CELEBRATING OUR VIRTUE SIGNALS.

I was feeling pretty good about our country going into the Canada 150 celebrations, but then I watched a bit of CBC’s coverage, both leading into and on Canada Day itself.

I learned two things, essentially: First, that the country is fundamentally illegitimate. Hence all the statements from the various musicians and emcees about how our celebrations were taking place on traditional Mohawk or Cree or Mi’kmaq territory and how grateful we were for First Nations’ going along with that — even if it’s not clear their going along was either voluntary or even conscious.

And, second, that our main virtue as a country is that, in recent decades at least, we have been so open to so many people from so many other countries coming and joining us — and thus, though this wasn’t emphasized, perpetuating and deepening our illegitimacy by recruiting reinforcements to the original ill-inspired project.

Strangely, the fact of our openness dominated what it is exactly about our society that actually makes people want to come here, namely that they can be free, live in peace, and participate in an economy that, by both world- contemporary and world-historical standards, works astonishingly well.

I don’t know about your family, but we did a little Canada Day entertaining of our own. As I welcomed guests onto our front porch, I didn’t tell them I wanted to thank Bob and Sally Robertson ( names changed for privacy reasons), who owned the porch and the house attached to it before us and who were graciously letting us use it for the purposes we were now putting it to.

I didn’t do that because my wife and I bought the house from the Robertsons fair and square and it’s ours in both law and fact. If it’s being used for entertaining on Canada Day, it’s because we want it that way. If our guests have any people to thank, it’s us (which of course they all did as they left).

Same story with the Canadian land mass: If the curr ent country of Canada ( i ncluding First Nations people, even if many don’t seem to want to come along with the rest of us) got the l and f rom First Nations fair and square, by treaty, by international law, by the law of conquest, whatever, then why are we thanking the original First Nations inhabitants for letting us use it? They are to the land as the Robertsons are to my house: its former owners.

On the other hand, if Canada didn’t get the land fair and square, then sanctimonious mumblings about whose land it “traditionally” was, and how grateful we are that the original owners have acquiesced in it being ceded to the non- traditional uses we’re putting it to, are distasteful.

If the land isn’t properly Canada’s, Canada should either give it back or start paying rent on it, with the exact rent, as in all rental agreements, being agreeable to the landlord, in this case the various First Nations.

If I were a native person ( an act of cross- cultural imagining that lately seems nearly on its way to becoming illegal in Canada) I’m pretty sure my reaction would be: “Either put up or shut up.”

If by contrast Progressive Canada’s position is: “We may not have got the land from you in entirely legal or moral ways, but with all the settlement and development that have since taken place it’s obviously impractical to give it back so we just want to speak these words to let you understand that if we had to do it all over again, we probably would do it differently,” I expect I’d be inclined to say: “Don’t waste your breath. Your implicit apology is mainly virtue-signalling, designed to make you feel better about yourselves, and to show your moral superiority to those among you who have a less subtle view of history.”

One other thing: the Canada 150 celebrations were not actually about “discovery” and colonialism, as so much of the commentary suggested. Celebration of Cartier or Cabot or Champlain would be that. Celebration of Montreal’s founding by de Maisonneuve is that. By contrast, what took place in 1867 was merely the merger of four already discovered and existing colonies, with an invitation to other colonies to follow. Confederation did increase the British North American project’s chance of success, so it wasn’t irrelevant to the balance between settlers and natives. But it was mainly a political arrangement altering relations among European enclaves already well- enough established that their combined population had already outnumbered native inhabitants by 20 or 30 to one.

One more conclusion based on last week’s discussions surrounding Canada 150: If Confederation had to be done over again, I doubt it could be, given how politics works — or, to be exact, doesn’t work — today.

IF CANADA DIDN’T GET IT FAIR AND SQUARE THEN SANCTIMONY ABOUT WHOSE ‘ TRADITIONAL’ LAND IT IS.