The east window of the Peace Tower quoting Psalm 72:8 He shall have dominion also from sea to sea

As I’m sure you’ve heard (assuming you are reading this within earshot of 2024), that there are rumblings from the American republic about expansion. Not content with its far-flung holdings and its near continental “lower 48”, there’s a reaching for Greenland, the Panama Canal, and most importantly for your author, Canada.

It’s been a long time since Canada worried about formal annexation from America, the last real planning around it was Defense Scheme N.01, meaning it’s been nearly a century since anyone really thought about it in any formal sense.

Thinking is certainly what this latest event triggers for me, but really what doesn’t trigger that for me? I spill my thoughts here to prevent my overly large head from being too chaotic. That aside, I’ve been wrestling with my relationship to my home and native land for many years. It had never sat well with me being Canadian from as early as I can recall. I even remember when I realized I was Canadian, having the strange realization that all the TV shows and movies were not made where I was from, but from somewhere else was very disorienting. I always passed a rather large Canadian flag when we drove anywhere in my hometown, and sometime before I reached 10 it hit me that I never saw that flag in any of those stories on the screen. From there the wrestling really began in earnest.

To compound the problem, I’m inclined towards history in a typically male fashion, and Canada doesn’t have a lot of it, or at least not a lot of it that was terribly interesting to a boy who could just as easily read on the British Empire and Pax Britannica or the ascent of the American Republic. Canada just didn’t have much to compare with either of those narratives. What story was there to tug at the heart of a boy who wanted to read of war and empire? Even the story we had could easily enough be subsumed into the greater story of the British Empire, and frankly most Canadians for the majority of our history wanted it told that way, which has become rather awkward for some, as Canada became uncoupled from the Mother Country and started the transition into “Brand Canada”.

But what is “Brand Canada”? Good question, it is that Canada is a domesticated, neutered, and cuddly place where no one has any views on anything in particular, especially no wrongthink, perish the thought. No one lives here, nor ever has lived here, and no one really should want to live here. People only reside in Canada in the same way that you reside in a hotel for as long as it suits your purposes, then you check out when it no longer has any utility for you. This is obviously distinct from living in a place where one builds a patriotic love of home. Perfect for a world of the deracinated, at least we can be world leaders in something.

The idea of “Brand Canada” is wrapped up in the post Imperial Canadian identity crisis. Since American independence, English Canada's raison d'être was to be a middle finger to the revolutionaries and maintain a thoroughly British presence in North America, though we did adopt coffee instead of tea, so make of that what you will. Canada has been distinctly adrift since we threw our lot in with the Americans while at the same time trying as hard as possible to not become American. Of course, French Canada has a wholly different conception of its own purpose, and this distinct group, really the historical tether of Canada to any pretense of history, was very much out of my reach due to my abysmal command of French (which has marginally improved with extreme effort).

And now, irony of ironies, it’s no longer the Quebecois and their struggle to survive against a tide of English that seems to threaten Confederation as much as the very English-speaking West of Canada, where Cantonese is more likely to be spoken than the second official language, which has a constant low-level rumbling about exiting. For why would they stay beyond crude economic reasons? What visceral ties of sentiment bind Western Canada to its East? Increasingly little it seems. One gets the sense that it feels like a marriage where one spouse isn’t pleased with the current arrangements, while the other sees no reason to change things because things seem to work for them, and when the couple goes to marriage counseling the counselor focuses on how much easier their joint tax filing is, or how messy the housing market is currently so it’s best to stay put together. Now, dear reader, does this sound like a fantastic line of advice to save such a marriage?

So, what’s the digression about? It’s about the absolute hollowness that characterizes the subsuming of Canada into “Brand Canada”. Where the former had history, the latter has a focus group. Where the former had symbols, the latter has a logo. Where the former has particularity, the latter has homogenization. And where the former had an identity, the later has a brand. Imagine having the gall and naivety to consider completely jettisoning a country’s history and replacing it with drinking a Double Double from Tim Horton’s, liking hockey, and maybe enjoying a weekend at the cottage.

Home and native land

My venom on this subject is one which I’ve been trying hard in the last year or so to dilute and mellow on with great effort. For it has occurred to me more and more that to be at deep odds with where you live is largely destructive and disordered. It is in the same vein as those who love “humanity” but despise the real people who live around them. The direction of love at an abstract removed from your incarnate existence is one that brings of it nothing but strange obsession and zero tangible benefit either to the soul or the world. It does this while also giving the feeling of being beneficent yet having done absolutely nothing of any palpable value.

It's also in part that I do not want to deliver to my sons a dislike of home. Of all the things my own father and mother handed to me, a love of their new home was one of the most precious. They wanted me to see it from coast to coast, and so for many years we travelled to see a different Canadian province each year, until we had seen them all, though I’ve yet to see the three territories, something I hope to remedy. Those travels gave me a unique perspective on this continental sized dominion, the places on the map had memories attached to them. From the mountains of the West to the rugged Atlantic coast, that is what I see when I look at a map of Canada, I see real places that I have been. And so, in my mind, Canada isn’t just arbitrary lines on a map, but is instead Quebec City where my wife and I like to vacation, Cape Breton where we saw why the province is called “New Scotland”, Lake Louise where we made snow angels in the mountains, St. John’s where I felt at peace, Drumheller where I made memories of dinosaurs and Ottawa where I’ve made a life. It is all these real places I’ve set foot and the memories of them and their peoples.

This incarnational view of Canada is what I have increasingly become hitched to. Where previously I had searched, as many still do, for a Canadian Creed to look to. This is only natural, the American’s most definitely have a creed and are often enough called a “creedal” nation, E Pluribus Unam and whatnot. And Canada is similar enough, where it was once said there were three nations in one country, English, French, and Native, now there are many who call Canada home. Thusly, there is an impetus to find something to bind her together against the natural tendency of disparate groups to pull apart. The phrase from the British North America Act “peace, order, and good government” has often been tried, and can appeal at one level, but let us not delude ourselves to think this stirs the blood. Another attempt is trying to make Canada the most progressive country. But this of course presents the problem of presentism, where the past is always deficient, and so is largely demonized for not being up to date on the latest progress. One can see the self-defeating nature of this, since countries are chiefly held together by history and sentiment, destroying an attachment to that is probably the best way to ensure a countries dissolution, meaning the initial point of the enterprise is defeated.

It's not difficult to observe the struggle to maintain a country with multiple nations, examples abound all over the world. The ones which successfully maintain themselves usually have some overriding narrative linking back to the historical exploits of the shared polity. Think of the Scottish Referendum where there was heavy emphasis placed on the triumphs of Britain as a whole to try an ameliorate the Scottish feeling of being a colony of England. That referendum was won with a clear, though small, majority. On the other end is the Spanish experience where no option of referendum was given and a long terror campaign by Basque separatists was waged against Madrid. To compound Spain’s integrity issues, the Catalans also have made loud rumblings and various attempts at sovereignty, all strongly rejected and put down by the central Spanish state. With Spain it was the clear belief of those in the central government of the rightness of maintaining Spanish integrity which allowed them to have the backbone to continually fight for the oneness of Spain. The feeling of shared history and sentiment is integral to that project. It is one of the reasons that those elements in Spanish politics which seek to denigrate that countries past are an existential threat to the territorial integrity of Spain as we know it today, since the undermining of sentiment will produce disastrous effects for that unity.

Canada has gone back and forth on narrative building in this regard, and will probably continue to pendulum swing between attempts at national deconstruction to ham-fisted attempts to play up the war of 1812. The Quebecois have a much easier time of this than the rest of Canada, being able to trace back their nationality to the original les habitants and the uniqueness of trying to maintain their particularity after the loss of Quebec to Britain at the conclusion of the Seven Years War. In that I envy them, because Canada as a larger country would benefit from having a clear, simple, and resonant national narrative to rely upon. Yet, providence has deemed that not to be at Canada’s disposal, and so other avenues must be sought.

Neighbours

It’s a strange relationship that Canada has with America. As mentioned earlier, Canada had for almost a century the mission of being the loyalist outpost of those who fled the American Revolution. That this most northern outpost of Britannia’s Empire would be a beacon of truly British civilization in opposition to America’s model. And to that Canada has done fairly well. At the time of the revolution the American colonies had 2.5 million people and Canada’s population? A mere 100,000. Meaning America had 25 times Canada’s population. Fast forward to today, America has an astounding population of about 340 million and Canada has about 41.5 million, closing the gap to only 8 times as many inhabitants. It is to Canada’s credit that it has been able to attract so many with the dream of living in one of the harsher climates on earth and creating a first world standard of living here.

Yet, this success has seemed to be rather lackluster when compared to the amazing success of the United States and its ascent into being the most powerful country on the map. Being next door to such a neighbour naturally engenders an understandable inferiority complex. But Canada originally had its own answer to that, we were part of the empire on which the sun never set, right up until it ceased to exist. Since then, Canada has had to figure out a way to navigate true independence. But the exigencies of the Cold War, and basic geography, required that Canada have a close relationship with the new awakened power of the United States. As a result of this intimate partnership, we became more like them, while stubbornly resisting Americanization. This is the unfortunate tightrope that Canada has walked for decades.

I think that this has been part of the general derangement in Canadian identity formation following the dissolution of the British Empire. If the Americans did something one way, Canada felt obliged to do it the opposite way, just to ensure that there was a difference between our two very similar countries, that there was something to point to differentiate us and ensure that we didn’t become Americans.

This partnership has left lasting changes upon Canada, such as Canada having a strange mix of Westminster government with a Supreme Court of Canada added on, creating an odd warping of Canadian law from its roots. Further, and even more concerning, is the Canadian imbibing of American cultural issues and the associated neuroses of its ruling classes, despite our very different fault lines, histories, and demographics. Only now with the chaos of the 2010s and early 2020s in the rear view do I think Canada has really started to understand that this has happened at all.

But most of all, the topmost important import is the idea, mentioned earlier, of the need to have a Canadian Creed and a Canadian Dream. Many countries that are American allies in the post-world war two era have similar difficulties with this as American influence seeped into their own politics and ways of thinking. The countries of the old world suffer perhaps even more than Canada when trying to deform themselves to try and become “Creedal”, since those countries were in no way conceived in that way. Poland wasn’t founded on a Polish Creed, Portugal wasn’t founded on a Portuguese Creed. Perhaps the closest example in the old world is the French Republic, but even there, that regime is bolted onto the much older French Kingdom with new management. To try and contort these countries into little mirrors of America was folly.

Canada is in a slightly better position, even though there were clearly founding nations in Canada, the aforementioned British, French, and Native. At its heart Canada is a country of the new world, a settler society. Even if throughout Canada’s history there was restrictive immigration policies, the point is that from the beginning it was assumed that Canada would be made up of people from somewhere else, who would come, settle, and build this country. But, there was never a creedal tradition to go along with this. Canada stands in the strange area between the old world and America, made up of settlers but not necessarily united in creed. Yet, despite this closeness to America, having Canada try and search for a creed in the same vein as the American’s is a vain search. The chief problem being that any such set of propositions are wholly manufactured for a purpose and in no way were organically incorporated. If Canada could find one, it will happen organically and from the bottom up, not artificially imposed from above with the associated inauthenticity. The painful truth of this is that the templates available to most countries to establish themselves are not open to Canada. We are neither an ancient country founded by an overwhelming majority of one group, nor are we a modern nation with a creed to rally to. Canada must navigate someway in between, or even forge a unique path of its own. To this end, this is why I have now become tied to the “incarnational” view of my home, since it seems to me the best way of resolving the tensions, as it relies upon the real and tangible as opposed to the abstract and ethereal.

Ultimately, it may be just the existence of America which is the greatest ally in creating Canadian unity. The recent events concerning American threats and tariffs have engendered a rather strong rally around the flag effect here in Canada which has reversed years of decline in Canadian pride. Being in a position as the smaller country surrounded by the larger is something which is on the side of Canadian unity as the effect of an outside threat is something to force peoples together despite their reservations. Even I, traditionally very Yankeephilic, have felt a degree of animosity as a result of recent events. This has provided to me a visceral sense of the effectiveness of the outsider creating a stronger nationalism than would be generated otherwise.

Parting thoughts

When the totals are tallied on all this, I’ve seen interesting changes to my own attitude over the past few years regarding my home. One of the things which I think has been instrumental is my conversion to Catholicism which ties into this vain search for a Canadian Creed to live by.

For myself, I was always enamoured of the American Founding Fathers and what they created. At one point I had the Declaration of Independence memorized. Further, when I look back, my first feeling of a religious experience was when I visited Washington D.C. and stood in the Jefferson Memorial. It stirred in me a feeling which I’d never felt before, and one which I still struggle to describe. But from that high point, things descended as we drove back north. It was to a home which wasn’t part of that great project that I’d been so intellectually and emotionally involved in. Being removed from that was acutely painful.

What Catholicism really gave to me was peace from that intellectual and emotional strain. There was a right ordering of my loves which accompanied that reorientation, and a salutary result was an increasing love and appreciation of my home. It helps that Canada and Catholicism have a long history, mostly confined to Quebec, but not entirely, as immigration spread the Church over the whole country. My place of residence, Ottawa, has a rich Catholic heritage, with beautiful churches dotting the landscape, a part of the geography of this most lovely valley, but distinct from it. The weight that this lifted from me was very freeing, and has let me see this place, despite its deep flaws and derangements, as my home.

Where before I had fantasies of moving elsewhere and putting on another identity in order to fill the apparent hole which the lack of moving Canadian propositions created, now things are much different. With that vacuum occupied I no longer feel that desire. I know if I were to move abroad, wherever I go, I’d still sport the maple leaf somewhere in my dwelling out of sentiment and still call myself a Canadian.

Whatever the future holds for this curious confederation, for my part, I hope she can escape “Brand Canada”, cut her own path instead of seeking to tread those more charted, and stand glorious and free.