I would focus on our inventiveness and our diversity.
Our history of inventiveness is amazing. Canadians tend to be bashful about it when we shouldn’t be.
Remember Marquis wheat, which opened up the Canadian West to gain production and other agricultural developments, and extensive population growth.
Canadians not only feed themselves, but millions of people around the world. Canada’s agriculture and food sector, from farming to food processing, retailing, hospitality and research, employ a large number of people.
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And we’re still researching and developing new products to meet changing needs . That’s true in many other sectors of Canada’s economy, too. Think Blackberry.
Consider how we have harnessed radioactive materials for health care and energy. Sadly, we have yet to solve the problems of melting ice in the Arctic, loss of permafrost there, and the pollution caused by automobiles and industry.
Think about communications, from the telephone of Alexander Graham Bell to the theories of Herbert Marshall McLuhan.
Consider the Canadarm for moving heavy equipment in space.
Appreciate universal national health care and the Canada Pension Plan, which affect our daily lives.
Reflect on the work of peace-making and peace-keeping, instead of fighting wars, and prime minister Lester Pearson’s Nobel Prize in 1957 for making that idea come to life through the United Nations.
Then, consider our diversity.
We are many different people from many different places, a nation of immigrants.
We are the ancient peoples who likely crossed the Bering Sea ice bridge and are today’s First Nations, Métis, and non-status aboriginals.
We are English and French, the first two nations to establish foreign colonies here after the Vikings. We are people from countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and elsewhere.
True, we haven’t always gotten along. The French and English fought and are still fighting. “Canadians” fought Aboriginal people and then tried to assimilate them through residential schools, two problems still requiring urgent settlement.
We have fought overseas in South Africa, in Spain, in two world wars and in Korea. We’ve even fought the Americans.
But people from different heritages have left indelible marks on Canada. John A. Macdonald, our first prime minister, and Bell were both Scots. So was Sanford Fleming, creator of standard time.
Hans Selye, whose work paved the way for understanding stress, was Hungarian. Wilder Penfield, who helped us learn much about the brain and its work, was an American. Louis Riél was Métis. Adrienne Clarkson and Michalle Jean came from Hong Kong and Haiti, respectively.
In countless communities, people of very different traditions set aside historic differences and worked for their common good.
After you’ve read this and done your own thinking, read Discover Canada, the federal government’s new definition of Canada, for those wanting to become citizens. Ask yourself how comfortable you are with that .
