(Will we ever arrive at the Promised Land?)

I must admit that I didn't expect the response to my article that appeared in the electronic version of this paper. At last count there were 9 postings, some of them quite long and even "eesti keeles!" (in Estonian).

There seems to be a range of strongly felt opinions about the language issue. I think I have a bit of an advantage there because of my own personal experiences. First of all, language is a real thorny problem here in Ottawa with extremists on both sides of the linguistic divide. Second, although I'm of Estonian parentage and Estonian is my first language, the mother of my children was of Latvian parentage.

I lived on both sides, the "outsider" and married to the "outsider".

Fortunately both our parents were realistic reasonable people who thoroughly enjoyed their grandchildren even though mine had to talk English to them. Also, the background, religion, culture and food are almost identical so the children weren't deprived of their Baltic heritage.

My son speaks his mother tongue as well as French and English. When he was little, we decided that his mother and grandmother would only speak Latvian to him and he could learn English on the street, which he did. During these early years I also learned basic conversational Latvian. Now I've forgotten most of it, but I could probably still manage to get my face slapped in Riga.

Realistically, I think most children can learn their mother tongue if the will is there. Father tongue with a father that works away from the home and has to travel a lot is a different matter, although I do know one father here who managed this. But not every child has the ability to learn a second language, something that was brought home to many parents here when their children couldn't cope in French language immersion courses. This caused much angst among those whose children were labeled as "failures" at an early age and it must have left life-long scars on the children. Sometimes, it happened in a family that one child had the ability, and another didn't, as was the case with mine.

One of the things that you readers have in common is that you take the time to bother to read and even subscribe to an Estonian newspaper, even though I suspect the preference seems to be, as with me, to jump to the English language pages first thing after we've scanned the obituaries.

Given this shared bond and background, I find it hard to understand why some of you can be so unkind to each other. Is this then the Estonian spirit to refer to others as "language Nazis" and not in jest? Does it make somebody feel better when they accuse others of being terrible parents having deprived the fruit of their loins their birthright? Come on already - is this the second Tower of Babel, Esto style !?

A lot of positive comments came out too, especially the ones that said "welcome back!". I felt good about these because the future of our community is starting to look a bit brighter.

I think that as the second generation, especially the "dropouts", ages with the inevitable effect on health and the extra time for reflection that an empty nest gives, that more will take an interest in their heritage. Some may not find this change in Estonian Canadian society to be comfortable.

I keep reflecting on what I've picked up from my readings about North American Communism. I know many readers don't like it when I draw comparisons, but for the Communists their most hated enemies were not the Fascists. No, they were the "fellow travelers" who weren't ultra-orthodox in their beliefs. Thus, they could quite easily tolerate everyone except those who were closest to them in outlook. Calling somebody a "Trotskyite" or "Social Revolutionary" was the lowest form of insult. In Canada, the Party reserved its vitriol for the CCF (now the NDP), not the Conservative Party.

We all know what happened to the Marxists. Why are some of you so determined to walk the same path?

Märkmed: