Canada, History, And The Politics Of Patriotism

On How To Reckon With Our Past

One of the enduring fights – and one of the actually interesting disputes between left and right in this country, though not unique to it – is the role of our history in our national story. The same argument pops up in America and Britain often, with the role of slavery and Jim Crow and the role of Empire taking up the discourse there, and in Canada the question mostly falls to our treatment of Indigenous peoples. It’s not solely that – there’s the head tax and Japanese internment and the turning back of the St. Louis too – but it’s the idea that how can we be proud of a country with so many mistakes in our history.

The first time I was exposed to the view that Canada’s flaw were, as it were, invalidating was in high school, when a particularly left wing teacher of mine made the argument that Mackenzie King couldn’t be one of Canada’s best Prime Ministers because of his antisemitic decision to turn back the St. Louis, full as it was of Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis. It wasn’t a surprising argument – this is a woman for whom nuance was far too complicated – but it’s always struck me as an entirely counterproductive one.

One of the least useful forms of historical analysis is asking why historical figures didn’t have the courage of our convictions, which is to say modern sensibilities. Yes, it’s easy to dismiss figures for holding views that time have proven to me horrid, but it’s not going to provide anything resembling a useful understanding of the past. Nor is the left’s seeming willingness to toss this country’s good out with the bad – and it will relegate them to the sidelines, out of office and out of influence.

…

Jagmeet Singh’s Canada Day message is a classic of a certain genre – it’s a lecture, about the failures of the past, about rising hate now, and a minimal acknowledgement that Canada has done as much good as it has done bad at the end. It’s a completely tone deaf message to where the average Canadian is, because focusing on the bad ignores the fact that the vast majority of people in this country are proud to be Canadian.

Trudeau’s message – that Canada is always getting better, that we’ve been imperfect but are trying to do better and better – is where the average Canadian is, because in this case, the nuanced answer is the one that most Canadians find compelling. The view of some on the right that Canada has never erred is dismissed for a similar reason – we have fucked up as a country before, and acknowledging that isn’t bad. But living in the past, and specifically the bad parts of the past, is equally likely to get an eyeroll from the vast majority of people.

Talk to most people over the age of 60, and specifically ask them about their views of homosexuality and gay marriage. Be respectful in how you do it, but a lot of them will have to admit that they were in the wrong place on the issue and now aren’t, and in a lot of cases there will be a defensiveness about that fact. The reason is that good people don’t want to accept that the position they used to take was always wrong – they want to believe that their taking that long to get to the right place isn’t an indictment of them.

In the same way, Canadians are not going to look fondly at a movement that decries our failures without a fulsome understanding of the times we were in, and how far we’ve come. Is it far enough, especially with regards to Indigenous communities? Of course not. But it’s pretty fucking far, and a denial of that fact is as damaging politically as anything.

Canadians are smart people, and too often in these arguments we associate intelligence and willingness to support the argument that I support – or the political party I support – when we should be focusing on whether the argument makes sense. I used to be of the view that conservatives were dumb hicks that just had to have things explained to them enough to get them to become liberals, but the thing is, they’re not. I might disagree with a lot of Canadians, but the truth is most people are smarter than we give them credit for being. People who vote Liberal are not on the whole blind to the issues with the government and aren’t too stupid to notice the ethical issues with it, they’re mostly people aware of the tradeoffs and willing to accept them, in the same way that Poilievre supporters are not all Convoy loving, anti-vax nutters yelling homophobic slurs and waving Confederate flags.

This country is quite an accomplishment and it is so in spite of its historic failures. It’s not fair to say that we are the country we are because we fucked over our Indigenous population and our various other failings, but it is fair to say that we have made a country worth living in. It’s not good enough, but at the very least we didn’t take our ill gotten gains and waste them.

We are a country that is flawed in some ways, some more fundamental than others, but it’s hard to escape the idea that we are one of the best countries in the world. We have some of the greatest cities in the world, we have some of the best people, and most of all we have made a country where your status as an outsider, whether it be colour of skin, sexuality, or time of arrival does not diminish most people’s understanding of you as a Canadian.

We are living in an example of what a multi-racial democracy can look like, and it is to our great credit that we had a Mayoral election a week ago where the top three candidates were all born outside this country and that fact elicited less attention than the fact that an AI-generated piece of artwork for a campaign included three arms.

Canada fucked up a lot in its past. We are a great country now, and we are making this country one that is worth fighting for. Those points aren’t in conflict, and if you’re a politician who can’t make these points in tandem, then don’t be surprised when this country decides they have no interest in what you’re selling.