New Brunswick teacher Erik Millett raises questions about patriotism
Published Sunday June 28th, 2009
Teacher Erik Millett resigned from his job as principal of Belleisle Elementary School in Springfield, N.B., after coming under intense criticism for halting the morning soundtrack of O Canada in favour of singing the anthem at monthly assemblies.
Almost six months later, he spoke to The Canadian Press about what the incident taught him:
"As Canadians we must realize that it is not our anthem or our flag that makes this country what it is. Every country in the world has a flag and an anthem. Every dictatorship, every religious state, democracy, what have you. ... But that's not what makes the country what it is.
"It's the underlying laws and values and rules and practices and democratic institutions that guide a country that are important.
"And what is sad, what is sad in what has happened in this is that many of those institutions in Canada were damaged as a result of how people conducted themselves. Whether it's breaking the law and threatening a principal's life. Whether it's emailing hate mail to a person. Whether it's a federal minister not respecting the provincial-federal jurisdiction set out in the 1867 Constitution. Whether it's people saying that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is not important, and for a (school) superintendent to somehow think they're above the law of the land.
"Those are the things that have been damaged and tarnished by the way these events unfolded."
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It appears this man has not learned anything. He clearly is not operating at the level which we would expect of a principal in our education system.