Canada Day: no mo’ ho hum

In this era of globalization, it’s worth celebrating our national birthday

by Andrea Reimer

This Canada Day I got more than I bargained for when I decided to visit two American friends on the Sunshine Coast. Somewhere between the fridge and the BBQ I found myself looking for a nation.

My original plan to visit these particular friends was not born out of any missionary zeal about sharing our national holiday with newly arrived Americans. Like many Canadians, I was just simply overjoyed to see three days off in a row in my daytimer, so much so that I broke one of my own cardinal rules and decided to travel with the herd on the long weekend. I should have known it was a bad omen when the Queen of Oak Bay plowed into the dock at Sewell’s Marina in Horseshoe Bay the day before. But by Friday morning the catamaran carnage seemed to be cleared so my daughter and I headed off.

The second bad omen was when we missed the ferry by five minutes and had to wait three hours for the next one, thanks to the combination of the previous day’s accident and a new summer schedule. Now before you get your sanctimonious Canadian knickers in a knot, we did not drive to the ferry, which only a fool or a desperate person would do on a long weekend. Instead we took the bus. but for reasons known only to West Vancouver Transit and the recently privatized BC Ferries, the two no longer meet up. Well, to be more accurate, the two meet up just fine but you now have to buy a ticket ten minutes before sailing, even if you’re walking on. So I simmered at the ticket booth while watching the ferry load from a distance for nine minutes.

The third bad omen was when we got there to find not only our friends, but red and white flowers, red and white napkins, red and white wine, the makings of a bonfire in the yard and twelve more friends on the way. With panic setting in (I was wearing blue and white, my daughter red and orange) I realized, my god, we were actually going to celebrate Canada Day.

It was only the second time in my life I’ve had occasion to accidentally celebrate Canada Day. The first time was when my American husband received his landed immigrant status on July 1, 1999. Friends of ours thought it was cute that he would start paying taxes on our national holiday so they held a big fete in his honour, complete with “I Am Canadian” flags, courtesy of Molson breweries. The real celebration for our family that year was that he was finally able to work after two and a half years of trying to raise a child on my bare bones income, so I was understandably less focused on the significance of the day itself.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m as patriotic as the next Canadian. And that’s exactly the point. Sure we observe Canada Day, but generally we observe it as the day off that falls between the May long weekend and the August long weekend. There seem to be more of us crammed into WalMarts, Home Depots and Ikeas buying patio furniture and bedding plants than there are at Canada Day celebrations. If we manage to drop by one at all, it’s more because there might be something there to entertain our kids and free flags to boot.

When I was trying to explain this to my bewildered American friends in the midst of us Canadians making polite comments on the red and whiteness of the table, they seemed relieved to know that it wasn’t that they hadn’t been invited to neighbour’s celebrations the previous year: there just weren’t any to go to.

I, on the other hand, was the opposite of relieved. Certainly Canadians have the capacity to celebrate. From Toronto to Vancouver we often get it on for our local hockey team, for example, and just a couple of years ago several million of us spontaneously piled into the streets at the drop of a hat to celebrate Canada’s Olympic gold medal hockey victory.

Several calls to friends, casually inquiring about their whereabouts on Canada Day turned up a blank though. A few strolls on the beach, a couple house cleanings and much excitement about the day off but no definitive celebratory activities. What they did all have in common was that they all gave a passing thought to that most favourite of Canadian pastimes, being thankful that at least they were not Americans and/or living in America.

Personally I have a hard time believing that our national identity is really that wrapped up in who we are not but then I’m hard pressed to tell you who we are.

Just because we are a nation doesn’t mean that Canada itself was ever founded. Most countries in the modern era were forged out of bold new ideas—and some bloodshed—but somehow Canada bucked the trend. While America lost many lives to declare a separate nation built on the principles of the establishment of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, we were busy negotiating what essentially amounts to a free trade agreement with our weary colonial fathers to establish our dominion over Fish, Farms and Forests. As a result, Canada’s birthday seems more about evolution than revolution.

Creating a federation of regional trading blocs was all very civilized and explains some of our kinship with Western European countries that have similar stories to tell. Yet one wonders how long a 138-year-old nation can hold together with a few free trade agreements under its belt, a whole lot of institutions but very few unifying ideas. Increasingly it is leaving us adrift in a globalized world that has a much clearer idea where it’s going than Canada does. And what do we really have to lose by trying to find a consensus? At the very least we could have a better celebration than the Americans. and that’s something we can already all agree on.

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