50 years after ’67 lovefest comes ‘sourpuss nation’
The good news on the 150th anniversary of Confederation is that polls show Canadians likely more attached to their country than are the inhabitants of any other western nation. However, the reason is both murky and a flip of the finger at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s characterization of Canada as a post-national society.
We’ve always been a difficult place to understand.
Half a century after our 1967 centennial —“the last good year,” as cultural historian Pierre Berton put it — Canadians appear on the road to becoming Sourpuss Nation, the 14,000-kilogram sesquicentennial rubber duck being towed around Ontario notwithstanding.
A recent exploration by polling firm EKOS Research reports that the importance of many longtime salient symbols of our sense of nationhood is dramatically eroding.
Canadians report that the significance to their national identity of the beaver, the maple leaf, the flag, “O Canada,” hockey — yes, hockey — the Grey Cup, Parliament Hill, cultural diversity, tolerance, official bilingualism, Canada Day, Remembrance Day and the RCMP have all declined.
For the first time since EKOS began asking the question in the 1990s, the number of Canadians who think the country is admitting too many immigrants who are not white has passed the 40-per-cent mark — meaning we’re not only souring on so many traditional national symbols we appear to be becoming more racist.
Indigenous people, except as photo ops, weren’t really on the celebration agenda in 1967. In 2017, it seems clear not a lot of them want to be.
And Quebec’s more than six million francophones have about as much attachment to the country as they do to their neighbour’s cat, says EKOS president Frank Graves. But he adds: “I don’t think that’s necessarily a problem. I think what’s been established is a new healthy détente where Quebecers are able to pursue their own thing and there’s a nice civic nationalism where we agree on things.”
Yet the flip side of the narrative is that, even with Quebecers in the mix, Canadians are attached to their country with powerful glue — most symbolically affixed to freedom (although that’s declining), medicare, national parks, a clean environment and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Few signs of postnational centrifugal disintegration.
As for the sapping interest in other symbols, Frank Graves offers four reasons: Increased pluralism. Confusion left behind by the previous government’s effort to reorder some of our symbols — the emphasis on military history, for example; the de-emphasis on the charter.
A pessimistic sense among ordinary Canadians that progress is ending, inequality is rising and waving the flag won’t help.
Dark clouds over mainly Conservative voters who constitute 25 to 30 per cent of the electorate and are much more economically fearful, allergic to immigration and globalization, mistrustful of elites and nostalgic for white privilege than the rest of their fellow citizens. Sixty per cent tell EKOS they would have voted for Donald Trump as U.S. president compared to 3 per cent of Liberal supporters. We’re increasingly two Canadas (or three or four) with a vanishing middle ground.
It’s not1967 Canada when we all fell — or most of us did — madly in love with ourselves.
The 500 residents of Bowsman, Man., recipients of a new sewage treatment system, joyously burnt their outhouses as a centennial celebration.
Yukon’s Alpine Club members climbed 12 hitherto unscaled mountains, yodelled on their way by then-Secretary of State Judy LaMarsh standing waist-deep in snow.
Expo 67 drew the country and the whole world to Montreal.
St. Paul, Alta., as its primary centennial project, built a landing pad for flying saucers beside the town’s community centre.
Model and actress Pamela Anderson, born at 4:08 a.m. on July 1, in Ladysmith, B.C., was declared Canada’s official centennial baby.
Bobby Gimby led his marching band into our DNA with the all-time, smash, record-breaking, centennial hit “CA-NADA!”
And the Toronto Maple Leafs, for the last time, won the Stanley Cup.
Montreal poet Irving Layton proclaimed in his centennial poem: “Like an old, nervous and eager cow my country is being led up to the bull of history.” That doesn’t capture us in 2017.
Quebec’s more than six million francophones have about as much attachment to the country as they do to their neighbour’s cat
Michael Valpy is a fellow at University of Toronto’s School of Public Policy and Governance and a senior fellow at Massey College.