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We’re only in a position where we can effuse about our superior virtues, because absent our comforts, absent our wealth, absent our security, earlier Canadians offered their “blood, toil, tears and sweat” to labours beyond our capacity, and in conditions we will (hopefully) never taste, in fashioning this country. They were as much the artisans of our present good fortune as those craftsmen who worked in stone, ages before there was a Canada, to give Europe its cathedrals.

They were as much the artisans of our present good fortune as those craftsmen who worked in stone

It was they who delivered the heritage of accomplishment for which on every July 1st we give thanks for, they who evolved the civil code, that manner we have in dealing with and thinking of our fellow Canadians, that we take such pride in. The latter-day penchant for frequent historical apologies is troublesome, especially if it is not at least occasionally played against the recognition of how much of the mixed past was right and honourable. In fact, we might ask how much of this apologetic streak is built on the arrogant presumption that if it had been “us” back then — us being the tolerant and inclusive and enlightened Canadians of 2019 — we could never have acted like “them.” Here’s a thought: them are us.

We could do with a dose of modesty about our current progressive moment, and a little more reverence, or at least respect, to the many, many moments that preceded it.

Photo by Mike Hensen/Postmedia News

A Canada Day celebration, thoughtfully conceived, would be something of a festival of thanksgiving for all the good things, brave actions and enduring fortitude it took to bring Canada to its 21st-century heights. It would, naturally, count our heroes, but fix equally on the nameless labourers, farmers, loggers, traders, fishermen, and emphatically the mothers of our pioneers. How greatly the women of early Canada, with all the challenges and deprivations of their time, helped knit our common values and inspirited our civic ethos, is beyond measurement, but it is not therefore beyond present day regard and celebration.