Canadian Identity

A great deal of hand wringing has gone on about the prospects of democracy in the Middle East, and how the current situation in Iraq is likely to shake out. We have lost a sense of scale, a recognition that there is no way to measure success or failure from the perspective of a month or a year – that such questions are answered through the efforts of decades. Having finished the war the UN would not allow his father to complete, today George Bush is taking on Jimmy Carter’s failure to confront Iran. Seeding concepts of freedom and democracy takes time, and often fails to stick on the first try – but ultimately, it is the only hope for long term stability in the region. If this war fails to achieve it, another will follow.
We also make the mistake of assuming that violent struggle is an impediment to the process of stabilization and democracy. Very few countries emerge as stable democracies without bloody, gut-wrenching political upheaval, or a struggle for their survival from threats without – it has a maturing effect on nations, transforming populations into peoples.
And over the past year or so, I’ve come to the conclusion that this is at the core of Canada’s problem in achieving a “national identity”.
We’ve yet to fight for our country in a life or death struggle. The US has been through two cataclysmic wars at home – the American Revolution and the Civil War – American patriotism springs from this history. Pearl Harbor and 911 occurred on American soil. The British Empire grew out of centuries of armed conflict and invasion. And while an empire no more, there is no national debate about British identity – “Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves!”
A few days ago the anniversary of Vimy was noted – now nearly 90 years in the past, and the closest Canadians have come to a sense of common nation, common achievment – and yet, even that was from behind the safe distance of the Atlantic. Our troops fought for freedom and against the Axis in WWII – but not here. Canadian schoolchildren were not sent to the country to protect them from German bombs. Our parents suffered no mornings picking through rubble for loved ones. Today, we pride ourselves on “peacekeeping” – that is, staying out of the way until the hard fighting is done.
It’s sadly revealing – and to our discredit – that when asked, most Canadians cite a government entitlement (public health care) as the defining feature of Canadian identity. Most of the rest list differences between ourselves and “the Americans”, not understanding that identity is not something that one receives from “the government” or that exists “relative to”.
Today, unwilling to face fully the threat of Islamism – or to acknowledge and honour that those who do are spilling their blood to secure our way of life as much as theirs – I do wonder if this unusual gap in our history has been our undoing. Having skipped over the part where we expelled the barbarians, with no fundamental shared Canadian experience to cement us as a nation, I suspect our passivity is now terminal, and the beginning of an inevitable slide towards de-Confederation.
But no fear – it will be a negotiated settlement.