Dear Canada, Especially BC: Are You Even Watching?

 🍁 Dear Canada, Especially BC: Are You Even Watching? 🍁

We sit up here, smug sometimes, watching the U.S. fall apart—healthcare collapsing, violence escalating, and corporate greed devouring lives. But look closer. Our house isn’t in order either. We are in deep trouble—and too few are sounding the alarm.

---

🚨 WAKE UP, VANCOUVER & BC

We jog. We spin. We do the Grouse Grind 3x a week to sweat out stress—but what are we running from?

What if we harnessed that energy for something useful?

• Imagine gyms that generate electricity.
• Imagine bikes that wash clothes while you ride.
• Imagine fitness that fuels your neighbourhood, not just your physique.

We have the energy. We just need the will to rewire it.

---

🍔 WHO’S COOKING ANYMORE?

Let’s talk food.

• $10 for a cob of corn with butter and cheese.
• $14 for a fancy gelato.
• $8 for a croissant.
• And still…some can’t even buy a litre of milk.

Older folks—especially men—live alone and survive on premade food.
Young people were never taught to cook.
Everyone's ordering delivery from people too exhausted and underpaid to eat well themselves.
Immigrants and temporary foreign workers are delivering our food while locals can’t even get hired to serve coffee.

Meanwhile, diabetes, thyroid disorders, and fertility issues are skyrocketing.
We’re eating ourselves sick and calling it culture.

---

🧠 SHELL-SHOCKED CULTURE

Yes, that’s the word: Shell-shocked.
Not from bombs—but from gentrification, globalization, automation, colonization, immigration policy, climate fear, and total disconnection.

All these overlapping crises have left Vancouver and Surrey—places that once felt like communities—dazed, confused, and deeply divided.

And as gig work explodes to serve an imported workforce, our local youth and elders are being left behind.
Can’t find work.
Can’t afford food.
Can’t even imagine owning a home.
Just trying to breathe through the pain while this world keeps spinning out of control.

---

💊 DEAD FROM DESPAIR

We are losing a generation.
Young people. Middle-aged people.
Dying quietly in back alleys, in tents, in bedrooms, in shelters.
Not just from opioids.
From hopelessness.

And it all connects:

• The gig economy that hollowed out decent jobs
• The unaffordable homes we sold to investors
• The health system that’s failing
• The education system that teaches obedience, not survival
• The trauma we refuse to name

---

🔥 A TIPPING POINT—OR A TURNING POINT?

The U.S. may have crossed over to the dark side.
But we still have a chance.
We can flip this. Not just for us, but for the next seven generations.

Because what are we even leaving them?
A scorched planet, a collapsed social system, and some weird joke about “spending the kids’ inheritance”?
Their future is not a punchline.
Their overdose, or silence, or rage—is not a coincidence.

---

💪 WHAT DO WE DO?

We build. We grow. We reconnect. We relearn.

🌱 Teach your neighbour how to cook.
🛠️ Fix something instead of buying new.
🤝 Create local jobs that matter—like repairing, teaching, farming, and caregiving.
🧠 Talk to your elders. Ask them what they did when there was no money.
🏕️ Host free classes in parks—gardening, art, music, survival.
🏘️ Advocate for co-ops, land back, mutual aid, rent caps.
🎤 Give young people the mic—and LISTEN.

---

This isn’t just survival—it’s rebirth.
And it starts with YOU. Me. Us. Together.
Right here in BC.

The ancestors are watching.
The children are waiting.
And the future is not yet written.

Let’s make it something worth surviving for.

With fierce love,
🇨🇦 Tina Winterlik aka Zipolita
https://tinawinterlik.blogspot.com
Instagram: @zipolita

---