Canada has always been a different kind of country. We weren’t founded through a revolution like our neighbours to the south, but by years of diplomacy and co-operation. We didn’t need a civil war to unite our colonies under one banner, just a working railroad.
Even after Canada became its own country in 1867, we kept close ties to the British Empire, effortlessly inheriting the same systems of government, public education and justice that the Brits had hammered out for over 600 years of conflict. All the hard work had already been done for us.
That’s not to say that we don’t have any past glories to be proud of – the march on Washington in 1812, Vimy Ridge, Paschendale, Juno Beach, and hundreds of other battles and peacekeeping missions. We have always been resolute in times of war and conflict, but that’s never been the quality that defined us as a nation.
We started as a nation of farmers, concession roads and small towns, united by our shared experiences of Canada – cold winters, warm summers and swarms of mosquitoes and black flies. We evolved into an educated, urban society with tall buildings, clean streets, cold winters, warm summers and swarms of mosquitoes and black flies.
Like the Brits, we tend to praise quick wits and humour above all other attributes, albeit with a blue collar tinge that we picked up from the U.S. I liked Chretien in the beginning because he was quick with the comebacks and entertaining in debates. Arguably our greatest cultural export is comedy.
We have our own strange language in Canada, punctuated with "eh’s?", "whuhs?", odd spellings, and foreign concepts like tuques, loonies, toonies and two-fours.
If we emptied our collective closets we could carpet the country in a sea of plaid, our national colour scheme. If we laid our hockey sticks from end to end we could probably circle the equator several times.
It’s impossible to know what to make of that, or to define a country based on its national character. Canada is hard to categorize, as are Canadians.
What does it mean to be Canadian anyway – putting aside the fuzzy patriotism foisted on us by our national beer companies? More importantly, what makes a Canadian great?
The CBC recently asked this question of it viewers, directing people to their Web site to cast their votes for the Greatest Canadian.
There is a long list of names to choose from. There are sports legends like Wayne Gretzky and Rocket Richard, writers like Margaret Atwood and Timothy Findley, actors like Jim Carrey and Mike Myers, musicians like Neil Young and Stompin’ Tom Connors, politicians like Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Sir John A. Macdonald, inspirational figures like Terry Fox and Louis Riel, inventors like Dr. Frederick Banting and Alexander Graham Bell, philosophers like Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye, and heroes like World War I aces Billy Bishop and Roy Brown.
To cast your vote you can either pick a name from the long and distinguished list or nominate your own pick for Greatest Canadian.
It’s a tough question, and reading through the amazing biographies on the CBC site makes it even tougher. Do you go with someone who exemplifies what it means to be Canadian, a comic writer like Stephen Leacock, an artist and naturalist like Tom Thomson, or a hockey player like Bobby Orr? Do you choose someone who helped put Canada on the map, like newspaper baron Ken Thomson, spinal cord research advocate Rick Hansen, or ecologist and television personality Dr. David Suzuki?
Can you reject the contributions made by divas like Shania Twain, Celine Dion, Alanis Morissette, and Sarah Mclachlan? If you travelled to Sweden, grabbed someone by the shoulders and shook him or her until they spit out the name of a famous Canadian, would that Canadian be Pamela Anderson? Would it be Bob or Doug McKenzie? Would it be Rush frontman Geddy Lee?
Is the Greatest Canadian someone who helped to lay the foundations for Canada, like our early Prime Ministers.
Do they have to be born here to qualify, or can that person be someone like Nigeria’s Daniel Igali, proudly waving the Canadian flag after winning Olympic gold in wrestling?
Personally I’m not really sure who to vote for or how I would even begin to narrow my own list of Canadian heroes down, even if I was allowed a hundred votes. Even the CBC’s own list is far from comprehensive. For example, you won’t find any members from the Tragically Hip on the list, despite the obvious Canadian content in almost everything they do. Honest Ed Mirvish, the owner of Toronto’s original discount store, a philanthropist, and a great patron of the arts world-wide, also didn’t warrant a place on the list.
Don Cherry also didn’t make the cut – like him or lump him, you can’t deny his inherent greatness.
It was also interesting to note that brewing magnate John Molson made the list while his competitor John Labatt did not. Was that the result of a personal preference for Molson Export over Labatt Blue on behalf of the CBC archivists, or did Mr. Labatt have some kind of deep dark secret I don’t know about, like maybe funnelling a portion of his profits to the Kaiser?
So who do I cast my vote for? This isn’t like voting for a Prime Minister or playing that game where you choose the one food you could eat the rest of your life.
After careful consideration I’ve decided to vote for Dr. David Suzuki, who spoke in Whistler last week. Any national attention he gets, even from a silly poll like this one, will help him to advance his further sustainability platform in this country, which is what I think Canada needs. It’s been a long time since Sir John A. Macdonald built the railroad, William Lyon Mackenzie King established Canada’s strong economy and social safety net, and Lester B. Pearson made Canada into an international power.
The others names on the list are great, no question, but Dr. Suzuki is the only great Canadian with a vision for the future of this country.
That’s refreshing for a country that seems to spend an inordinate amount of time dwelling on the glories of our past. It’s time to move forward, eh?
