoba, there is a tacit no fail policy in place where keeping any kids back a grade is almost unheard of. Not only does it require parent's permission and approval before holding a student back, but sometimes even then kids have been pushed along forwards a grade, ready or not.

If you look through and provincial standard math curriculum, it includes gems like this.

http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/cur/math/mathcurr.html

For a problem like 7 + 5, providing the answer 12, is incorrect. You are instead supposed to show multiple methods of solving the problem, like saying 7 is the same as 2+5 and I know 5+5 is 10, so 10 +2 is 12, thus the answer is 12. It's absolute stupidity, institutionalised and made into a standard. The nutjobs like those in this video have already pretty much 'won' up here in Canada and the struggle is to get back to a sane world where Math and education aren't butchered.

Sorry - the polar bear was just playing with his food. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/polar-bear-dog-video-churchill-manitoba-1.3855128

@newtboy,

1000 acre farms do not count as "family farms" in my eyes, even if they are owned by a single family.

Your entitled to that opinion, but you are also flat wrong. If you want to support a family of 2 or 3 children and do something as outrageous as send them off for post secondary education it isn't happening by running a subsistence farm. I'm in Manitoba, Canada and we've got about 20 thousand farms and the average size is right around 1000 acres. Those guys are in exactly the same financial class as the mom and pop corner convenience stores. They've got about the same money for raising their families and retire with about the same kind of savings. I really don't care whether you agree with me on that or not, it is a reality of farming today.

BUT....overuse of equipment either over packs the soil, making it produce far less, or over plows the soil, making it run off and blow away (see the dust bowl).
...
No, actually overproducing on a piece of land like that makes it unusable quickly and new farm land is needed to replace it while it recuperates (if it ever can). Chemical fertilizers add salts that kill beneficial bacteria, "killing" the soil, sometimes permanently. producing double or triple the amount of food on the same land is beneficial in the extreme short term, and disastrous in the barely long term.


I've got family that's been farming this same land for better then 100 years and still getting better yields per acre ever year. Your idea's about what is sustainable or good practice is disconnected from reality.

I'm from Manitoba myself and the juxtaposition of the video showing great restraint by the officer with this quote from the article is my main reason for posting:
Leah Gazan, an Indigenous activist and University of Winnipeg professor, said the officer could've used less forceful tactics to restrain Kokopenace

I don't want to downplay the obstacles faced in the US by African Americans, but I feel really strongly that race relations in Canada between Aboriginals and the country is in a MUCH worse place.

In Canada the past and history between aboriginals and Canada still has been ignored more often than it has been met head on. For both good and ill reasons over our history, we've had a two tiered system of laws that treat separately with you based on whether you are native or not. Originally this was oppressive of native communities, but now it's often the other way around:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/judges-must-weigh-cultural-factors-in-native-sentencing-court-rules/article535585/

The greater problem to try and solve is Canada's native reserve system. Native people living on reserves are more often than not growing up in 3rd world conditions. The worst part is, proposing changes to that system is itself 'racist' against aboriginals. Our reserve system is systematically destroying generations of people based upon their race, and nobody seems to be able to fix the thing .

i wasn't entirely sure where this took place since it was from CBC manitoba but it was OPP that arrested her.

to your next point, this doesn't show anything extreme but the linked article makes me wonder why she had to go to the hospital and what she died of. it wouldn't be crazy if she was beaten in custody. there is severe racism for first nation in the police force canada wide. but obviously we don't know. there are a lot of pieces missing to this story.

@kir_mokum

This is Ontario, not Manitoba.

And I'm about ready to take a road trip out to Kenora and find whoever was screaming "LET THE FEMALE COP ARREST HER" and punch him in his damn mouth.

Seriously. She's being arrested, she was legitimately not being beaten, and she was very obviously resisting. At that point, a different gendered cop wouldn't have done anything.

And why does the fact that she died have anything to do with this? She wasn't choke-slammed, shot, hell, I didn't even see any punches thrown in her general direction, so the title of this is completely and utterly misleading.

There's enough stupid videos of cops being retards on the sift, this, however, isn't one that needs to be here.

i can't say for sure but it sounds like the "something else" that required her to go to the hospital was being in police custody, which would explain why she ran.

being first nations in manitoba is a very bad thing to be. i mean, being first nations in canada isn't great either, but manitoba is particularly bad.

The puns keep going here.

"I'm sure the NDP would much rather be riding up in the polls."
"Pat Martin a victim of wedgie politics?"

Martin himself weighs in: "I kind of got caught with my pants down. Winnipeggers never like to play full price to anything. Fifty per cent off is like catnip to a Winnipegger, believe me."

Yes, that's kinda the point.
Per capita, BC doesn't have enough seats. We are far out weighed by Quebec and Ontario. And unfortunately, they don't care about what our opinions are. We vote differently than them in every way,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_alienation_in_Canada

Also, Ontario gets more seats than BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba Combined.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Canadian_federal_electoral_districts

It was actually a temporary oil workers' camp.

It's Canada, pretty sure these guys are in manitoba.. or out east, not sure which.

Canadian from Manitoba checking in here. Things like crutches, prescription medications, and ambulances are out of pocket expenses. Got something like diabetes? Expect to be spending a lot of money every month on drugs.

For life threatening emergencies or even broken bones and stitches our system works great for people, and no worries about going broke, you just go in anyways. Our federal and provincial taxation levels though are also much higher than in the US and a large percentage of that is spent directly on health care. I don't know what level of health insurance that amount would buy each Canadian, but it is important to remember that the Canadian healthcare system is NOT free.

I must say I do prefer the Canadian system to the American one. Largely on the basis of not seeing working class families being financially destroyed by life threatening and uninsured medical conditions.

I can't just say that though without pointing out that our Canadian system has it's own serious flaws. I know of people with back injuries putting them off work until they can get surgery, and that surgery being a waiting time for them measured in years. They flew down to the states to spend thousands of dollars out of pocket to get the surgery in weeks instead, and were financially ahead too over those two years since they could get back to work. Patients showing symptoms that might indicate major heart conditions or other illnesses who would get an immediate MRI or other expensive diagnostic in the states straight away will routinely wait months in Canada.

That is all just a long winded way to say the Canadian system is far from perfect and has very serious problems and flaws in it that are negatively impacting peoples health and financial well being too. It's no magic bullet.