' 'Gratitude' Concuding entry

                          Last Entry for 'Gratitude'


         This is my blog and of course it's biased. So let me make three concluding points.
          First off, even though I've pointed out how many union members feel no gratitude to the New Democratic Party, there's many thousands of workers in B.C. who are unionized and do vote N.D.P. election after election. As one former head of the B.C. Federation of Labour Len Guy, once told me,"If union members don't vote for the N.D.P. I don't know who does."
      Unions like the B.C.G.E.U. may have negotiators who praise right wing premiers. Yet come election time, dozens of B.C.G.E.U. officials flood into N.D.P. campaign offices. Like many other unions, the B.C.G.E.U. gives lots of money to the N.D.P. before and during elections.
     Jean Swanson, the long-time anti-poverty activist is not hated on the downtown eastside. Far from it. Many of the poor people who live there, admire Swanson. Some of them revere her.
      Billy Taylor may have made enemies among members of the Cree nation. Yet many Cree aboriginals admire him. And before I get on my high horse to denounce those who show no gratitude, I too have been guilty of being helped by people and then never thanking them. One man who drove me to school for one entire
year never saw me again after that.
     "You just used me," he said when he ran into me a few years
later. So as the 20th century American movie star Mae West used to say, "I'm no angel." Nor was he the first person I used and then vanished from. with no thanks give.
      Ingratitude I conclude has been shown by me and many others. Alas it's just part of life.