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Took a road trip out west this summer. Every province, in every city or small town with a population of 700 people. All Indians working at fast food places. The country is no longer great.

The first time i travelled across Canada on a road trip, heading west, going town to town along the TransCanada Hiway, i choose a black friend to accompany me. I choose him because he was really easy to get along with and i knew he was an auto mechanics enthusiast, which, as it turned out came in handy on the trip. We were on the road for a few months. I grew up in a city in a little multicultural bubble of liberalism and was taught as a child not to judge others based on skin colour or sex; to be respectful towards people of all ilks and ethnicities. The thing is, i was young enough to not really realize that i was in a bubble. As we travelled though parts of Saskatchewan and Alberta, where there are few to no blacks in many towns, i began to realize that Canada is quite racist in the outback and little towns mid country. I was surprised and actually angered by it. My friend took it in stride however. For example, i was meeting people, getting invited home for dinner and meet the wife and kids sort of thing, and my friend couldn't even get a conversation going with most people, they just totally ignored him and gave him a wide berth. I know underlying all of that is just the fear of an unknown quantity and the fact that a lot of Canadians watch American news sometimes which tends to be chock full of black in gang wars, shooting each other and committing violent crime so they get a false view of black culture because the news at that time rarely showed blacks unless they were committing a crime.