Canada Day, 102 days early

It's probably a silly thing to be proud of one's country. Neither I nor anyone I know has had anything to do with creating or maintaining the things I love about Canada, for instance. I certainly didn't create the great natural beauty that's virtually everywhere you turn in this vast land.

(That brings to mind one of my favourite quotes, from the renowned astronomer Carl Sagan: 'To make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.")

I love how the oven predates the universe!

Nor have I done much to sustain what to my mind is the equally magnificent "human-ness" that is Canada. Indeed, the sheer scale of the country and its occasionally cantankerous climate probably had a lot to do with that. Better minds than mine (Margaret Atwood's, for instance) have mused that we are still a people huddled in our little villages for warmth against hostile Nature. As such, we have a collective instinct towards community. Hardly individualism a l'Americain is all well and good, but in a Saskatchewan blizzard it's an invitation to suicide. (It's ironic that a country abbreviated U.S. only remembers us when they're at war. Maybe that's why Americans declare war on everything so often.)

And yet I do feel a great pride in my country, because I sense that Shane Koyczan's on to something. In that poem he recited at the Olympic opening ceremonies last month, we all heard it: we are an experiment going right for a change.

Take health care, and I keep cycling back to this simply because it continues to puzzle and bewilder me. The tea-baggers in the States can rail against entitlement programs all they want and I can think of is how many of them are safely insured? Our system is far from perfect--wait times are sometimes (or often, depending on the procedure) disgustingly long and even though we spend less than the U.S. per capita on health care, the money we do spend eats up a large and ever-increasing chunk of government budgets. These and other problems remain to be solved, and they are daunting. But in solving them, it goes without saying that universality will be preserved. It is the sine qua non of health care in Canada, the founding principle, the entire idea in a nutshell. Profit doesn't enter into it, which is why the GOP looks at it askance.

Call me a Canadian, but I can't help thinking we've got it right. Or at least a hell of a lot more right than they do south of 49. We are, quite frankly, flabbergasted that anyone would be against extending health care to someone who currently does not have it. That mindset, to the average Canadian, is either evil or profoundly deluded.

Here's another thing I like about this country: we're not so relentlessly political. Reading about the Orwellian rewriting of history by the Texas Board of Education, I was struck dumb by "the vote was 10 to 5 along party lines. See, up here in Canada, the only politicians are...politicians: provincial and federal. At the municipal level, there are no political parties.

Now, sometimes it seems like there are. The Toronto city council, for instance, might as well be affiliated with the NDP. But that reflects the leanings of a majority of their constituents: just the same as in Texas. The difference is, there are no party lines, so councils are mayors are free to draw from anywhere on the political spectrum. I think this opens minds just a wee bit. An idea from the right or left isn't as likely in Canada to be dismissed out of hand simply because it came from the right or the left. And all but the most partisan have to admit that every once in a while, "the other side" might have a valid point.

Four out of five Canadians agree that a new law in Quebec requiring Muslim women to unveil if they wish to receive (or provide) public service is a good thing. It's rare to find even that level of agreement in Canada, but it gets to the heart of who we are as a people. We're all about reasonable accommodation. I don't see much of that spirit in the what's in it for me 'United' States at all. We're just simply more moderate, more balanced, on nearly any metric you'd care to name. We have a better work-life balance largely because we're not....quite...as materialistic. This is one reason our economy is in considerably better shape than theirs.

We have a considerably more nuanced attitude on religion, to wit: it's perfectly okay so long as it's private. Public displays of faith tend to rub Canadians the wrong way, whereas they're pretty much required in America.

There are problems with the Canadian approach to things. We value consensus so highly that sometimes it's a miracle anything gets done. We'll avoid confrontation even when it's clearly warranted, which tends to cast segments of our population as doormats. Culturally, we not only welcome the world, we practically insist that the world bring its troubled attitudes with it when it comes calling (though that is beginning to change...I'm not sure whether the Harper government has anything to do with it, but if so, I thank them). But for all its foibles and issues, I wouldn't choose to live anywhere else.