Canada Day Is Back, But Time Has Not Stood Still

Jeff Green | Jun 29, 2022

I've probably been to 25 Canada Day breakfasts at my local fire hall. For most of those years, the icons of the day, red and white and the maple leaf, seemed as sweet and benign as the maple syrup we pour into our coffee cups.

In our part of rural Ontario, Canada Day has been a big deal for decades. The combination of national pride, the timing of Canada Day at the beginning of summer, and community groups that came together to create events that families really enjoyed, resulted in Canada Day festivities that are a highlight of the year.

After the close call Quebec referendum in 1995, the federal government invested in a massive branding exercise. Since then the fireworks have improved, thanks to grant money, and the white and red, and maple leaf all over, hats and pins and flags, have been on full display each year.

But something has changed over time. 

By the time Canada Day 2017, the 150th anniversary celebration, came along, recognition that Canada’s success was based on more than hard work and kindness, had become mainstream.

Icons such as the Maple Leaf, and our first prime Minister, John A. Macdonald, had been tarnished.

This has not changed Canada Day in our rural communities. The fun is in the events, the music, the strawberries, the beach and the onset of summer vacation, and the sun, when we are lucky enough to have a sunny Canada Day.

But the recognition about how the political, economic, environmental and social culture that all comes together to make Canada the country that it is, was built on the elimination of a previous culture on these lands, and the continued subjugation of its Indigenous peoples and the descendants, is now a part of our national psyche.

That is what the path towards reconciliation is. We don't stop celebrating, or enjoying what we have, but we do so without the illusion that Canada is anything more than a flawed country that we need to work on together. The flag of Canada has become as much a symbol of our failures, as of our successes, as a nation.

We have been forced to stay at home on Canada Day for two years, and we are finally coming back together to enjoy each other’s company and our short summer, but as we do so, the meaning of the flag that we wave on Canada Day has changed once again.

The Freedom Convoy came to Ottawa this past winter and, among other things, claimed the flag as their own. They hold to the concept that the flag is untarnished, that it represents a view of Canada as free from restrictions, not only the physical restrictions over COVID, but any blemish on the unabashed pride in Canada's economic and cultural standing in the world.

I may be wrong, but my understanding is that, at least some of the groundswell of support for what the Freedom Convoy represents, is a reaction to this idea that we are a flawed country, that we have a past to answer to, and that we need to change in order to get better.

The argument is that we have worked hard, built prosperity and a comfortable life for ourselves, and all of the churning political changes that are part of our contemporary landscape are a threat to that prosperity and that comfort.

The concern I have about this is that this is nostalgia for a past that never existed.  It is also a very real threat to the hard-fought gains, not only of Indigenous peoples, but of people of colour,  the queer community, linguistic minorities, among others, and that it treats our existential battle against climate change as some kind of political trick designed to take our freedoms away.

All of this resentment seems to be captured in the figure of Trudeau and is behind the Fuck Trudeau flags that were flying this past winter.

Just as the figure of John A. Macdonald has become a trigger for many, in the wake of all the revelations about the residential school system that he was central in creating, the figure of our current prime minister is a trigger for the Freedom Convoy supporters.

All of this will be played out in Ottawa this week, and I suspect in federal politics when the Conservative Party chooses a new leader this fall.

It will not be top of mind in our Canada Day festivities this week, however. 

If the weather is good, our first Canada Day in three years will do what we need it to do, mark the beginning of a joyous Canadian summer after a two-year pandemic.

We need the summer each year after our long winters, and we need it even more this year.