5 hours Ago By [email protected] (Bruce Arthur)
One of Canada’s biggest problem is that broadly, we’ve had it easy. Yes, the land can be harsh; yes, this is a country of blood and toil. But as actual crises go — national, all-hands-on-deck crises — this hockey-loving country has skated.
The 1995 Quebec referendum; the COVID pandemic. Those are the only two things that could have truly broken this country, in most of our lifetimes. Times change.
Living next to Donald Trump is a crisis. It was always clear his people would try to disassemble the American federal government in his second term, and that he intended to seek revenge. And it was clear he was coming after his allies, Canada included.
Trump truly, wrongly believes tariffs will enrich the United States. He is an incompetent blusterer, and even though Canada got Trump to back off his tariff threats, the idea of annexation is planted. That threat won’t vanish.
This is economic wartime. We are not dealing with a logical opponent; we are dealing with a mad, foolish predator surrounded by fanatics. Canada fights together now, or Canada falls apart.
Some people, fattened and cosseted by the relative safety and sleepiness of this country, or blinded by the post-pandemic problems — and really, by Canada’s general post-Cold War austerity in health care, housing, education, long-term care, infrastructure, the military — have demanded a reason to fight for the country. What binds us together? Hockey? Less than ever. Medicare has been badly bruised, despite the professionals holding it together.
Housing is a nightmare, and the pandemic expanded society’s cracks. So many of the common cultural values we once held have largely atomized in the age of the internet: we don’t have “The Beachcombers” to watch anymore. But there’s still something here.
You’re damned right Canadians are booing “The Star Spangled Banner” at hockey and basketball games; you’re damned right Canadians are taking U.S. liquor off the shelves.
You’re damned right we’re furious. I’m furious at the fascists and criminals ransacking the American government, and furious at the quislings and Vichy Canadians who have decided patriotism might be optional. If you feel that way, you were never very patriotic at all.
Most of us still are , and it feels like Canada is waking up to the bonds and moral compact that tie us together. What’s worth fighting for is the ideals of this country, more than its reality. Every country falls short of its ideals, in little and massive ways, and Canada has.
Subtitled “A Memoir in Pieces,” the culture and politics commentator’s written a book that is But we are the ones who must decide how much we reach for those ideals, because Canada is a collective project for Canadians. This is a nation where someone like the CBC’s Elamin Abdelmahmoud can come here from Sudan and become a cultural light in the country; it’s a place where you can take your child to a children’s hospital and not worry about the bill. It’s a place where I can meet my neighbour for the first time out shovelling snow, a Bosnian Serb who fled Yugoslavia’s civil war with his wife, who has raised two daughters in Canada.
And I can eventually feel like his family is my family, too. Really, when I think of Canada I always think of Winnipeg. It can be a hard place, but so many people there are in it together.
Canada tells itself that’s what it is. For all the outsized anger that emerged from the pandemic, the vast majority of Canadians took care of others with masks and vaccination and sacrifice. And the vast majority of us are angry at the American government, and maybe at Americans as well.
Even Pierre Poilievre — who in November reacted to the tariff threats by demanding Trudeau adopt pre-existing Conservative policies to counter Trump, and who as recently as two weeks ago wasn’t committed to retaliatory tariffs — is now committed to dollar-for-dollar retaliation. He’s finally reading the mood. Canada doesn’t need to go nuclear — well, speaking literally, getting the bomb’s not the worst idea — but it needs to be seen as willing to fight.
Because Canadians — and that must include First Nations — need to be the ones who chart our future. Canadians need to decide how much we take care of one another, how ambitiously we rewire Canada for a harsher future. That’s the mission, now.
No other nation is as threatened by Trump, and the world will watch how we respond: whether we fortify ourselves against the madman and his fanatics, or whether we splinter. So what are we fighting for? What did Canada do for you? It allowed you to live in a country that welcomes people who share the value of collective individuality, and that has been largely sheltered from the harshest currents of the world. You got to be a part of this thing.
Well, the world is arriving in a rush, now. Time to be Canadian, for everything it’s worth..
