by George Campbell, mtwx.ca
Monday afternoon, my wife Fran and I took our grandson to Desert Hills Farm Market. Cold wind cutting through our jackets, but the place was packed. Kids running between pumpkin displays, families loading wagons, that perfect October chaos.
Our grandson went nuts picking pumpkins. Too many. Way too many. But that’s what grandparents are for, right?
What got me wasn’t the pumpkins. It was watching the staff. A kid maybe nineteen directing traffic in the parking lot – smiling, waving people through, jogging between cars in that cold wind. Inside, someone mopping up tracked-in mud every five minutes. Another worker helping an elderly woman carry her pumpkins.
Then I saw this employee, mid-fifties, helping a young woman re-load a produce bin. He wasn’t just helping – he was showing her how to make it easier on herself, how to make the display look better. Teaching. Mentoring. Right there in the middle of the chaos.
Nobody standing around. Nobody complaining about the weather or the crowds.
They were just… working. And you could tell – they gave a damn.
We left and drove to the taco stand. Same thing. Packed to the rafters. People sitting outside in metal chairs, wind whipping their napkins around, laughing and eating tacos like it was the best day of their lives. The staff treated us like we’d made their day by showing up.
Fran drove home so I could watch the scenery. That hour ride, I kept thinking about those workers. How hard they were working. How they helped each other without being asked. How nobody was waiting for someone else to solve problems – they just saw what needed doing and did it.
I felt good. Really good. Not just about the day with our grandson, but about seeing people who still understand what work means.
Thursday morning, driving to work, I turned on the radio.
David Eby. BC Premier. Whining about American lumber tariffs. Going on about how unfair it is that Americans can buy Russian lumber cheaper than ours because of the tariffs.
And I’m listening to this, and something snaps.
Get over it, David.
There’s nothing written anywhere that says America has to buy our lumber. They made their decision last November. This is how they’ve chosen to do business. You don’t like it? Too bad.
But here’s what really got me – and this is where I started getting angry, really angry.
Those people at Desert Hills faced cold and impossible crowds and they just… handled it. The Taco Stand staff dealt with chaos and kept smiling. They didn’t get on the radio to complain. They didn’t blame anyone. They saw what needed doing and they did it.
But our Premier? Our government? They get on the radio and whine. They blame Americans. They blame tariffs. They blame everyone except themselves.
Are Americans the only country in the world that uses lumber? Really?
And we eat it up. We WANT to hear it.
Because we’ve been living beyond our means for so long – as a province, as a country – and instead of admitting it, instead of rolling up our sleeves and fixing our own mess, we encourage our politicians to blame everyone else and spend more money doing it.
We allowed this. This entitled, socialist state where everyone expects someone else to pay, someone else to fix it, someone else to make it fair.
Those workers at Desert Hills? They’re the exception now. Not the rule.
We used to be a country of people who saw a problem and got to work. Now we’re a country of people who see a problem and look for someone to blame.
I’m not talking about Americans or tariffs or politics. I’m talking about you. Right now. Are you the person mopping floors in a windstorm, or are you the person complaining it’s not fair that you have to mop?
Because I’ll tell you what – those workers aren’t waiting for government handouts. They’re not blaming Americans for their problems. They’re showing up, doing the work, and going home proud of what they built.
The whiners? They’re already lost.
Which one are you?