When vital academic disciplines are phased out due to lack of student interest and bare-bones federal funding from the Bushitlerhalliburton regime, it’s a sad day for all.
So it was with heavy heart that I discovered from the Globe and Mail that the University of Vermont’s Canadian Studies Department was being phased out.
Canada was heralded as “cool” by a highbrow international magazine a few years ago, but that popularity has dimmed in the ivory towers of the University of Vermont.
The school has yanked funding from its Canadian studies program because interest has sagged in recent years. Only three students at the U of V now major in Canuck.
Faculty members fear the university’s Canadian content could soon disappear into the mists of the Green Mountains.
“Symbolically, [the cut] speaks very clearly to the fact that this administration simply doesn’t care deeply about the study of Canada on this campus,” history professor David Massell said in an interview from the Burlington campus.
Paul Martin, the fittingly named director of Canadian studies, says losing the $35,000 annual allowance will force the program to close its office, shave research assistance and cancel its annual trip to Ottawa.
Of course, it’s only a 4 hour drive between Burlington and Ottawa, and I’m sure it’s on a bus route. Perhaps the Ottawa field trip can be saved, at the very least. There’s nothing quite like seeing Ottawa’s natives in their flamboyant ethnic costumery, proudly festooned with relics of hunting trips from days long gone by.
And you realize that this means no more doctoral dissertations on the semiotics of the Canadian flag or investigations of the role of rubber boots and Newfie screech in the emerging immigrant culture of Newfoundland.
What will the Canadians do without us to study them?
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