Can this city get anything right?

While driving down the high-traffic Queenston Road which I frequent three times a week, I noticed a billboard that hadn't been there the day before: A SEX SHOW advertisement. Not only was this billboard featured over a FAMILY Martial Arts location, but it also featured a picture of a woman's breast with her nipple topped in whipped cream. This is not only disgusting and sexist but intrusive to drivers who DID NOT ASK to be exposed to this pornographic advertisement. 

But that is not the part that is the most disturbing; what is absolutely disgusting is that this is situated DIRECTLY ACROSS from St. Eugene's Catholic ELEMENTARY school! As I drove by, young students in the playground were openly exposed to this billboard. If pornography is illegal for children under 18, how does this billboard gain the rights to be placed across from an elementary school when it is no different?!

As a future educator and a person who is simply for preserving the innocent minds of our youth, I am so disappointed in the city of Hamilton that they would allow such a billboard, especially in a location where it is so openly exposed to children. Already I was disappointed in every representative that was elected for Hamilton-Wentworth Public Schools when results were in last night but this takes the cake. 

ourtimetolead.ca

Have you heard of it? Have you visited it? Chances are, if you've been to the movies at a Cineplex location recently, you would have seen it on your screen. Accessing the site probably didn't even cross your mind. The advertisement was probably ignored like all the others (despite how eye-catching it truly was).


So, what is it?
It's a website run by the Globe and Mail where weeks are dedicated to specific topics ("8 Discussions We Need to Have"). This months focus is "FAILING BOYS". Let me tell you: if you are a future educator, if you are a future parent, or if you simply have a concern about the leaders of our future, you have to go to this website and read the articles under this discussion, immediately. They are absolutely fabulous and sadly, accurate. While some sentences, as with all news articles, need to be taken with a grain of salt, majority of the topics approached hit the nail right on the head. The feminization of education (something I'm strongly against), the lack of male role models (heartbreaking), developmental differences (something many fail to acknowledge) and so many more gems are available on this website. The best thing is that it is meant for discussion. What this means for you, emotional and passionate reader, is that your opinions are welcomed and, in fact, highly encouraged. Weekly chats, forums and "Article Discussions" are all available on this website. It is, after all, our time to lead. We must have a say and take part in this, as well. These are critical issues and they should not be ignored.


If "Failing Boys" doesn't tickle your fancy, the other discussions are about the military, about multiculturalism, about women in power, about our work-lives, our Health Care, the internet we explore and the food we eat. One is bound to concern you and affect you, first-hand. This website should not be avoided. Do yourself a favour and simply have a little read.

I want to be his rose:

The little prince went away, to look again at the roses. "You are not at all like my rose," he said. "As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one. You are like my fox when I first knew him. He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world." And the roses were very much embarrassed. "You are beautiful, but you are empty," he went on. "One could not die for you. To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you, the rose that belongs to me. But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the screen; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to become butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing. Because she is my rose."

And so it begins...

... but where will it lead?