In Canada, everyone has a chance to be Irish

I could be wrong [It's happened before! Ed.] but I suppose many Canadians will remember Robert O'Billovich. Nicknamed "Bobby O" or "Obie", or more often just plain "Bob", Mr O'Billovich has been something of a fixture in the Canadian Football League [110-yard field and only three downs. Ed.] since 1963 in the roles of player, coach, general manager, scout, and several front-office positions. As a long-time coach in the CFL, he won 107 regular season games in the CFL, the eighth highest win total by a head coach in the league's history. When last heard from he was scouting for the BC Lions.

Bob O'Billovich is not Irish, nor Irish-Canadian, but American, having been born in Butt MT [Butte, shurely. Ed.] He is not even of Irish ancestry, but something southern Slavic -- Serbian or Croatian or some such. The way I heard the story, the family surname was pinned on his father when he immigrated to the US of A. The agent who met him at Ellis Island said the real name -- "Bilovic" of some such -- wasn't suitable for an American, and put the "O" in front of it to make it sound at least Irish-American. And "O'Billovich" it's been, ever since.

I remembered this story when skimming the mojo wire this morning. There's a story about an autistic boy -- a Muslim immigrant to Canada -- who drowned in a pond somewhere between his school and his home in Saskatchewan. Ahmedsadiq Hussein Elmmi was found in a pond near École Dundonald School in Saskatoon last September 11th and was pronounced dead in hospital. Not the kind of story that makes it into WWW, but wait (as Vince Offer used to say), there's more.

In Canada, any incident in which a "marginalized person" meets an unpleasant end is immediately followed by an enquiry, so that the blame can be pinned on white born-in-Canada Christians. The Saskatoon public school board was duly made to appear before a panel of SJWs to explain why, if they weren't racists, they had failed to provide the child with a personal support worker to prevent him from wandering off. The child was represented by the provincial Children's Advocate (seriously), whose name is... wait for it... Corey O'Soup.

I immediately asked Dr Google what part of the auld sod Mr O'Soup comes from, and was delighted to find that he is a native Canadian. Not "native-born" Canadian, but "native Canadian" as in "First Nations", which is the appellation preferred nowadays by the folks who used to be known as "Indians".

Mr O'Soup was a teacher, senior policy analyst for the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations (FSIN), provincial superintendent for the Ministry of Education, senior manager for the Alberta Ministry of Education, executive director for Education/Post-Secondary Education and Training (FSIN); and is currently the First Nations and Metis Advisor at the Ministry of Education.

He told the Regina Leader-Post that his new role is "to advise, to criticize, to let [the government] know when they're doing good [sic] and when they're not doing good [sic] — particularly in the area of First Nation and Metis education." Sadly, he did not explain how he got his unusual moniker.