To “Stand on Guard”: A Canada Day message in troubled times
In 2008, I made the deliberate decision to return to Canada after spending more than half my life away, residing on four different continents. While I have deep and strong professional and emotional ties to the land, people, and cultures where I grew up and lived, none of these bonds were as strong as those that tied me to the land of my birth, my literal ‘motherland’ and the chosen home of my immigrant father. The host countries were gracious, but Canada, and most specifically these welcomed shores and pristine waterways of Georgian Bay, is home.
It was shortly after returning though that I was shocked, horrified and dismayed at the police actions surrounding the G20 summit. The romanticism and nostalgic lens I viewed my country through cracked at that time. I had lived through military coups in Lagos; street battles of rival political factions in Bangkok; anti-religious crackdowns in Kashgar and Kunming; unmitigated violence between ‘Rechtsextremen’ and ‘Linksradikale’ in Hamburg and watched the police actions in each response with a resigned trepidation and the beautiful illusion that Canada was somehow immune. I was wrong. There was some cold comfort in action taken against the police perpetrators in the wake of the G20 fiasco as well as recourse for the victims in the Canadian court systems, but still, the fact that it happened in the first place was a rude but necessary awakening.
Overshadowed by current realities, there has been little fanfare to the fact that it is now the ten year anniversary of the G20 summit protests and while things may not actually be worse, the calls for action are louder than ever. Now, in the middle of a pandemic, with heightened racial tensions, further evidence of police brutality, revelations of gross neglegince in for profit long-term care, arrest and detention of First Nation land defenders watching their treaty rights and claims fall distant second to the imperative of energy corporations, rapidly growing inequality, all in the backdrop of an ever-present growing and looming climate crisis …. In times like these, it’s easy to become cynical, disheartened, to throw up our hands and walk away, give up, or want to smash it all down. At the risk of sounding Polyanna-ish, I want to offer a glimmer of hope. In the dark shadow of so much that is glaringly wrong, I want to share a belief in a brighter future for all of us on this Canada Day holiday.
Nothing can be improved if we refuse to take an honest look at what the problems are. A doctor needs an accurate diagnosis before she can begin to find a cure. And so too must we Canadians look at the issues of our times with a clear lens. To try as hard as possible to filter out the distortions of ideological, cultural, and socio-economic bias that cloud our vision and try to find villains that aren’t necessarily there, to feed self-serving narratives that make ourselves the ‘heroes’ and ‘otherise’ our fellow Canadians who we might see as the problem. As with most significant change, the challenge before us is to look inward before turning our focus on the world around us. We must all be open to examining the spaces where we ourselves might be contributing to the problems.
To be critical of ourselves and our country is not an unpatriotic act. Quite the opposite. I’m reminded of the past actions of men like Louis Riel, William Lyon Mackenzie, or Louis Joseph Papineau who stood up to call out the problems of their times and were consequently attacked as ‘traitors’, with Riel paying with his life. The thing is though, they were right and each one of these people has been historically rehabilitated with Riel even taking a seat among the Fathers of Confederation, a man whose contributions were seen as integral to the creation of the country we have today.
Nestled between Lake Simcoe and the southern shores of Georgian Bay, Simcoe North is an interesting riding. While we face the same challenges as the rest of Canada of being sure new Canadians can find a fair place in their new societies, our riding also reflects the stark realities of the challenges of an older Canada.
The creation of Canada and our riding in particular, comes on the backs of the Indiginous population. The original Wendat inhabitants of Huronia were completely displaced by disease and colonial warfare and the existing Anishnaabe are still living the trauma of the 60s scoop, residential schools and further mistreatment and misrepresentation under an archaic ‘Indian Act’. With efforts to build and foster a new relationship with indigenous peoples and the rest of Canada, one that recognises First Nation rights and unique contributions to Canadian society through what John Rolston Saul identifies as “egalitarianism, a proper balance between individual and group, and a penchant for negotiation over violence are all Aboriginal values that Canada absorbed.” While progress is frustratingly slow, and pipeline politics set things back, Indigenous voices are louder and finally seem to be getting heard with signs of solidarity with these struggles from coast-to-coast-to-coast. However, given both history and current events, if First Nation populations are skeptical of the prospect of ‘reconciliation’ and positive change, who can blame them?
With our sizeable Francophone population existing beside an English speaking majority, Simcoe North is the living embodiment of the ‘two solitudes’. These stubborn divisions that still exist today (evident in the persistent resistance to unite traditionally French Catholic Penatanguishene with Anglo Protestant Midland into a single, efficient cost-effective administrative area). But in Canada’s history, as rough as Anglo/Franco relations have been, it’s actually quite miraculous that things work at all, dysfunctional as it may seem. Natural enemies on the European continent, the English and French were belligerents on opposite sides through centuries of conflict, and yet we have managed to co-create one of the most successful modern nation states going with much work to do still, but that’s fine. I think we’re up to the challenge.
We are a nation of overachievers. Pick a field, any field from medicine, science, culture, sports, engineering, whatever… you’ll find we are a nation of Bantings and Bests, of Norman Bethunes, of Viola Desmonds, of Tom Longboats, of Orillia’s own Gordon Lightfoots, Keanu Reeveses, Margaret Atwoods, Oscar Petersons, Chris Hadfields, Naheed Nenshis, Wayne Gretskys, Ryans Goslings and Reynolds, Tommy Douglases… the danger in creating a list like this is that it can never be big enough and these are just some of the outstanding Canadians that quickly come to mind but hopefully readers will get where I’m coming from.
Canada’s not perfect, not even close. While we can create an equally extensive list of bad Canadians and historical and contemporary shortcomings, today, I take a break from that to celebrate this country. To remind myself why I care and to take stock of what amazing things we do have. A moment to reduce my criticism and focus on what we are defending and why it’s worth it. In Simcoe North specifically, we have so much to be grateful for, so much that is worthy of protection as we stand on guard against the voracious and rapacious psychology of growth for growth’s sake. We stand on guard for our groundwater, the purest on Earth. We stand on guard to keep our soil free of toxic dumping. While current powers use Covid-19 as cover for nefarious endangerment of our natural ecology, we stand on guard as we always have as when we blocked Site 41, and in that tradition, we can do it all again.
Though she wasn’t Canadian, Hannah Arendt is, to me, the most important political thinker of the 20th century. It is her notion of the Amor Mundi the ‘love of the world’ that I hope will continue to drive us to action. To ‘think locally and act globally’. To love this riding, to love this country, to love the world we live in enough to accept responsibility for it. With the spirit of those who came before us and for the sake of those who will come after us, we’ve got this.
Happy Canada Day, everyone.
