Oddly, Canada might be having a more meaningful birthday this year than last, even if the 151st birthday just doesn't have the same cachet as the 150th.
This July 1, marking the 151st anniversary of Confederation, Canada has challenges to be sure. It would be news if we didn’t. Everything in human affairs is a work in progress.
Charles de Gaulle, the former president of France, once sighed in a moment of exasperation: “How can anyone govern a nation that has 246 varieties of cheese?”
Likewise, how can any nation manage with only 36 million souls inside almost 245,000 kilometres of coastline?
But we do. And remarkably well. Not with shock and awe, or fire and fury, or chest-thumping about our own exceptionalism. But with a quiet decency and sense of generosity.
There’s lots we need to do in this country – most importantly the unfinished work of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. There are widely differing views on how to do that and much else.
There are pipeline disputes. There are squabbles over the inter-provincial beer and wine trade. And brewing battles over the equalization formula.
But you have to be a pretty sensible land in the first place to even have an equalization formula.
There’s plenty of reason – in taking stock of what we’ve built, what we’ve got and what we aspire to – to kick back and celebrate.
We even have an unlikely person to toast for perhaps giving us a greater sense of ourselves and what we stand for than we did last year.
The unhinged attacks by President Donald Trump on our prime minister, our economy and our country have prompted us to recall what it is that makes us gratefully different, makes us modestly special, makes us who we are.
Granted, his are no small threats. Canada – with two-thirds of our trade conducted with the United States — is among the most vulnerable of countries to Trump’s upending of the world economic order.
But Canadian leaders of all stripes opted not to grab at partisan advantage during Trump’s burst of epic rudeness and insult. Rather, they stood together with the prime minister in the broader interests of the country.
Let’s leave it to others to sing the praises of this fine Canadian moment.
“Mr. Trump’s aggression has inspired a rare unity in Canada,” noted The Economist.
The same American friends who came to our defense against the president will be helping us celebrate.
Few voices have been so steadfast during this strange period in cross-border relations as that of former American ambassador to Canada Bruce Heyman.
“Never underestimate a Canadian,” he recently tweeted. “Not their friendship nor their resolve when attacked.”
For many, moreover, Canada has been the world’s chosen land – and a recent study says we are happy to be so.
In fact, as we celebrate Canada Day, the surveys once again confirm the blessings of living in this land. Canada is the most inclusive and tolerant country in the world (Ipsos), the second best place in the world to live, after Switzerland (U.S. News and World Report). Canadians are among the happiest people on Earth (ranked seventh according to a United Nations report), in part because we live in one of the safest places on Earth (ranked sixth, according to the Global Peace Index) and our cities enjoy the highest quality of life in the Western hemisphere (Mercer Quality of Living Survey).
Lots to be proud of as we raise a glass of something tasty and Canadian and toast our great nation.
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