This isn’t true, statistically. Regardless of education level, immigrants to Canada are over-represented in low income groups.

It’s not my kid’s soccer team. (My son is 27 and hates organized sports.) It’s a friend’s and they are not kids of well-off immigrants from the westside. They are kids of refugees and really poor immigrants who don’t have anything. My friend has given up driving her own son to the games — he has to walk — because she and a couple of other parents have to pick up all these other kids for the games, since their parents don’t have cars or the wherewithal to get them there, it seems.

A second friend is the one who talked about soccer fees doubling recently. She happens to live on the east side, but, yes, I imagine they doubled everywhere.

“your eastside kids’ soccer fees are being doubled because there’s less government money or when your entire soccer team is dominated by refugee and immigrant kids whose families can’t afford any fees at all. ”

My son’s westside soccer fee is $180. Just curious, what were yours before the increase and what are they now?

Actually, a majority of our team is also made up of immigrants (including my son), among them people originally from the US, Israel, UK, Malaysia, Phillipines, South Africa, Japan and China – and as far as I know all the parents pay the full fee. Worth remembering: immigrants are often well-educated and, deservedly, well-paid for their skills and work.

But back to the Olympics. I share your feeling of ambivalence. I would rather the whole event was somewhere else, but since it’s here, I’m going to several sporting events and plan to make the rounds of the “houses.”

Tragically, it wasn’t Dean Martin singing. It was a hired person doing a kind of karaoke to the accompaniment of a digital music/noise-making machine.

BUT in talking about Dean Martin… remember this… and remember it well… Dino is NEVER a “digression” … That is all.

I mean, really, folks. Didn’t any of you ever see “Moonstruck”?
gmgw