Terry Watada

2013’s Word of the Year was the decidedly inelegant “selfie.” President Barack Obama made it famous and controversial at the same time when he had one with Denmark’s Prime Minister Helle Thorning Schmidt during Mandela’s memorial service.

Born in a time of prosperity, I never saw my father cry but my brother did, just once. Thus that sense of betrayal, of confusion and of the absolute lack of self-esteem was planted in the ten-year-old’s mind until the day he died some 69 years later. That is the true meaning of redress: a gesture of compensation for a lifetime of hurt and shame.

She questioned everything she didn’t understand and there was plenty since I’m not sure she was Buddhist. We also argued over the word “diaspora.” I used it to describe the aftermath of WWII and the Japanese Canadian dispersal.

It was indeed amazing that democracy was so efficient. Unfortunately, recent events may have coloured the democratic process.