08 March 2000
Canada and what it means to be Canadian - THE COMMENTARY
By Joseph Planta
- A Joseph Planta Commentary - (date) VANCOUVER -- There are many things wrong with this country. (I, as well as Canadians coast to coast, have been dutifully bitching about misplaced priorities and stuff of the sort since the beginning of time.) With everything worth complaining about, one ought to take pause and examine what this country is about and who we are, the inhabitants of this vast land.
Are Canadians simply carbon copies of the folks living underneath the 49th Parallel? If one looks at the entertainment we consume, one could easily think we are essentially Americans. I mean, what soap operas do people watch? Riverdale or Traders? I didn’t think so. What comedy shows do people watch? Air Farce or 22 Minutes? I didn’t think so. Culturally speaking, Canada may have some great talents, but the land is so damned huge that we easily spread ourselves so thin, forgetting to realise how talented Canadians are.
Because we are so young (compared to the France, England or the US), Canada still has a long ways to go. We’ve somehow cut ourselves off from the ever bearing Great Britain, and somehow become beholden to the United States. Canada is not being treated as a country. This has not been something new, but something that’s been present all the way to the first and second World Wars.
Canada has so much possibility. This is a nation that prides itself on being tolerant, and we show that in our acceptance of the minorities that choose to live in this country. Our Governor General for one, who herself was a political refugee, is an example of the tolerance this country has and has demonstrated. But on the flip-side of that we are also known for being a haven for war criminals; those of the second World War, that seem to be protected by the laws of this land.
Being Canadian, means being a lot of things. You’d be hard pressed today to find someone who isn’t guilty of carrying, of what I call “hyphen growths”. It’s become an incessant feature of this society to carry these ever-annoying hyphens in their description of ethnicity. For example: Chinese-Canadians, Indo-Canadians, or Mexican-Canadians have been stressed upon for years now. Sure, it’s nice that we seem to be keeping some of our ethnic heritage, but sooner or later it shall erode the fabric that is Canada. Our country will slowly turn into a patchwork that will posses these hyphenated growths, thus slowly compromising Canadian identity. Canadians should be proud of the legacy we possess, not endanger it.
This may be a land that is just under one hundred and thirty-three years old, but it’s a land that’s been inhabited by peoples, centuries before. We must recognise that and pay tribute to the fact we inherit the land from our elders, but essentially are simply borrowing it from future generations. Canada maybe a homogeneous apathetic country, but it’s a nation that has unceasing possibilities. From the rolling hills of the Prairies to the rocked surfaces that adorn our Eastern Coast, to the cosmopolitan cities of Vancouver to Winnipeg, Toronto to Fredericton; Canada is a vast land whereby a peoples is being created.
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