We’ve never fought for our existence
There’s a lot more to celebrate on Canada’s 150th birthday than gargantuan rubber ducks. That’s why the National Post asked some of Canada’s most interesting personalities and writers to tell us what they would rather celebrate about Canada on the sesquicentennial — that is, if the government actually gave a duck what they thought.
The way Canada’s 150th- birthday celebration is shaping up, it will be a lot like the country’s first: low- key. And for all the faded nostalgia about the glorious national awakening during the centennial, this is not really a bad thing.
Canadians are lucky that our national birthday celebrates little; that we need not f ete a bloody fight for independence or emancipation. As Donald Creighton describes it in the closing pages of The Young Politician, Sir John A. was a bit put out by the day’s relative lack of pomp and the inability of Viscount Monck, the Governor General, to rise to the occasion.
Monck showed up in Ottawa a bit late and in regular clothes, making his way to Rideau Hall basically unrecognized by the people waiting about for t he festivities to begin. The official part of the first Dominion Day was largely a bureaucratic affair.
Documents were signed, a few honours bestowed, all part of a last-minute scramble to get the paperwork in order for the governance of a new federation. But the people didn’t much care. Cities and towns across the country watched early morning parades from various local regiments and garrisons, which gave a bit of Imperial romance to the day.
But then the soldiers retired and the people went off for sailing and sports, games and picnics.
As darkness fell, the sky was lit with roman candles and rockets. And that’s pretty much the way it’s been with our Canada Day celebrations ever since, with July 1, 1867 serving as the start of a proud tradition of along summer weekend spent lounging about with family and friends.
This tradition stands in sharp contrast to the more explicitly martial celebrations common to other countries, where the national day marks a glorious moment of emancipation or independence won through blood and sacrifice. That’s not to say that Canadians haven’t died fighting for peace and freedom.
Our national valour has been up held on foreign shores and distant battlefields from Bosch bult to Vimy, from Sicily to Kandahar. Our commitment to col- lective security throughout the Cold War was unwavering, and whenever NATO has called we’ve answered. Our men and women under arms are well-trained and dedicated, and rank amongst the world’s best. But Canada is also a country that’s been lucky enough not to have had to fight, militarily, for its existence. We’ve had no massive national trauma or calamity, no foreign occupation and no civil war.
We can afford to forego the draft, we can have a gong- show of a procurement system for our army, we can allow our navy to rust away, and we can treat our air force as a political bargaining chip in defence of favoured domestic industry.
Nothing much hangs on getting it right or wrong. Setting aside whatever 1812 was about, in the 150 years since Confederation, our trajectory has been a quiet search for identity, not a desperate struggle for survival. When we’ve gone to war, it’s been largely as a matter of choice or obligation.
This is almost unqualifiedly good news. Only a fool or romantic would wish it were otherwise. The downside, though, is that it has left us relatively weak and uncertain about ourselves. It isn’t just because of the ongoing question of Quebec’s place in Confederation.
That is just one of the many deep fractures in our psyche that the sesquicentennial has exposed. The attempt to create a common narrative around Canada 150 has had the perverse effect of turning the whole affair into an airing of grievances a mari usque ad mare. We’ve been reminded that Confederation was a bad deal for the Maritimes. Quebec’s premier has reiterated the province’s historic five conditions for signing the constitution. Alberta separatism is on the rise again.
And we can’ t even agree on t he words to our national anthem, let alone sing it in unison. We are peaceful and prosperous, and it hasn’t come at any great sacrifice. But the cost of being a peaceable kingdom is that we are not united.
If the celebrations over Canada 150 seem halfhearted, it’ s because we know — deep down — that the price we’ve paid for our country isn’ t that steep.