Wishing Everyone a Safe and HAPPY CANADA DAY!
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The Voice of North Grenville
Vol. 5, No.26
June 28, 2017
Celebrate Canada 150! Kemptville Eye Exam Clinic
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Every country needs, at some point in its history, to revisit traditional ideas, to reconsider the national myths and sense of identity, to get a clear and true perspective on where it has come from, where it is today, and where it wants to go in the future. Usually, these re-evaluations take place at times of national celebration, or national crisis. Canada, 150 years later, is a perfect opportunity for a national process of soul-searching. On this Canada Day in 2017, there are winds of change blowing through the country that can be disturbing, encouraging and challenging, all at once. They concern
some of the aspects of Canadian life that have been valued, or ignored, or even which remain constants in our collective story but now need to be reconsidered. As a country, Canada has always had certain tensions that require careful handling. For example, I will use the term “country”, rather than “nation”as one might with other places, because in Canada, “nation” can have deep-rooted associations leading to division and not unity. The word means very different things in our two official languages. The Dominion of Canada was founded, in part, to try and find a solution to the two nations issue, one which was historical in origin and had led to political deadlock and conflict before 1867.
Originally considered as a solution for the Canadas alone (today’s Ontario and Quebec), Confederation was enlarged to include Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, while Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island voted to stay out. But the foundational issue of French and English has never gone away completely and remains a fundamental fact of Canadian life. Bilingualism still stirs up strong feelings across the country, as do Quebec’s language laws. What about the peoples who were here before both French and English colonisers? They are still here, living under an Act of Parliament such as no other ethnic group endures, still relegated to second-class citizenship, still fighting to retain their
cultural and social identities in the face of attacks from both Francophone and Anglophone governments. We have institutional racism in Canada. What will we do about it to deserve 150 years of celebration? The Canadian Government has had to apologise to Ukrainians, Chinese, Japanese, as well as indigenous peoples in previous years for the way in which their ancestors had been treated. But that fear of foreigners endures to this day. No-one doubts the reality of extremist terrorism and its potential. But it is not new. In 1865, a foreign ethnic group, identified by their religion, were posing a real threat to British North America. They continued on page 2
Happy Canada Day
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