Monumental Washington

I've been putting replying to some personal emails for a month now telling myself I'll get a blog entry done first and include a link in my reply. Of course, I don't have any more time now than I had earlier in the month - and I'm not just doing this to procrastinate -, it's simply time I got this done.

It’s a big enough claim to fame for a city to be the capital the USA, but when one is actually there, walking past all the embassies on Massachusetts Avenue, it’s easy to understand why some call Washington, DC the capital of the world. Before ever seeing the city, I had built it up in my mind as being huge and well... city-like: like New York. On the contrary, DC is quite green and since no building can be taller than the Washington Monument, there are no real skyscrapers. One can imagine that the number of foreign diplomats that pass through the city has created a strong pressure to keep away the negative traits often associated with cities.

But for me, the most defining part of DC is its monuments and memorials (to get an idea, check out http://www.pbase.com/jpochard/washington_dc or http://www.scienceviews.com/photo/parks/WashingtonDCMonuments1.html). These monuments aren't just sculptures either, they often incorporate the most important ideas, in the form of quotations, of the people to which the monuments are dedicated. Now, I know I have to be careful how loudly I say this around other Canadians, but the monuments in DC are so inspiring that even I, as a Canadian, can't help but to feel indebted to all those Americans who vehemently fought to reintroduce and firmly establish the ancient notions of democracy and equality back into the modern world - notions Canada seemingly effortlessly borrowed and took as its own. Now, what happened after the establishment of the USA and in the more recent past is a whole other story, but I simply ask: What would Canada be now if it hadn't been for Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and James Madison?