What is the Strength of the Canadian Character?

It’s a question Canadian’s ponder and navel gaze about more often than they should. It can be something that frustrates and confounds us, or more often than not something that we pay no mind to except maybe once a year on the first of July or in a high school social studies class.

Unlike the British and French we don’t cling to our past glorying in it and believing our history continues to make us a great nation, that our traditions are a shining light, the envy of the world. In fact, frustratingly Canadians know very little about their past. As annual Canada Day poll, after Canada Day poll shows, most of our citizens could not pass a quiz on even the basics of their own nations history. So what about the future?

With the possible exception of former Prime Minister Sir Wilfred Laurier who said that the “20^th century would belong to Canada” we rarely dream of or aspire to greatness as a nation.

There is no equivalent of Manifest Destiny in Canada, unlike the United States we don’t dream that we are a nation destined for glory, a ‘shining light on a hill’ for the worlds oppressed. In our elections there is never talk of ‘Canadian Exceptionalism’, any candidate who did would mocked left and right by the media and public.

So if we don’t glorify or even know about our past; if we don’t have national visions of glory and destiny, what then is our unique strength and character as a nation and as a people?

The answer is in the ‘now’; Canadians are a people that live in the present. This does not mean we don’t plan for the future or have our own unique perspective on our past.  It means that we don’t cling to past glories, we don’t generally have grand visions of a powerful future, but by being in the now, by living in the moment we are often able to pull together and propel ourselves to greatness for a moment in time.

Whether it is storming Vimy Ridge in 1917, an overtime win on home ice in the Vancouver Olympics, or our seemingly never ending need to deal with issues of national unity Canadians have a unique ability to reinvent themselves to meet a challenge.

Unburdened by our past or shackled to a vision of future greatness, the Canadian Character is one that strolls along unassumingly living day by day until an obstacle is placed in our collective path. Then determinedly, and very often creatively we accept that challenge pull together for the moment to meet the crisis. We don’t always succeed, but truthfully, most times we do.

So the secret to our greatness as a people and as a nation is not to be found in a Pierre Burton book or a Group of Seven Painting, it’s not found in some glorious vision of becoming a northern superpower, it is found in the often daily challenges we meet and rise to overcome. As a nation, or individually, we always find a way and that my friend is the real strength of the Canadian Character.