What does Canada Day mean in 2023?
That is a loaded question from the start, but my query is simply a follow up after watching the transmogrification of our national birthday, flag, symbols, and history from a cause for celebration to denigration in less than five years by those who claim to lead us. The irony ought not to be lost on anyone that our “Canada Day” was an invention of the Laurentian elite: why are they now so dead set on canceling their own creation?
The short answer is that those who inhabit that humid, hellish corridor along the St. Lawrence have lost control of the narrative and trappings. That should have been impossible given all of post-1965 Canada was fabricated by Pearson and Trudeau Sr., from a Maple Leaf with Liberal colors to a Charter of cosmopolitan left civil libertarianism. But then Trudeau Jr. stated Canada was a “post-national state,” tossing our so-called outdated symbols into the dustbin of history.
But that’s the problem with rubbish piles. You never know who might pick through them or even who might not have gotten the memo that items thereof have been designated as evil, obsolete trash. It turns out that a large slice of the Canadian demographic pie - working class old stock, grateful recent arrivals, and non-captured Indigenous and Metis folks - still happen to believe our continental dominion is an incredible country to call home and worthy of praise.
In fact, many of these people, and thousands more who cheered-on from afar, believed in the Pearsonian myth of Canada so much that they went all the way to Ottawa in February 2022. Indeed, a few rude individuals accompanied them, a fact of life at every political gathering including those run by our elite, but the distinguishing factor of the Freedom Convoy was the universal proliferation of the Maple Leaf. Our leaders responded by declaring it a hate symbol.
To be clear, this had been going on for months by then, as the church burnings of 2021 can attest, where the question of unmarked graves at former residential school sites had then resulted in the lowering of the Canadian flag for weeks. Our most well-known symbol at home and abroad had already been demoted to the status of an ideological punching bag long before the “truckists” arrived in Ottawa with their bouncy castles, tailgate BBQs, and loud horns.
So what’s the point? Well, the data doesn’t lie and one does not need to be a genius to interpret it. On the one hand, there exists a gentrified Laurentian elite determined to keep a total monopoly on our national narrative and symbolism, defining and interpreting what is good from bad, noble from savage for everyone at all times and places, world without end. On the other hand, people are trying to enjoy their country and heritage in relative peace on long weekends.
This divide can only grow as divergent narratives continue to speak to siloed populations. Our ruling class is still consuming the story told by our state broadcaster and other large media conglomerates, while the patriotic underclass gets its news from local radio or alternative media. While one side decries the sins of our forebears and the virtue of obliterating their tokens, the other will become evermore incensed as their very living memories are declared invalid and hateful.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
In fact, if you’ve read this far and wonder what on earth I am talking about, don’t worry, you’re still inoculated from what has gone on and what is going on. I am glad you exist and your innocence is intact. For the rest of us who cannot go back to less furious times or forget what has occurred, moments of celebration and taking a load off are key to staying sane and civil. Indeed, leisure is the great promise of a country as peaceful as ours.
So consider this a call to arm-chairs rather than action. After a tumultuous few years, it is right and just, our duty and our salvation to always and everywhere celebrate our nation on the first day of July. Perhaps that will be enough to convince our adversaries to give Canada another chance.
Nathan Giede is a Prince George writer
