The Canada You Might Not Know
By Ian Ogilvie
Canada has been in the news lately. Small in population (40 million), Canada is not accustomed to being a headline in the national US news. Recently, Canadians have not welcomed the banter around Canada becoming a US State. But that minor provocation reveals a silver lining for Canada: it stokes Canadian national identity and pride.
Canadians are not known for chest beating nationalism. They are less ideological than their southern neighbors. They put less of a premium on free speech and individualism, and more emphasis on collective well-being.
In part that’s because of its geography. Canada is enormous, larger than the US, but the majority of Canada is subarctic and barely inhabitable. More than 75% of the population lives within 100 miles of the US border.
But it’s mostly because of Canada’s history. Whereas Americans broke off from their colonial parent, Great Britain, suddenly and violently in the American Revolution, Canada’s origins are marked more by gradualism and accommodation.
Not to say that there’s no violence in Canada’s past: colonization by Europeans included forced labor, land theft and cultural suppression of indigenous people. Indigenous nations such as the Algonquin, Iroquois and Cree were decimated by killing by settlers, as well as by smallpox and other diseases brought by Europeans.
But unlike the US, Canadian history was not just colonists vs indigenous peoples, it was colonists vs. colonists as well, since France and Great Britain each claimed Canada as its own. In the 17th and 18th centuries, when the two colonial powers fought, indigenous nations often fought alongside one or the other until the British finally defeated the French in the Seven Years War (1756 -1763).
Later, Canadian “Loyalists” — so called because they remained loyal to the British Crown after the American Revolution – helped the British repel the United States in the War of 1812.
There was no violent definitive uprising by settlers against the British, but a slow legal evolution toward independence instead. Not until 1867 did the British pass the Constitution Act, which authorized Canadian self-governance and established Parliament and the Supreme Court of Canada and lower courts. Still, Canada remained a British colony.
Only in 1982 did Canada “patriate” the Constitution (make it fully Canadian) by passing the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which enabled Canada to make major changes to its own constitution.
These momentous changes were brought about peacefully and through compromise.
Signs of this history of compromise are everywhere today. Even though the French were defeated on the battlefield, the status of Francophones (French speakers) was elevated through the ballot box in 1976, when the Parti Quebecois came to power in Quebec. Although two plebiscites on the question of whether to split from Canada failed, Quebec’s status as a “distinct society” within Canada was secured. French and English are the official languages in all of Canada, even though most Western Canadians don’t speak any French. And Canada is bijural — governed by civil law in Quebec and common law elsewhere, and national laws and regulations must respect both types of systems.
Provinces today are more powerful than American States. To keep Quebec on board, 1982’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms included a “notwithstanding clause” that empowered provinces to overrule fundamental rights and freedoms. Quebec has invoked the clause to, among other things, prohibit new immigrants from learning English and, of course, Quebec has flirted with secession, actions that wouldn’t be tolerated in the US.
All that compromise and gradualism makes Canada more decentralized and seem more politically unwieldy than the US and may also dilute Canadians’ sense of national identity.
From time to time, though, external events such as the First and Second World Wars have coalesced Canadians: Canadians took great pride in their contributions to those war efforts but often felt taken for granted by the British Empire for which they fought.
Today’s news is small potatoes by comparison but is still enough to bring Canadians together. I can’t help but think of my Dad, who was well traveled and lived some of his life in the US. He was a proud Canadian even though I never saw him fly the Canadian flag. He loved Quebec just as much and taught me to be sympathetic to Quebec’s unique identity and desire to remain predominantly French speaking.
If you visit Quebec, you’ll notice that “Je me souviens” is the motto on every license plate. Literally it means “I remember”, but it is more profoundly a reminder to remember Quebec’s French history above all. Canadians sometimes need a reminder of their own special place in history. Though they may seem a modest and self-effacing people, a little provocation does just that.
Ian, excellent perspective! My mother, and my father’s parents, were Newfoundlanders. Sorta Canadian. My many Canadian cousins are pretty vocal, for Canadians anyway, eh?