I have often thought about what it means to be Canadian, and that thought has been even more pressing over these past few weeks with Trump’s shenanigans south of the border.
I can’t say I have always been proud of the country, but never once have I thought: ‘I’d rather be American.’ It seems very surreal that many seem to be having this conversation all around Canada today, but it’s a clever psychological ploy by Trump as he is likely aware of Canadians’ historic insecurity about our own national identity.
Oddly enough, that insecurity itself is very Canadian. An American never asks what it means to be American. The indoctrination down there is thorough in their schools, and Americans walk around with the confidence of being the world’s great superpower seemingly blessed by providence itself, if all the US sloganeering and self-affirmation is to be believed.
Canadians, on the other hand, have never been blessed by such providence. We have only ever been born into a hard land to endure. Everything we have has been the product of hard work, bitter tears and a gritty determination to move forward. Our forefathers and mothers never had time to think about abstract concepts like manifest destiny. They were too busy trying to survive. Kissing the flag has always come a long way second to putting food on the plate.
And yet we have endured. We have survived. We built a great country out of the rocky bones and shallow soil of the land itself, pouring our own blood into every inch of it, through our own industriousness.
It’s not pretty. It’s not grand, nor imperial, but it's ours. When you sit back on the patio at the end of day, weary to the bones, and look out on the land we live in, and work upon, and call ours, the sun setting all orange and gold behind the mountains, it ain’t too bad. There is grandeur of a different sort in it, and a great peace.
I, for one, wouldn’t trade it for any other place on Earth.
God bless our great nation. The true north, strong and free.
