From sea to shining sea, a celebration

COAST TO COAST. IT IS A DEFINING ELEMENT OF CANADA. — FR. DE SOUZA

Sin Tofino, B. C. oon upon driving into Pacific Rim National Park there is a roadside marker indicating the 49th parallel, a handy reminder t hat while t hat l atitude serves as a metonym for the entire Canada- U. S. border, for most of us the 49th parallel is entirely in Canada, and we live south of it.

The 49th parallel is only the border for the four western provinces. But even Victoria lies below it, as the 49thruns through Vancouver Island. Indeed, all the capital cities — save for Edmonton, Regina and Winnipeg — lie below 49, even St. John’s, out at sea in the north Atlantic.

The 49th serves as a sort of counterweight to the maple leaf as a national symbol. Just as the 49th parallel has no practical meaning east of the Manitoba- Ontario border, maple trees are not found i n any abundance west of it.

Our national symbols are not really national; the country is simply too big. Even our national anthem is entirely different in English and French, and rather incoherent if sung bilingually.

What remains quintessentially Canadian is that we are a continental nation. In a certain sense, the confederation of 1867 was not complete until the transcontinental railway was built, the first great project of the new Dominion of Canada.

So when unrelated travel plans had me visiting St. John’s, Newfoundland, and Vancouver Island within a few weeks, the pious thought occurred that it would be fitting to visit both Cape Spear — Canada’s easternmost point — and Tofino. This is not Canada’s westernmost point, but Boundary Mountain in the Yukon is rather more than practicality permits. In any case, Tofino’s t ownsfolk have seen fit to mark the end of the TransCanada Highway here, so it has something of a claim.

Coast to coast. It is a defining element of Canada, the sheer vastness of a land mass that extends, extends, extends to the horizon and beyond, finding an end in the only thing more vast than the land itself — the sea.

The national motto — A mari usque ad mare — is biblical, taken from Psalm 72: Et dominabitur a mari usque ad mare, et a flumine usque ad terminos terrae — He shall have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.

There is some evidence in the confederation conferences that the very name of the “dominion” of Canada — as opposed to the “kingdom” favoured by some, including Sir John A. Macdonald — was inspired by Psalm 72. But there were other dominions in the British colonial period too.

It seems t hat George Monro Grant was the key figure in the national motto. A Presbyterian minister most notable for his long principalship of Queen’s University, he crossed Canada in 1872 as the secretary to Sanford Fleming, chief surveyor and engineer of the Canadian Pacific Railway. ( British Columbia had just joined Confederation in 1 87 1 ) . His memoir of the trip was called Ocean to Ocean, and he subsequently preached frequently on Psalm 72, invoking God’s blessing upon the new dominion, and advocating A mari usque ad mare as the national motto. It was adopted in 1921.

Those of limited biblical literacy and poetic imagination have proposed speaking of “sea to sea to sea,” to include the allegedly overlooked Arctic Ocean. The motto does not specify which seas are being referred to, so no interpretation is excluded. In any case, a motto is not a cartographical instrument; nonetheless Psalm 72 fits Canada very well. The north-south reach is expressed well by “the river” — the mighty St. Lawrence — to “the ends of the earth” — a fitting description of the far north. And we pray that God has dominion over it all.

Travelling across the immensity of Canada is a reminder of how relatively little of it belongs under man’s dominion. Leave aside the cities which only dot the map; even agriculture has only touched a portion of the land. As impressive as the railway was, and the TransCanada Highway is, they remain the narrowest of ribbons etched into the landscape.

I will be in Ottawa for Dominion Day. It is possible that I will be less than moved by the self- congratulatory uplift, coupled with faux contrition for historic wrongs, that will mark the day.

It ought to be an occasion of gratitude. So my modest Canada 150 project was to pray Psalm 72, first at Cape Spear and then here on the beaches of Tofino, that indeed the Lord would have dominion from sea to sea, and that across this gracious land, He shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor… ( that) in His days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of peace so long as the moon endureth.”

A blessed sesquicentennial, Canada!