This blog is a random collection of information, partly in support of my quotations web site. Other topics include wine, military news, economics, history, libertarianism, and other random things which happen to strike my fancy. Backup site is at http://quotulatiousness.blogspot.com/ (if there are no posts showing, hit the backup blog for explanation). Comments have been turned off, as the spam was getting too much to handle. Comments can be emailed to me for posting.

August 02, 2006

QotD: 50,000 Canadians in Lebanon

How did "50,000 Canadians" come to be in Lebanon? Is it one of our major trading partners? Has Bombardier opened up a Ski-Doo plant there? Is Beirut where the Quebec Nordiques wound up? 50,000 Canucks out of a total Lebanese population of 3.8 million works out to about 1.3 per cent of the population. Hezbollah claims 400,000 supporters in Lebanon after 20 years of diligent recruiting and investment by Iran, but Canada has managed to amass an eighth of that figure with nary a thought. Despite significantly smaller populations than our G7 colleagues, we have more citizens in Lebanon than the Americans, British and Germans.

Combined.

France is the former colonial power in Lebanon and the Western country with which it maintains the closest ties, yet even the French can muster only 30,000 citizens in the country. Formerly known as "the Paris of the Middle East," these days Beirut would appear to be the Saskatoon of the Middle East. Another decade or two and Lebanon will boast more Canadians than most of the Maritimes. If Canadians were represented within the global population as generously as they are among the Lebanese, there would be over 81 million Canadian citizens living outside Canada.

Mark Steyn, "50,000 problematic Canadians", Macleans.ca, 2006-08-01

Posted by Nicholas at August 2, 2006 12:04 AM
Comments
His stupidity knows no ends. We took in major waves of immigration in 1948 and again around 1975 - from the Christian community mainly with a large settlement in the Maritimes. Every year of my public schooling included Lebanese classmates and I lived in small town NS, not the big City. Just as we did with the Dutch in the mid-50s after the dyke break tragedies and the Ukranians as well as Russian and Polish Jews in earlier eras. That he can twist numbers is no surprise but that he is so unaware of simple Canadian history is bizzare. How is it he earns enough to feed himself? Posted by: Alan at August 2, 2006 12:33 PM
What an idiot. I followed your link and now must exercise myself again. [Thank you for letting me do so, BTW.] He might as well be surprised that there are people in Canada with the prefix "Mac" in their last names. If I gave a rats ass about McLeans as a publications I would phone the editor over this load of crap. Posted by: Alan at August 2, 2006 12:37 PM
We took in major waves of immigration in 1948 and again around 1975 - from the Christian community mainly with a large settlement in the Maritimes. Every year of my public schooling included Lebanese classmates and I lived in small town NS, not the big City.
I have to admit that it was quite an eye-opener for me when I visited Halifax for the first time (1982) . . . they had a positively huge Lebanese community there. I had no idea that there were so many Lebanese anywhere in Canada, never mind in Halifax — not the immigration magnet of the last fifty years, compared to Toronto, Vancouver, or Calgary. Posted by: Nicholas at August 4, 2006 11:23 AM
If I gave a rats ass about McLeans as a publications I would phone the editor over this load of crap.
In that case, he's definitely earning his keep. Controversy is a good thing, from the point of view of the publisher. If he's exercising you, he's undoubtedly also doing the same thing for many others. Editors usually like to have at least a token contrarian on staff . . . it generates such lovely (vitriolic) responses to print on the Letters page. Posted by: Nicholas at August 4, 2006 11:26 AM


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