Good Citizen, Bad Citizen
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay On May 20, 1980, I was in Geneva Park near Orillia , Ontario , building multi-layered bird houses. These were destined to be placed around the park, in hopes of attracting bug-eating Purple Martins. Meanwhile, back in my hometown Montreal , Good Citizens flocked to the polling stations to decide the future fate of the Province of Quebec in Canada . That day, my fellow Quebeckers set out to save Canada from disintegration. I set out to save Geneva Park from mosquitoes. I was not alone. Every day, my six fellow Katimavikers and I walked a short, wooded path from our cabins to the Geneva Park workshop. There, we outfitted the park and its conference centre with birdhouses and beds. For all this work, we were paid one dollar a day; with the promise of a thousand dollars if we finished the whole nine months of the Katimavik program. Katimavik was set up, among other reasons, to send groups of young people into communities to