HOT SUMMER DAZE
Thursday, July 1, 2021
Canada Day is unchanged – a holiday of heat, hotdogs, ice cream and fireworks – or not.
Ours is a country of heatwaves and cold-snaps; we overheat or freeze our butts – and between times, we watch the pendulum swing far and wide to extremes. Most things of significance stay on the front page for a few days and then go inside, below the fold, and the stories fade from view. This year, particularly June, the consciousness-raising has been significant and, in my view, largely positive in terms of drawing attention to correcting our recorded history and adjusting whom we revere (i.e., naming buildings, streets, schools) historical figures.
I read some articles online that were largely constructive, but what proved more interesting were the comments, both pro and con. Telling too, news stories of Catholic churches being burned. Amazing coincidences – and I’m not going for humour here, but those churches were more combustible than others – perhaps the current heatwave involves more than the weather.
Most media coverage lately has addressed atrocities and correcting the view of history, which I support, but surely thinking Canadians must realize it’s much more than that. Equality doesn’t exist, and all the beautiful platitudes and government promises to get safe water on reserves is a pathetic historical apology – or maybe it’s an apology for a pathetic history. Either way you slice it, it’s not enough, it never has been enough, and now the political promises are limp attempts at reparations.
Let’s look at history. 450-500 years ago, English and French came here – each came to ‘claim this place for their country,’ they came to explore and exploit. They did, they fought it out, and while the English won the battle on the Plains of (or Heights of) Abraham (Abraham Martin was the landowner.)
Indigenous Canadians might reasonably argue that they were the landowners because an entire continent has been taken from them by force – hardly fair when they had been so welcoming of newcomers and had no concept of land ownership, title, or European laws.
My point is, while we can’t roll back 500 years of history, we should not ignore or dismiss what happened – and we need to, not as a solution to a multitude of problems, but as a first step toward understanding this is much more than a reconciliation report or revelations about residential schools. Yes, none of us were alive or participants then, but we are here now – and if we aren’t going to take hold of these issues in partnership with our fellow citizens, the descendants of our original citizens, then history will reflect that we were lazy and didn’t walk our talk.
Canada, a magnificent country – and every time we open the door to more immigrants to grow our economy and help us exploit our abundance of resources, land, and opportunity, we need to have all Canadians at the table as equals in fairness and with kindness.
Until that happens, we should not be surprised by what the news brings us or that people who are rightfully impatient and who have every right to assign blame and responsibility sometimes take matters into their own hands.
This place called Canada is a fantastic country – but it could be so much more fantastic than it has been. It strikes me as odd that our government is trying so hard to beat a virus, to beat back climate change but yet they cannot hear the beating of an ancient drum …
Oh, Canada, indeed.