With yet another flag-waving Canada Day behind us, celebrating Canada’s 147th birthday, replete with a veritable love-in of self-congratulatory fervour, one cannot escape the uncomfortable notion that it is a slippery slope from patriotism to jingoism.
From Dominion Day to Canada Day: From the historical significance of the Parliament of Canada officially recognizing July 1 as Dominion Day in 1879 to the banality of Canada Day, as a result of Pierre Elliott Trudeau ramming a private member’s bill through the House of Commons without the required proper quorum of 20 members on a Friday afternoon before summer recess on July 9, 1982 …… all part of his efforts of “re-branding” Canada.
Trudeau’s contrived official policy of legislated multiculturalism, passed by Parliament on July 7, 1988 as the “Act for the Preservation and Enhancement of Multiculturalism”, has in reality become a politically and socially engineered substitute fornational identity and a sad manifestation of the growing ignorance, particularly among young Canadians, with respect to Canada’s traditional, national and historical heritage.
Approaching Canada’s 150th birthday three years from now in 2017, let’s resolve to re-name “Canada Day” to “Confederation Day” to keep reminding ourselves of the country’s historical roots.
National days celebrate self-made historical achievement. The French people gave birth to their nation on July 14, 1789, and celebrate is as Bastille Day. Americans gave birth to their nation on July 4, 1776, and celebrate it as Independence Day.
Canada began its journey to self-government on July 1, 1867 as the federal Dominion of Canada with the Confederation of the three colonies of British North America into the Canadian provinces of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
If we really want to celebrate this precious country of ours and honour its history, let’s mark Canada’s birthday as … Confederation Day !
E.W. Bopp,
Tsawwassen
