This photo, taken of a Canadian flag in Shediac, New Brunswick, was taken by Tony Webster and is used in accordance with his Creative Commons License. Happy 60th anniversary to the Canadian flag.
I fly this flag at this time because I was asked to do so by no less than former prime ministers Joe Clark, Kim Campbell, Jean Chretien, Paul Martin and Stephen Harper, who wrote an open letter to Canadians asking them "to show the flag as never before" in response to the "threats and insults from Donald Trump."
I am happy to do my part, even though it may seem ironic, or even hypocritical, given that less than four years ago, many of us pulled back on celebrating Canada Day, given what was brought to light about the horrors our First Nations' children experienced in our residential schools.
The fact is, my country has a history, and a lot of it isn't good. There's the discriminatory treatment of Chinese Canadians like my grandfather. There's the checkered experience of those of African descent, looking for freedom at the end of the underground railway but also finding more racism and even segregation. There's the tragedy of the MS St. Louis and our response of "one is too many" when it comes to Canadian acceptance of Jewish refugees before World War Two. The fact remains that Canada is a colonial experiment, achieved through the dispossession and the displacement of the people who were here when we arrived, and the injustices continue in the form of racial discrimination and ongoing boil water advisories. This cannot be ignored.
My country is flawed, but I think it's important to celebrate our flag, accept our history, and demand the security of our future because we acknowledge that our country is flawed.
On July 5, 2021, Mike Pompeo, who served as the director of the CIA under Donald Trump, tweeted, "If we teach that the founding of the United States of America was somehow flawed. It was corrupt. It was racist. That's really dangerous. It strikes at the very foundations of our country."
This, I think, highlights the difference between Trumpists, and true patriots on both sides of the border. It's possible to love a country and acknowledge its flaws. Indeed, I would say that it is a duty of true patriots to acknowledge their country's flaws.
Because refusing to acknowledge those flaws doesn't make those flaws go away. Indeed, it perpetuates the injustices that arise from them. When the United States was founded, many of its founders owned slaves (this was true, to a lesser extent, in Upper and Lower Canada as well). Ignoring that fact does nothing to fix the severe injustices that these realities presented, and still present to this day, as seen through such consequences as the Civil War, Jim Crow, the Tulsa Race Massacre, segregation and more. You cannot celebrate the fight for civil rights without acknowledging why it had to be a fight in the first place, and trying to do so gives oxygen to those who seek to reverse what gains we've made, deepening the country's shame.
My country is flawed, but a true patriot would admit that because it encourages people to get to work to fix these flaws, seek justice, make recompense, and turn this country into something we can truly be proud of. The fact that I can say this here on my country's soil gives me hope for my country. For as long as these words are said, the possibility for improvement remains.
Denial is not patriotism. You cannot make a country great by lying about its history.
In Other News...
On this day, eighteen years ago, I linked to the following video:
What do you think? Has this aged badly, or is it prophetic?