Canada Day - And Our National Stories

Much to celebrate

Today is “Canada Day.” Newer nations, forged from old nations, have compelling reasons to set aside a day of celebration for their founding. Hence, in another 3 days, our American cousins for example, will have their own “July the 4^th” day.

The “old” nations may not have “national days,” but they too have multiple historical reasons for joy, celebration and acknowledgement of great national movements, milestones and achievements.

But it will not do for the predatory “elite” to allow us, the people, to celebrate. Therefore, the overarching theme of nationhood that has been fostered and carefully indoctrinated into susceptible young minds in the last few decades is that of guilt. Guilt for what happened. Guilt for what did not happen but ought to have happened. Guilt for promises made - and broken. Guilt for displacement, replacement, advantage, disadvantage, land use, water use - and even guilt for possessing less of a particular skin pigment!

We the people have tried to do intensely and relentlessly exactly what the predatory elite have wanted us to do. By continuously trying to deny that terrible things were done to indigenous or minority populations and devoting whole “think tanks” and news outlets to the study of why certain allegations made by the latter are not true, our whole narrative of nationhood has been consumed by a back and forth of blame, counter-blame and justification; thus proving the old adage, “whatever gets your attention, gets you.” And thus also, serving exactly the purposes of our bureaucracy, our governments and their globalists masters.

In Canada, for example, it cannot be denied that the residential school system was a coordinated, government assault on the lives, culture and security of indigenous children and families. The residential schools may have been run by the churches, but it was the government of Canada’s first Prime Minister, John A Macdonald that first authorized the forcible relocation of indigenous children away from their families and to residential schools, often hundreds of miles away. And it was successive Canadian governments that financed and ran the schools.

The Canadian physician, Peter Bryce (1853-1952), chief medical officer of the Department of Indian Affairs at the time, confirmed with actual inspection of the residential schools and by irrefutable statistics, that the health and mortality rate of the indigenous children in these schools were appalling and disturbing. His “Report on the Indian Schools of Manitoba and the Northwest Territories” showed that between 25% and 69% of students in the residential schools were dead either during their school years or soon after, most of them from Tuberculosis. The Bryce report pointed out the terrible sanitation, poor ventilation and lack of heating in the schools as the cause of the childrens’ illnesses and deaths. He blamed the federal government (not the Churches).

All nations have imperfect, flawed histories. There are also national leaders who with the passage of time and after historical review, fall from their pedestal of unimpeachable character and almost saintly veneration. We must not seek to defend the inexcusable. It is a losing battle and one that is designed to keep us locked up in prison walls of recrimination and vitriol - on both sides.

Instead, whilst freely acknowledging the mistakes and atrocities of the past, we should also joyfully celebrate our national achievements - there is so much to celebrate!

Most Canadians have no idea of how our coast to coast railway was built in the nineteenth century - over much harsher terrain and with less than a tenth of the population of the Americans. It is a magnificent achievement, that should be repeatedly reinforced into our national consciousness. How did a remote wilderness get transformed over less than a century into a modern, industrial economy? How did the people of a poorly populated, vast and isolated hinterland discover insulin, the shopping mall, the zipper, the egg carton, ice hockey, basketball - ?  That and much more, is also the story of Canada.

Our indigenous brothers and sisters have their own, great celebratory story. A story of mastering the elements and the unforgiving wilderness over thousands of years; a story of living in harmony with the environment and with the natural world; a story of ingenious methods of transport with kayak, canoe and snowshoe; a story of very early, participatory democracy; and a story of great generosity to Canada’s first travellers from the West, including Jacques Cartier and Anthony Henday. This and much more too, is the the story of Canada.

In the “old” countries, there is no point in defending colonialism - and its mercantile exploitation, cruel impoverishment and widespread, murderous abuse of native populations.

But does that mean that Britain cannot celebrate the King James Version of the Bible; or Shakespeare; or William Wilberforce and the abolition of slavery?  Or the invention of antisepsis, the industrial revolution, calculus, the steam engine and the railway? And a hundred other things?

The Germans (and people from other countries) in turn, must never seek to deny or diminish the terrors of the holocaust - and the systematic murder of Slavs, Jews, Gypsies, the disabled and homosexual people.

But Germany is also the land of Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Bach; of the great philosophers; of Goethe and Schiller; of great scientific and medical advances. A story no doubt, of a great civilization with so much to celebrate.

Acknowledgement of past wrongs and a genuine repentance always precede forgiveness. But if our individual and national journeys stop at this stage and become mired in a pointless examination and reexamination of the atrocities of the past, we will lose our sense of nationhood and its inherent individual and collective value. This is already happening. This is also exactly what the globalists desire.

We must move past the dead shackles of historical wrongs and resolve never by God’s Grace, to repeat the wrongs.

But we must equally resolve to celebrate wildly and with gusto the great achievements of our national histories and narratives.

I wish my fellow Canadians a most joyous, a most blessed, a most happy Canada Day!