Canada always has been and always will be something worth celebrating.
Of course, it’s not perfect. No political entity ever has been or ever will be. It’s the striving to be better that makes countries like Canada special.
For Prince George residents who choose to focus on Canada’s many shortcomings, such the genocide of residential schools, colonial oppression, its racist history against Black and Asian Canadians, the whitewashed history and so on, you are ignoring the progress baked into the past 155 years.
For Prince George residents who don’t like name changes (or change in general), more immigration, more social, political, and financial power for First Nations, more Indigenous inclusivity, and a broader definition of what it means to be Canadian, you are ignoring the progress of the past 155 years in equal measure.
Canada’s ongoing evolution has been either too fast or too slow, depending on one’s individual perspective, but no one can argue it has been steady and relentless. Canada is unrecognizable from what it was 155 years ago, and it will be unrecognizable again 150 years from now. Both of those realities are worth celebrating.
The only meaningful debate is what happens next. What’s special about Canada is we have the freedom to have those debates. That freedom is neither unlimited or perfect but it is a freedom Canadians enjoy to a much greater degree than a majority of the world’s citizens. That is worth celebrating.
The country, the flag, and the history mean different things to different people. That diversity of views is worth celebrating.
Individual Canadians are free to celebrate, mourn, protest, or ignore the significance of Canada Day because the day doesn’t belong to some Canadians more or less than others. Then, now, and in the years to come, Canada Day is for all Canadians. That is worth celebrating.
However you choose to spend this day, it is worth celebrating the ever-changing ideal of Canada and the good fortune to be a citizen of this country.
Happy Canada Day.
Editor-in-chief Neil Godbout
