The beginning of July is a time for celebration across North America. It begins on the first of the month when Canadians close their offices, factories and banks and take to the outdoors to observe Canada Day.
They hold barbecues, corn roasts, games for the children, rock concerts on outdoor stages and watch fireworks displays at dusk, which at this time of the year occurs as late as ten in the evening. In some places north of the Arctic Circle, the sun does not go down at all but just moves around the horizon.
A focal point is a big concert on the grassy mound in front of the Parliament buildings in the national capital, Ottawa, and carried on television to all points. This features an air show by the Canadian Forces’ crack aerobatic team, the Snowbirds in their distinctive red training jets, and musical acts from across the sprawling country.
This week, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh were at the top of the guest list on one of their frequent visits to the second largest country in the world, yet occupied by only 34 million people. It is also one of the countries of which – like Jamaica – Elizabeth II is head of state. This is the seventh occasion on which the monarch has celebrated the day in Ottawa.
This year, Canada celebrated its 143rd anniversary of confederation, which came about after delegates from the province of Canada, comprising Ontario and Quebec, together with two other British colonies, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, met in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, for several months. They drafted the British North America Act, which is the basic document for the new confederation. The Act was presented to Queen Victoria in February 1867 and it very quickly navigated the two houses of the British Parliament. Victoria gave royal assent to the act on March 29, 1867, and set July 1 of that year as the date for union.
The conference featured a heated debate about how to describe the new country, with the delegates rejecting “kingdom” and “confederation”. They eventually consulted the Bible and used a designation found in the Psalms – that’s how the description Dominion came about. That template was adopted by some of the white colonies, notably Australia and New Zealand, and by Jamaica and other Caribbean countries when their time came. Two years later it was designated by law as Dominion Day.
Because the Canadians of those early years considered themselves to be primarily British, there were no celebrations to speak of and it wasn’t until 1917 – the golden anniversary of confederation – that any significant official celebrations took place. There were a few unsuccessful attempts by parliamentary back-benchers to change the designation to Canada Day, and that didn’t actually come about until 1982. By then that was what most Canadians called the day. The change was greeted by objections from fusty old monarchists and lovers of all things British, but their influence has dwindled as the years pass. Nowadays the celebrations are flashy and supported by grants from Ottawa and the provincial governments to cities and local organisations to put on local activities.
The earliest foreign settlers were from France, and they settled mostly in Quebec and the neighbouring province of New Brunswick. The confederation deal consisted mostly of an uneasy alliance between the primarily British settlers of Ontario and the Maritime provinces, and the mostly French settlers in Quebec. That accommodation has coloured much of the country’s history, resulting in such things as officially entrenching the use of English and French for official communications.
The Canada of today is quite a different creature from the one conceived by the Fathers of Confederation at their conference in Charlottetown. The big cities reflect the waves of immigration which have taken place in the past half-century. Take a bus or subway in Toronto and you see fellow-passengers of every possible hue, dressed in fashions from around the world, speaking a babble of languages. In Montreal you see Haitians, Cambodians, Vietnamese and people from French Africa. Vancouver is filled with Chinese who speak Mandarin and Cantonese and Punjabi-speaking Sikhs who work in lumber mills or market gardens in the fertile delta lands around the west coast city.
The aboriginal people who were here long before the immigrants were given the short end of the stick for so long, but have finally begun to receive the recognition and respect they deserve as well as a share in the spoils developed and produced by the newcomers at their expense.
South of the border, the Americans celebrate their independence day even more elaborately. On this occasion the festivities take place tomorrow. They hold parades led by the requisite marching brass band with acrobats tumbling along main streets as floats depicting all aspects of the American experience cruise by. Their country, too, has undergone enormous changes from the rural, Anglocentric, agrarian society of nostalgia; the slave-powered plantation regime of the south and the wide-open-spaces ethos of legend into a complex, modern post-industrial society which is still a powerful magnet to peoples from around the world.
The US has grown into the most powerful economic and military regime in history. They have produced some of the finest minds in the scientific and artistic worlds; have contributed enormously to the world’s cultural domain, and have generously assisted poorer peoples and defeated foes alike to get on their feet. At the same time they have indulged in some of the worst practices of demagogues and bully-boys in their relations with other nations. They have propped up evil dictators who have inflicted much malevolence on their own peoples. They have interfered in the internal business of other countries merely because they chose a different path from what the powers in Washington desired. And some of the cultural influences they have exported we could well do without.
But the well-intentioned founders set high standards in the declaration of independence which they celebrate on the Fourth of July and the constitution which grew out of that spectacularly successful effort to break away from the straitjacket of 18th century British colonial rule. Being only human, of course, they often fall quite short of those ideals. But every now and then, they rise to the occasion and even surpass it, which gives the rest of us hope that we, too, can aspire and achieve.
Both these countries were built by people who fled oppressive conditions and regimes in other parts of the world. The institutions and structures they have erected are a testament to the attractiveness of the dream they had when they came and the reality that they can, in fact, realise that dream. I moved to Canada with my small family 40 years ago and in that time have witnessed the mind-boggling changes which have taken place there. Overall, this is a very comfortable and pleasant place in which to live – a multi-hued, multi-lingual, multi-cultural multi-flavoured smorgasbord where with determination and effort, all who want to can make a good life.
Be the first to comment