Celebrate Canada Day? Not This Year
Canada is a nation that committed genocide against the Indigenous peoples that lived here first. That's not something I want to celebrate.
I wrote this a couple of weeks ago with the intention of submitting it to the Record as an op-ed. I never got around to making the submission, so I thought I’d just post it here, as is. It’s a personal reflection of The-Holiday-Formerly-Known-As-Canada-Day. It has not been updated to reflect the new numbers of indigenous children rediscovered in Saskatchewan and British Columbia
Canada Day is today. I've never been a patriot, but I've always had a little bit of pride in being Canadian. One of my most cherished memories was spending Canada Day with my sister on Parliament Hill in 2006, the late-night fireworks blazing in red and white over the Ottawa River. I also loved standing on French soil, honouring the men who sacrificed their lives at Vimy Ridge; the sound Vancouver made when Canada won the Olympic Gold hockey game in 2010 will forever ring in my ears.
But just a few days ago, a young man intentionally drove his truck into a family that was out for an evening walk, simply because they were Muslim. Now a 6-year-old boy is without his grandparent, parents, and sister, all of them mercilessly run down in the street.
A few weeks ago, we learned something we should have already known, because we were already told about it in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report - the bodies of 215 young Indigenous children, murdered by the Church, were found on the grounds of Canada's version of a concentration camp for Indigenous children, The Kamloops Residential School. At the Vatican, the Pope refuses to apologize for the sins of his priests and nuns, saying only that he is 'pained;' at home Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government has declined to drop a compensation suit against the families of residential school survivors.
In British Columbia, a supposedly progressive NDP government is allowing the logging of some of Canada's only remaining old growth forest, forest that was there long before the white man set foot on this continent. After all, it is the white man that has destroyed it, tore it up, and desecrated it. It is the white man that continues to clear cut to this day.
In Toronto, city council voted down a proposal that would give homeless individuals living at Tent City a place on the city council committee tasked with finding a solution to the problem of homelessness. Nothing says, "We're serious about homelessness!" like upper-middle-class bureaucrats, who live comfortably in Rosedale, sitting, bored, around a boardroom table: "Is this meeting over yet? I have a nice Cab-Sauvignon at home waiting for me!" We know that rough sleepers can be, well, rough, but do they really have to deny a voice around the table to the very folks who need the support?
Do you remember being taught that in 1939 Canada directly contributed to the deaths of hundreds of Jews in the concentration camps of Germany by turning away a boatload of Jewish refugees? Despondent, they gave up and went back to Europe, where the UK, France, Belgium and the Netherlands took them in, the final three of which were promptly invaded by Hitler. It is estimated that nearly 30% of the passengers on the MS. St. Louis perished in the death camps.
I could go on. Canada used to be a place of pride for so many. But it was only a place of pride because we were only allowed to see a white-washed sheet covering up a bloody past. As a child I remember thinking that Canada's history was boring, that the Americans had a much more exciting past, with their wars and rebellions. But the truth us that whether exciting or boring, Canada's history is no less littered with the bodies of brown and black people than our neighbours to the south. Canada has no moral superiority. We cannot claim to be a nation of 'Peace, Order and Good Government,' not when Peace, Order and Good Government has been used expansively and extensively by the men in power – it’s always been men - to suppress those they opposed. All that was required was an accusation of disturbing the peace, and away they went. We have only to look to the martyr of the Métis Nation, Louis Riel for proof.
Is Canada worthy of celebration this Canada Day? These days I'm not so sure that it is. I know that for me, today will be a day like any other. My wife will be off work, so we'll do chores around the house, watch some TV, have dinner. But celebrate Canada Day this year? I think I'll pass.