By Jim Hagarty
Up here in Canada, we are celebrating our 149th birthday today. We were actually around a century or more before that but in 1867, we finally got our act together and became an official country. The United States had just finished a Civil War and we were afraid our southern neighbours might just keep on marching north one day.
And now, the president of that gigantic southern neighbour, while visiting our country this week, said the world needs more Canada. How does a Canadian respond to a compliment like that without resorting to bragging? But bragging is not in our nature, so we just let it pass.
We have accepted into our country the downtrodden of the world and we still do. And those millions of people have made a great nation. My ancestors left Ireland during the Famine and have found a wonderful home here and in the U.S.
If there is one thing we can be a little bit cocky about is our tendency to marginalize the crazies in our society, and we have lots of goofballs. We steal their good ideas, if they have any, but we manage to keep the goons on the bench and give them little ice time.
Our Constitution contains, within its opening lines, the phrase, “peace, order and good government” as a guiding principle. Not to criticize our southern neighbour, but their constitution stresses the importance of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
That might seem like a subtle difference but I think it explains a lot. In Canada, the individual is part of something bigger. In the U.S., the individual is supreme. The European migration that ended up in each country, came to those places with different motivations.
But nothing is perfect.
To paraphrase Barack Obama: “Canada needs more Canada.”
