Oh, Canada

You once stood for something...

This morning the Globe and Mail published my column singing the praises of the National Film Board. Appearing in the Canada Day edition of the Globe I felt pretty proud.

Immediately though, two (I assume) Albertans appeared with comments that strongly opposed what I had to say.

Dear God. How has this country become a place where the CBC is being described as “Pravda”? Where the suggestion that, as Canadians, we might choose to watch a Canadian film, is suddenly so unreasonable?

I’ll ask: how in hell did this country become so ashamed of who we are? When did celebrating our own culture, our own art, our own nationhood become a negative?

While living in France we became accustomed to people who were proud of being French, but also comfortable in that role. They would watch Hollywood movies, but also films produced in France. They read French newspapers instead of relying on Facebook or Twitter for their current affairs.

While they lacked the over-the-top “Rah! Rah!” patriotism of the Americans, they still understood what their nation stood for, and why they were happy to live there.

Now, as we approach Canada Day, I find myself wondering just what this country stands for. Are we really just a place that wants desperately to be American? Where concepts like social programs, the Arts, and healthcare should be the province of the wealthy and fortunate?

It seems hard to understand today, but in 1967 pretty much everyone in Canada joined in celebrating the centennial of our country. There were events from coast to coast, and nearly every town did some kind of special project to mark the occasion.

When I talk to people today I don’t get any sense of that pride of place. I hear struggles to get health care, or housing, or a decently paid job. I hear endless gripes about “that damned Trudeau”, blaming him for literally every single thing that goes wrong in people’s lives.

And because we’re a country that no longer has a strong and viable news media, there’s no practical way for these people to sort fact from fiction.

That’s why the lies of the right-wing politicians in this country so often go unchallenged. My sense today is that people in Canada more often than not no longer actually like where they live, or, more specifically, have been taught to dislike the nation of their birth.

That’s why, today, the goal of so many Canadians isn’t to build a strong and prosperous nation, but to take away anything, no matter how small, that might smack of someone else getting something that you don’t have.

Canada didn’t used to be so petty-minded, so greedy, so hateful. It didn’t used to be a place that people felt ashamed to live in. It didn’t used to be a place where all politics was rooted in providing as little as possible to as few people as possible, and blaming them for their own misfortune while doing it.

We used to be a nation that was building ourselves, building the lifestyles of everyone who lived here, and building a culture that was unique to Canada, and that showed us off to the world as a very special place.

Now, I honestly don’t know. I can’t answer the simple question “What does Canada stand for?”