As is now The Hub’s tradition on Canada Day, we have gathered a host of our contributors to offer their thoughts on Canada, its strengths and weaknesses, its past and present, and what we have to be grateful for as citizens of this big, complicated country. It hasn’t been all good all the time, but there are many important lessons we’ve learned from Confederation to the current day that will serve us well as we build our bright future together. Happy Canada Day!
Let’s celebrate our rights today—and remember our responsibilities, too
By Karen Restoule, director of Indigenous Affairs at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute
This year, I’ll spend Canada Day like I do every year, at home in Dokis First Nation with family, enjoying the hallmarks of Canadian life. It’s a time to reconnect and reflect on the blessings that shape our lives here in our shared country: clear and flowing waters, land generous in its beauty and bounty, and the enduring strength of kinship.
Reflecting on the past year, public discourse has felt increasingly fractured. Across the country, more people are shouting about their rights. As a society, we’ve become increasingly consumed by individual rights. This shift should concern us all. A society built on rights without a sense of responsibility, reciprocity, and consideration for others eventually comes apart. Many have forgotten that rights are intended to protect a way of life, not replace it.
This may be an effect of our post-Charter era. Courts and tribunals have become the default avenue for resolving grievances, reinforcing a hyper-individualized understanding of justice. In social settings, Canadians now sound more like litigants than citizens, focused on what we are owed, rather than what we owe.
As someone who walks with one foot in two worlds—being proudly Ojibwe and proudly Canadian—I see this dynamic from both sides. I navigate multiple value systems: one that is focused on responsibility to self and family, and another increasingly preoccupied with entitlement.
Traditional Ojibwe governance was built around responsibilities—to ourselves, our families, and our Nations. That worldview calls on each of us to take ownership, protect what is sacred, and leave things better than we found them.
Canada Day shouldn’t just celebrate what we have. It should remind us what we owe. Strong countries are built not on demands, but on contribution, shared sacrifice, and love returned in equal measure.
Don’t let this nationalist moment go to waste
By Ben Woodfinden, former director of communications for Pierre Poilievre
It’s been a good year for Canadian nationalism. Flags with fresh creases, likely ordered from Amazon, have appeared on many front porches and balconies. People walk around the streets with baseball caps that say “Canada is not for sale.” The Sir John A. MacDonald statue outside of Queen’s Park is finally out of the box it was placed under to protect it from the progressive iconoclasm. The new Liberal government led by Mark Carney appears to be much less ashamed or embarrassed by our flag and institutions (like the Crown) than the previous Trudeau government.
Some commentators have observed that we’ve passed “peak woke” and appear to be in a moment in which a counter-reaction to woke and progressive overreach of the last few years. Combine this with the Trump-inspired awakenings of a dormant Canadian patriotism, and it appears Canadians are more willing and eager to celebrate the greatness of Canada than they have been in quite some time.
We shouldn’t let this moment go to waste, both politically and culturally. It’s time to refocus on building a stronger and more resilient Canada, one that can stand on its own two feet in an increasingly uncertain and unstable world, and one that can stand up for itself as it shares a continent with an increasingly unpredictable neighbour. And culturally, we should look to build on the wave of Canadian patriotism and think more seriously and with fresh eyes about what actually makes Canada distinct today.
We are more than just the “elbows up” caricature that inspired much Boomer nostalgia for a Canada defined by universal health care, peacekeepers, and progressive social values. We are “the only transcontinental, bicultural, parliamentary confederation in the history of the world,” to quote Conrad Black. We have tamed a largely frigid and inhospitable wilderness and built one of the greatest places on earth to live. And we stand as a relative beacon of freedom and stability in the world. So, as we celebrate the birthday of the Canadian Confederation, let us look to both the past and the future to rediscover what makes us so great and what makes this country worth fighting for.
Rob Johnson shows his Canadian pride in Calgary, Alta., Friday, July 26, 2024. Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press.
This American wishes you well, Canada
By David Polansky, research fellow with the Institute for Peace & Diplomacy.
As an American in Canada, I must confess to having historically been a bit skeptical of Canada Day. After all, its calendrical placement and even its name bear a suspicious similarity to American Independence Day. And while it does commemorate a real event—the granting of Dominion status to substantial territories in what is now Canada—it achieved its present designation less than 45 years ago, which is to say it is, in a sense, younger than I am. I like my traditions to have a little more mileage (kilometrage?) on them.
Nonetheless, several things have softened my stance here. The first and simplest is just spending more time here and having children who are (lord help me) themselves Canadian. The second is that I am obliged to acknowledge the inevitable “createdness” of all such national traditions—and why should age or its lack be a barrier to establishing ways to express pride in one’s country? And the last and perhaps most important is my strong belief that such pride is—all things considered—to be admired and fostered in a nation’s citizenry. Indeed, one can take the measure of the value of such pride in having seen too much of its absence in recent years.
And so I applaud any recovery of (characteristically modest) Canadian pride and wish my fellow residents a very happy national holiday.
“Elbows Up” isn’t enough
By Aiden Muscovitch, assistant editor at The Hub
During the last election, many messages were hurled at Canadians. We were told to keep our “elbows up,” for instance. I’m still not entirely sure what that means. All I really took away was a vague nod to Gordie Howe, which I’m a few generations too young to fully appreciate, and visions of a white-haired Mike Myers, minus the blue velvet suit and white cravat.
The only message that truly resonated with me was the hopeful return of the Canadian promise: that anybody, from anywhere, could achieve anything. That you could afford a home, find a good job, raise a family, and live in a safe, thriving neighbourhood. Today, the Canadian promise feels more like the Canadian vanishing fantasy. Pierre Poilievre tried to tap into that yearning, pledging to “bring home the Canadian promise.” But he didn’t win.
For now, that promise still feels out of reach. Housing prices are through the roof, and homeownership is out of reach for Canadians with average incomes. Young couples are having fewer children. The job market for young people is among the worst in the developed world.
Still, this Canada Day, somehow, I have hope. I am hopeful because this is a fundamentally good country, full of decent, hardworking people who still believe in what Canada can and should be: a place where anybody, from anywhere, can do anything. That belief is where the restoration begins.
This year, I hope our new government will not lead with slogans or phony ribbon-cutting ceremonies disguised as nation-building. I hope they lead with action. With love for a country that, at its best, offers the kind of life people everywhere dream of. That’s the promise of Canada. That’s the fight that all Canadians would have their elbows up for.
Despite everything, Canada can still inspire
By Harrison Lowman, The Hub’s managing editor
This year, the proudest Canadian I met wasn’t even a Canadian citizen.
When Hasan, 24, picked me up in his Uber, he was smiling ear to ear. No matter that the human rights activist had been forced to flee Afghanistan when the Taliban returned, leaving his family back home. No matter that he had spent nine months in a refugee camp in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), not knowing where he’d end up. Or that he didn’t have a high school diploma. Or that much of the money he made would be sent to his ill mother to pay for her medicine.
Hasan had made it to Canada, and Canada was now home. And he was eternally grateful.
Hasan remembers bits and pieces of the war during his childhood, a war that cost 165 Canadian lives. At 16, he recalls the ground shaking and a massive mushroom cloud rising in the distance after the U.S. dropped the largest non-nuclear bomb in existence on an ISIS cave complex in his province of Nangarhar. When those U.S. soldiers left Afghanistan in 2021, Hasan, who had been advocating for women’s rights, knew it was time for him to leave too, or become a Taliban target.
Being stuck at the UAE refugee camp was a struggle, but when he heard the Canadian government had accepted his mountain of forms, he was over the moon.
“When I heard the name Canada, I got very excited,” he told me. “The culture, the lifestyle is different [from mine]. “But everyone hopes to come to Canada…It was like a paradise for me.”
Hasan knows Canada is facing challenges of its own. People tell him Toronto was better 10 years ago—the crime, the cleanliness, the costs. But here he says he has freedom. And he’s been struck by Canadians who have lent him a helping hand as he tries to survive, alone in our largest city.
“If you need help, they will show you the way. They are good people, warm people.”
Late last month, Hasan graduated from high school. He hopes to study law or political science. With each Uber ride, his English is improving.
Next, he’s applying for his Canadian citizenship. It’s a citizenship he knows is only possible because of the nation born 158 years ago today.
“[Because of Canada] now I have a life here,” Hasan tells me. “This is the result of Canada Day.”
A young boy waves flags while attending Canada Day in Vancouver, on Saturday, July 1, 2023. Ethan Cairns/The Canadian Press.
Canada’s renewed patriotism needs to go beyond Trump and actively include youth
By Amal Attar-Guzman, content manager at The Hub
For the last five years, Canadian patriotism has been suffering, and the numbers back it up. From the pandemic, a decade of detrimental policy decisions at all levels of government, increasingly tough economic and affordability challenges, to debilitating social cohesion, I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that many were feeling social and economic malaise. This has been especially the case for people in my age cohort and younger, who are seriously struggling to find a silver lining in Canada’s future.
However, the tides started to change when President Donald Trump got re-elected. Once he started his tirades of “51st State” rhetoric and tariff threats, Canadians immediately felt this historical insecurity of Americans trying to interfere with Canadian sovereignty, culture, and politics. This was especially felt among Boomers, who then helped Prime Minister Mark Carney to win the election. In cliché fashion, it took an American down south to remind us of the importance of Canada.
While this swell of Canadian patriotism seems promising, its foundations are rocky for two reasons. First, Trump is a short-term political fixture, since he will be in office for four years. And second, Canadian youth meant to continue to carry the patriotic torch are barely represented or involved in this rise of Canadian patriotism. One can watch any “Elbows Up” rally and see barely any young faces in the crowd. And there seems to be a lack of concern that they’re not around.
Basing a country’s patriotism on a political leader for a short period of time, and without actively including Canadian youth in the country’s actual future, is extremely short-sighted.
As we rediscover our patriotism, let’s look forward to finding socioeconomic solutions that have Canadian youth actively in mind and even involved. That way, we can ensure that this sudden swell of Canadian pride is not a short-term gain, but a long-term one.
You have to love your country to keep it
By Kelden Formosa, a Canadian commentator and an elementary school teacher in Calgary
To me, Canada Day evokes two feelings, one coming more from the heart and the other from the head. First, it’s a celebration of this land as my home and native land, to borrow a line from our anthem. There are plenty of beautiful places around the world, but this is the only one that’s really my home. The feeling I have when looking at a vista in Spain or Ireland or the United States is a different one than the feeling I get when looking at one in Newfoundland, Alberta, or British Columbia. All across Canada, I can look at that vista and feel a surge of pride and gratitude—not only is it beautiful in some external sense, but it is my home, and it is beautiful.
How lucky am I to have been born here? The second feeling comes more from the head. Canada has never just been a country; it’s been a project—an audacious experiment in aiming for true North, being strong and free, but tempered by loyalty, pragmatism, quiet competence, and pluralism.
Canada emerges in large part from the traditions of Western Civilization and is firmly within “the West” even now, but we’ve put our own spin on it and can thus contribute something back to Western and global civilization, enriching the whole of humanity. For example, we have (or had) something to teach the world about multiculturalism done well: an important responsibility in an era of migration. In a sense, my hope for Canada is a hope for the whole world. If we can’t get it right here, then who can?
But we’re only likely to get things right, to advance that national project successfully, if we really love it—as it is, as it was, and for what it could be. Canada Day is the time to cultivate that love, to remember who we are, where we come from, and where we’re going, and to share it with our families and neighbours, such that the maple leaf and the land and values it stands for might last—if not forever, then for a very long time to come.
A hat-tip to hockey and all those who play
By Kirk LaPointe, The Hub’s B.C. correspondent
For Canada Day, I’d like to salute a feature of our lives beyond the red maple or the inviting lake, in the crunch of skates in recreational hockey that unites as an enduring rhythm of Canadian life. It can be argued that the beer-league version of old-timers hockey is the largest determinant of our masculinity. For millions of men who play and have played it (we’ll discuss women in a minute), recreational hockey defines how we belong in the shuffle of middle age, how we value camaraderie in the solitude of later life, how we assert competitiveness, how we mellow our rivalries into friendships, and how we nurture our waning physicality as we relive our past and renew the present.
It is where grey hair meets old tape jobs, where laughter is a more important statement than the scoreboard, where the dressing room conversation over the decades shifts from strategies to injuries to procedures to loss. It is less about Wayne Gretzky’s maxim—going where the puck will be—and more about accepting you can mainly be where the puck recently was.
And it grows more inclusive as a game as time goes on: smaller players need not physically fear when bodychecking and slapshots are stricken from play, weaker players need not competitively fear they will never keep up. In most Canadian towns, there is a league, a division, or even just a pick-up game at every level. Within a generation, there will be large leagues of women old timers—you can see them in growing numbers now in their 20s and 30s—and the effect will be to complete the sport’s identity.
For many, it’s the last team they’ll ever play on, and perhaps the most meaningful. It keeps us moving, connected, and, in a country defined by cold, deeply warm.
Canada’s march continues
By J.D.M. Stewart, author and lead at JDM Policy and Communications
I spent the past two years researching and writing a book about Canada’s prime ministers, and I always enjoyed it when I came across the words and examples of prime ministers who reflected on how wonderful this country is or how dedicated they were to it. From Sir John A. Macdonald to Mark Carney, most leaders have celebrated the country and its achievements.
In 1965, when Lester B. Pearson unveiled the Canadian flag that will be everywhere on July 1, he said it represented “not a break with history but a new stage in Canada’s forward march from a group of separate and scattered and dependent colonies, to a great and sovereign Confederation stretching from sea to sea and from our Southern border to the north pole.” This year marked the 60th anniversary of the flag, and Canada continues on its forward march.
Sir Wilfrid Laurier told us that “Canada has been the inspiration of my life.” It is hard not to see a call to action behind those words, a wish to serve, and a hope that those who feel inspired by the country will continue to try to improve it as well.
July 1 is a day for celebrating and being grateful for this country. On this morning, in 1993, Prime Minister Kim Campbell spoke in St. John’s at a sunrise ceremony, and noted how big the country was. “But Canada is not too big to fit in the heart of each and every one of us.”
Canada has a huge place in mine, as I hope it does yours.
Competitors gather for the national anthem prior to rodeo action at the Calgary Stampede in Calgary, Alta., Saturday, July 8, 2023. Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press.
There’s no place like home
By Christopher Dummitt, professor of history at Trent University
I had been living in Britain for three years before I fully realized how much Canada was my home. It was the winter of 2007.
My three-year appointment as a professor at the University of London wasn’t going to guarantee long-term security, so I’d started applying for academic jobs. As a Canadian historian, unsurprisingly, most of those jobs were back here in Canada.
That’s when I got shortlisted for a job at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario. It wasn’t just any opportunity. Peterborough was my hometown. My parents had grown up there. Same with my grandparents. And their parents before them.
I flew into Toronto Pearson in late January, in the freezing cold, and rented a car for the drive northeast. It’s possibly the least auspicious way to arrive in any country: being greeted by the hellscape of anger and frustration that is Highway 401.
But as I exited onto Highway 115 and headed north, something started to change. I passed by exits and restaurants I knew. I crossed over the high country near Kirby and past the Tim Horton’s that everyone stops at, and descended into the rolling hills of Peterborough County.
The feeling was instantaneous. This landscape made sense to me. It wasn’t like driving through England, where it all seemed lush and green and different. Something just felt right here. It felt like home.
I think I started to smile, or maybe that’s just how I remember it. It’s always nice to go away, but even better to come home.
Even though I’d been born and raised in Canada, it was that bitterly cold but sunny day in January, driving north along the 115, that I fully realized this was really home.
Everyone might have a different version of this story, but what brings us together on Canada Day is the shared sense of belonging here. Exactly here.
