A Canadian is a transplanted snail called James who sat down on a brick.  A Canadian is a big fat street party on the Danforth in Toronto, 2004.  A Canadian is hockey night in Canada on a small patch of ice created by buckets of water in the backyard.  A Canadian is a plane full of people from Vancouver flying to Quebec with signs saying:  “WE LOVE YOU.”  A Canadian is the wind on the prairies that who has seen.  And a red-headed girl in a green-gabled house on an island with red soil.  And the Mounties who always always get their man.  A Canadian trusts the law.  And since we generally rank either second or third or fourth or whatever, we try harder.  But weren’t we proud when Gorbachev said, “Look at Canada. They don’t kill people there.”  Or something like that.  That’s because a Canadian is, if nothing else, decent.  Isn’t that the adjective that most commonly comes to mind?  We’re as decent as the day is long, are we not--fair-minded, peaceable, not demanding guns to defend ourselves, abhorring and resisting the culture of violence we are virtually force-fed by the fee-fi-fo-fuming giant close by.  My Canadian friends who travel a lot say we don’t know how lucky we are.  I think a lot of us do know it.  I, for one, am a Canadian who loves Canada more than words can say.

My love is not cheap.  It’s been tested, and it endures.  I can thank my parents for this.  And I can thank the community from which I came, and which was destroyed by the particular brand of racism in my childhood.  I can thank my Grade Two Highroads to Reading that I practically memorized when we were living in that once-upon-a-time space called Slocan (British Columbia).  Books were precious and few.  I can thank the CBC that I listened to when we were finally allowed to have radios again, after we were moved east of the Rockies. That’s when a Canadian became the Green Hornet, the House on the Hill, Share the Wealth, Terry and the Pirates and Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster and Rawhide, and that beautiful blonde skater, Barbara Ann Scott.  Other Canadians from my community who were exiled missed out on all that.  A Canadian is a group of more than four thousand people who were exiled for no crime.  Oh sweet democratic country that I love. Some people are tired of this drum-beat....