How very fortunate it is for us as Canadians that we live in such a country, where we are safe and secure, where our futures hold promise that aspirations can be achieved, where people do have opportunities to make the most of what life can offer. Where the landscape is one of unalloyed beauty and diversity, enriched by tremendous natural resources. Where we are able to cultivate our own food sources and have excellent trade relations with other countries for export-import as needed to support both economy and lifestyle.

Where our children are exposed to excellent educational opportunities through an education system among the best in the world, accessible through a system of moderate taxation and administration. And where our population is assured of outstanding health care through a universal health care system that serves every Canadian's needs in a first-world scientific-medical environment with a conscience.

Where law and our constitution guarantees the right of equality and the order it implies ensures that we have little to concern ourselves with as law-abiding and trusting citizens of a stable country. We could be living in Argentina, Zimbabwe, Somalia, Philippines or Chechnya, but we don't live there, thanks to our good fortune. Imagine if we were Syrians or Lebanese, Yemenites or Libyans, subject to tribal antipathies. Or Brazilians or Argentinians where like much of the wretched corrupted parts of the world inequality of the genders is rife; unimaginable, in fact. Who would want to live in sectarian-conflicted Sudan or South Sudan?

In Canada, we can exit our comfortable homes, relax in our serene backyards, look up at the sky and wonder why it is that gulls are circling the storm-clouded heavens, not fearing that warplanes or helicopter gunships will suddenly appear to bomb or strafe us.

We can go shopping at our local supermarkets and find the shelves stocked with fresh produce and specialty food products to enable us to live healthy lives. We can find employment that will lead to personal stability and sometimes prosperity. We can become ill with the assurance that we will be well looked after. We don't have to fear for the safety of our extended family, victims of criminal networks.

We can sleep soundly at night knowing that ideological-political factions are not plotting to overthrow the ambitions of a governing egotistical, religion-ridden autocrat like Turkey's whose vengeance will roil the country for years to come, hard on the heels of his government's violent attacks against a minority ethnic population in the country, even while his own country is imperilled by the vicious presence of a terrorist group that government has itself empowered.

We can be grateful that Canada was never an imperialist power, although it had once been a colonial outpost of just such a historical power. We can be aware that there is the brutal presence of a global religious-political force bent on empowering itself through violent conquest which regularly makes its appearance on the world stage with devastating consequences as its psychopathic representatives shout triumphantly Allahu Akbar!, while committing unspeakable atrocities.