THIS week, and not for the first time, I have had cause to thank God that my Aunt Agnes chose to emigrate from Glasgow to Canada and not the USA. More than 60 years later, during which there have been seven children, 10 grandchildren and a great grand-child, I am with them once more to celebrate the wedding of my cousin Nicholas to Candace. There is, of course, a Glaswegian flavour to the wedding which is suffused with drink, tears, man-hugs and optimistic promises. At the end Runrig’s By Yon Bonnie Banks is played and everyone does that thing where, in the eyes of others, it looks like we all run into each other and head-butt someone.
In most respects though, this is a Canadian affair. Seven nationalities are represented here: Canadian, Scots, Irish, English, French, Russian, Dutch and Indian. In Scotland, we like to think of ourselves as diverse and we probably are. In Canada though, diversity comes before everything else. Here, it seems to be an instinct and not a choice.
My trip here also coincided with Canada Day on July 1. Next year Canada, as we know it, will be 150 years old. Canada wears its independence and its patriotism lightly and the close proximity of America’s Independence Day has led some to suggest that there should simply be one big celebration to unite both countries. Canadians will never allow this to happen, though. A large part of the attraction of being Canadian is a love of not being American. This isn’t an unpleasant or xenophobic thing; the Canadians are incapable of hating anyone. Rather, it is a distillation of many Canadians’ contempt for some of their southern cousins more acquisitive and avaricious tendencies.
Canada Day commemorates the year when the three old colonies of Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were gathered into a single and largely self-governing dominion of the British Empire. Full independence arrived in 1982 but Canada had effectively been independent a long time before then. This is a public holiday and there are fireworks and flags; and social media helps spread the happiness and hoopla far beyond these shores. This is effectively Canada’s Independence Day but it carries none of the unpleasant baggage that attaches itself to that term in the US. It is a curious quirk of geopolitical fate that sharing the same border are two countries whose means of expressing and celebrating their independence couldn’t be any more different.
In America, as events of the last few weeks have sadly shown, nationhood and patriotism is increasingly expressed through the law of force and at the end of a gun. The preamble to this year’s July 4 echoed to the sound of gunfire all over a sick and uncivilised nation as America continues in its favourite pastime of arming emotionally fragile young loners, and its police continue to appoint themselves judge, jury and executioner of young black men, and where to express any sort of Islamic identity is to risk suspicion, fear and hate. Indeed, as some Americans deployed social media to ridicule Canada Day as irrelevant in its proximity to July 4, Donald Trump, the man who wants to be their president, said that he would buy Canada if Hilary Clinton beat him to the White House.
Sometimes a country gets the leader that it deserves. If Trump becomes president at the end of this year there could be no more appropriate chief for a once mighty nation that now chooses to express its identity in excluding others, erecting barriers, abjuring all notions of community and sharing and telling its young people that the law of the gun is above all others.
It’s not that Canadians don’t feel proud of their country; why wouldn’t they when there is much of which they can be proud? It’s just that they seem to eschew patriotism, or at least those dubious qualities that have come to be associated with patriotism. You won’t hear a Canadian telling you that his country is the best country in the world or that its attitude to racial, religious and sexual diversity is world class (which it is). Nor will you hear its political leaders talk about the “Canadian Way” or aim to make its health and education systems “world class”. These are empty and shallow slogans which say everything about the bearers’ arrogance and little about what can realistically be expected. Canadians revel in being relaxed about their patriotism; it isn’t expressed in flag-waving; slogans or aggression. They take pride in being patriotically unpatriotic.
The main editorial of the The Globe and Mail on July 1 stated: “When it comes to celebrating ourselves and our country, Canadians can feel somewhat awkward. Our best values, on a good day, are expressed modestly, not shouted aggressively. Take us for who we are, and that’s fine with us – national pride shouldn’t require a hard sell.” The writer could have abbreviated this opening paragraph to: “We are not America.”
I’d like to see Scotland take its lead from Canada and become more relaxed about its national identity and its sense of nationhood. Too often, I feel, we choose to define ourselves by what we think England isn’t. Yet, we no longer need to do this as England seems to be choosing now to express its sense of national identity by what Scotland isn’t: in this it seems to be going down a different path from Scotland.
The manner in which the EU referendum was conducted south of the border was ugly and characterised by fear, loathing and suspicion. Its outcome was gained by the lies of an elite who have always seen power as a right and not a privilege. The blood-letting at the top of the Tory Party for control of the UK is the natural denouement to a campaign which extolled division and exclusion and ridiculed compassion and community.
Scotland no longer has to fret so much about making the case for independence as England is doing it so well for us.
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