This Canada Day......perhaps.

Canada Day fireworks over the
parliament buildings

July 1^st is Canada Day and Canadians everywhere will celebrate it in fine style. Some will have already headed to the cottage to spend time with family and friends; others will be attending Canada Day celebrations that will be held in every city, village and dell across the country.

There will be bands, stage shows and crowds; barbeques, parties and fireworks. The Prime Minister and every politician in the country will show up somewhere to be seen, to be photographed and to be ignored by most people. The mayor of our city, who will go to the opening of an envelope if you invite him, will somehow manage to show up at dozens of events.

Canadians gather in the thousands across the
country to celebrate Canada Day

It will all be televised and written about and for one brief day out of the year, most Canadians like most Americans on July 4^th, will forget that they are liberals or conservatives, left or right and will celebrate being Canadian. On July 2^nd, we will go back to yelling at and blaming each other for everything.

Canada is a young country but with a rich heritage, respected in the past for our values and for what we have accomplished. Unfortunately, in recent years many Canadians have lost sight of what made us who we are and have begun to take it all for granted. Too many have forgotten what gave us what we have and focus only on what we don’t.

We have forgotten our history at the threat of our future.

Dr. Frederick Banting who
developed the treatment for
diabetes with Dr. Charles Best

We are a country with a small population and yet our contribution to the world in all areas has been immense. Some of the world's great entertainers, including the current king of pop Justin Beiber, were and are Canadian.

It was a Canadian, Dr. Frederick Banting, who along with Dr. Charles Best, developed a means to produce insulin which saved countless lives of those suffering from diabetes world-wide.

Tommy Douglas gave Canada universal health care and Lester Pearson, a former Liberal prime minister was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of Canada’s contribution to peace-keeping around the world.

Canada is not a war-like nation but has consistently honoured its commitment to its allies and has always punched above its weight in both World Wars, Korea, Afghanistan, the Balkans and Libya. We have participated in more peace keeping missions than any other single nation and have done this despite our military being under equipped for decades.

It was Canadian ambassador, Ken Taylor, who risked his life to hide American diplomats in the Canadian Embassy in Tehran during the Iranian Revolution that saw the U.S. Embassy stormed by Iranian students and most of the embassy staff held hostage. He successfully arranged to get them safely out of Iran by issuing false Canadian diplomatic credentials.

The Bluenose was the fastest schooner
in the world for two decades

Technologically, it was Canadians who invented the telephone, designed and built the Bluenose, the world’s fastest schooner for more than twenty years, the Canada Space arm and developed the Avro Aero, at the time, the world’s most advanced fighter aircraft (a project inexplicitly cancelled by the Canadian government without explanation).

It was Canada that stepped up when the twin towers were attacked, taking all 'in the air' aircraft from American airspace and it was Canadians in Newfoundland who reached out to stranded travelers who were forced to land in Gander while the 911 crisis was happening.

It was a Canadian company that revolutionized the telephone switching system and it was Canadians by the thousands who bused, drove and flew to Quebec in 1995 in a show of national unity. Based on recent polls, we couldn't be bothered today.

Despite our great geographical size, we have built a sophisticated communications and transportation infrastructure starting with The Great Canadian Railway more than 150 years ago and the Trans Canada Highway that was completed in the middle of the last century. We were one of the first countries to implement debit card transactions and had a higher per capita usage of the Internet than our American cousins.

We are Canadians and there have been people in our past who have accomplished great things. Those days and the attitude behind those successes are slipping away from us.

Anger, blame and and complaint have replaced civility, respect
and cooperation

We have become a nation of whiners, of people too easily bought by politicians with our own money and too quick to blame others for our particular circumstance. We have gone from a society that believed in self-reliance to one that believes the state should give us whatever we ask for.

We are divided on every major issue from education to health care, from the environment to old age security, from abortion to registering hunting rifles and we no longer have the ability to discuss these issues rationally or civilly. We complain, we accuse and we criticize. We have become too polarized to be Canadian anymore.

We demand more and more from government at the expense of our own individual independence and our collective prosperity.

We have allowed what made Canadians distinct to erode until we now behave like people in virtually every other country in the world.

Our health care system is no longer the envy of the world, nor should it be. We defend against any discussion of innovation of the delivery of health care, including the blending of private and public sector delivery with all of the tenacity  and threat of a she wolf protecting her cubs. Politicians, stand with a deer in the head lights look, afraid to move or make a decision, as health care costs continue to skyrocket driving provincial budgets further and further into deficit.  As a result, health care services are being delisted, more than 2 million people do not have access to a family physician and wait times in hospitals are a disgrace. What was once one of the great achievements of our social democracy is eroding and crumbling and we do nothing but argue about it and resist any change or improvement.

We cling to environmental issues and solutions that have been, or are rapidly being, discredited both economically and on the science. We continue to elect those who lie to us rather than take a chance on a political party that may do a better job simply because we cannot allow ourselves to break with our own pet ideologies.

We do not listen to each other any more

We no longer innovate or even applaud those who do, we throw hissy fits, argue and contaminate what made our country such a great nation in which to live. Where once we strove to achieve we now impose politically correct mediocrity upon each other.

We increasingly impose absurd and wildly contradictory rules on ourselves and interfere in the lives of others simply because what they may be doing annoys us.

In other words, we are forgetting how being Canadian used to be defined. It isn't the evolution of a society, it is an erosion of the values and character that once defined one of the most respected societies in the world.

While I respect and even admire the peoples of many countries around the world, I love being a Canadian and except for occasional visits to other countries from time to time, there is no place in the world I would rather live. Canadians have it within them to once again be a great people, a kind and compassionate people that can again be an example as they once were. But we will not achieve that by continuing to travel the road upon which we now wander.

Quebec students protesting a
seventy-five cent a day tuition increase

This is the road to nowhere but down and this Canada Day, I think it would do all Canadians well to consider the countless blessing bestowed on this country rather than whine about what it may or may not be providing us at the moment. I think that on this Canada Day, somewhere between the chicken and ribs, the burgers and hotdogs and the fireworks and the music, it might be worthwhile to consider how much this country offers, has already given and whether or not each of us is contributing to that with our current attitudes, our intolerant behaviour with each other or even our apathy.

A country is like any relationship, you can only take it for granted for so long before you lose what made having it worthwhile. There are countries in Europe facing that harsh reality today.

Perhaps.....this Canada Day we should rediscover the joy of being Canadian and forget about being on the left or the right, activist or bureaucrat, Christian, Jew, Muslim or atheist, gay or heterosexual.

Perhaps.....this Canada Day we should celebrate our past and remember that the people who went before us and who accomplished so much, didn’t whine their way to success, achieve it by demanding more government entitlements or by blaming others for their situation.

In a world filled with oppression, violence, disease and poverty, perhaps.....this Canada Day we will stop looking for reasons to feel offended and start looking for reasons to appreciate what we have already been given.

Perhaps.....this Canada Day we could consider going back to being Canadians again and appreciate our opportunities and contribute to our potential rather than demanding an ongoing free ride at the expense of other Canadians.

Perhaps.....we will rediscover our sense of humour and our joie de vivre.

To help that along, here is the national anthem played by a group of Canadian young people using nothing but Molson Canadian beer bottles and beer cans. It isn’t going to change the world but it is the kind of ingenuity, creativity and sheer fun that used to define us as a people.

Hopefully, this Canada Day, many of us will rediscover and embrace a more positive attitude about being Canadian and our future as a nation.

Perhaps.....this Canada Day we will once again remember that those people we verbally attack are also Canadians and our neighbours; maybe we will again learn to treat each other with mutual respect. If we accomplished nothing else as a nation this year that, in and of itself, would be more worthwhile than most of what we have accomplished in a very long time.

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