Canada Day

I’m listening to Fireworks , by the Tragically Hip. I’ve said this before, but I’ve only really started to appreciate their music after I left Canada. Maybe it’s familiarity breeding contempt, maybe it’s simply the bad CanCon aftertaste. But now, nearly ten years on, I’m struck by Gord Downie’s ability to condense Canada into sequences of 3 to 4 minutes of blue collar poetry.

To me, Fireworks is about doing amazing things in spite of your upbringing. It’s about having the guts to step out of your own frame and do something magnificent, something daring, something bigger than yourself. Not just the courage of your convictions - that’s easy by comparison - it’s about having the courage to step forward, unasked, and put it all on the line, outcome be damned.

This is something that, by default, Canadians do not do. It’s not in our blood. We’re happy to cheer on someone else, but when it comes to our time to shine, we tend to sit on our hands. Makes for a generally harmonious country (which is inevitably being tainted by our polarising neighbour to the South), but a country that is a bit bland, forgettable and faceless. Spirit of the West’s Far too Canadian springs to mind here.

The inability to step out has made for a country and a people with a great skill for diplomacy and peacekeeping. The flipside is a people - and I am a product of this - a people unable to step out of their personal frames. A faceless people, beige and in the background, always ready to help and support, but unwilling to display some guts.

It’s the most Canadian part of me.

Ironically, fittingly - Tragically - the homeland I love so much has given me the part of myself that I hate the most.