SundayReview | Opinion
Canada Doesn’t Know How to Party
TORONTO
— July 1 is Canada’s 150th anniversary, but nobody seems particularly
eager to join the party. The muted attempts at celebration have so far
produced either awkwardness or embarrassment. A giant rubber duck, six
stories tall, is supposed to arrive in Toronto Harbor on Canada Day, but
its imminent appearance has been greeted by outrage over costs and
suspicions of plagiarism. In March, the CBC, Canada’s national
broadcaster, began televising a documentary series called “The Story of
Us” to the almost instantaneous howling of Quebec and Nova Scotia
politicians at what they regarded as significant omissions in our
supposedly collective narrative. Resistance 150, an indigenous political
movement, is planning to disrupt the anniversary itself.
The principal excitement of our sesquicentennial so far has been the fury of national self-critique it has inspired.
The
irony is that Canada, at the moment, has a lot to celebrate. Our prime
minister is glamorous and internationally recognized as a celebrity of
progressive politics. We are among the last societies in the West not
totally consumed by loathing of others. Canada leads the Group of 7
countries in economic growth. Our cultural power is real: Drake recently
had 24 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 at the same time — for one
shining moment he was nearly a quarter of popular music. Frankly, it’s
not going to get much better than this for little old Canada.
So
why is Canada so bad at celebrating itself? The nationalism that
defined the country during the last major anniversary, the centenary in
1967, has evaporated. The election of Justin Trudeau has brought a new
generation to power, a generation raised on a vision of history more
critical than laudatory. We dream of reconciliation with the victims of
our ancestors’ crimes rather than memorialization of their triumphs.
Mr.
Trudeau has described the country he leads as “the first postnational
state,” with “no core identity, no mainstream.” He may be right. But if
we are a postnational state, then why are we even mentioning the
formation of a national state in the first place? It seems so arbitrary.
Nonetheless,
I will be celebrating. The British North America Act, which I was
forced to study in school and which, at the time, I considered the
single most boring object ever produced by human consciousness, has
grown on me. Maybe I’ve aged. But so has the world. Confederation was an
attempt at compromise between peoples within a unified political
framework. In this way at least, a moldy 19th-century document has,
oddly, prepared Canada for the 21st century surprisingly well.
Nationally,
Canada has been spared the populism that has swallowed the rest of the
Western world because there is not, and has never been, such a thing as a
“real Canadian.” Kevin O’Leary — Canada’s supposed answer to Donald
Trump — ended his campaign for the leadership of the Conservative Party,
even though he was leading in the polls, because he couldn’t speak
French well enough to win an election. To lead this country, you must be
able to navigate multiple languages and multiple cultures. Our
longstanding identity crisis has suddenly turned to a huge advantage —
we come, in a sense, pre-broken.
Pierre
Trudeau, Justin’s father, articulated Canada’s difference from other
countries perfectly: “There is no such thing as a model or ideal
Canadian,” he said when he was prime minister in 1971. “What could be
more absurd than the concept of an ‘all Canadian’ boy or girl? A society
which emphasizes uniformity is one which creates intolerance and hate.”
Despite this country’s manifold failures to uphold its ideals, its core
vision has turned out to be much more sophisticated than America’s “E
pluribus unum.”
Not
that the pre-broken post-national condition is without its agonies.
Colonized self-loathing seems to be a national trait we will never fully
shake off. Canadian self-flagellation results always in the same warm,
comfortingly smug sense of virtue. Self-righteousness is to Canada what
violence is to America. It transcends the political spectrum. Whether it
is Conservative insistence on frugality and small-town values or the
furious outrage of identity politics on the left, everyone has the same
point to make: We’re not as good as we think we are, and the government
should do something about it.
The
virtues of this country are mostly negative anyway, which may also make
overt celebration difficult. Canada’s real glories are its hospitals
and its public schools, but those, unlike the Marine Corps, cannot be
paraded. Canada is, according to several international surveys, the most
tolerant country in the world. But it’s absurd to celebrate not being
quite as insane as the rest of the world. You don’t get a cookie because
you hate people on the basis of their skin color a little less than
everybody else.
None
of what I have written should be taken to imply that Canadians don’t
love their country, or that I don’t love my country. I do. Most
Canadians do, too. They just love it quietly. They don’t want to make a
big fuss. Britain made a big fuss with Brexit and look what’s happening
to it. America at the moment seems full of dedicated, flag-waving
patriots who love their country passionately, vociferously; they just
can’t stand their fellow citizens or their government.
Canada’s
reluctance to celebrate itself is actually something worth celebrating.
It has become abundantly clear in 2017 that patriotism is for losers.
Patriotism is for people and for countries that need to justify their
existence through symbols rather than achievements. Canada is doing well
enough that it doesn’t require spackled vanity. It doesn’t need
six-story-high rubber ducks.
This is the most Canadian thing I will ever write, I know, but I’m proud of my country for its lack of pride.
