White settlers and Canada Day: A refusal

 

The thought of giving up Canada Day celebrations was initially difficult for me.  I was very attached to Canada Day, without really knowing why.  It wasn't until my kids steadfastly refused to acknowledge "colonizers day" a few years back that I decided to sit down and really think it through.  Why was I so committed to recognizing Canada Day?  

The first piece of unpacking I did with respect to this question was an interrogation of who it is that Canada Day benefits.  There's some backstory that's important, mostly because I think it sets the stage for what happens during Canada Day in myriad communities across the country.  Canada Day was a huge deal in the the tiny farm community where I grew up.  There were parades, where every human within a twenty mile radius showed up to swelter in the heat and watch various types of farm equipment drive by.  In parallel, there was also the legendary Sports Day.  Sports Day was always held on the weekend closest to Canada Day; it consisted of (and still does, I think) a slo-pitch tournament and associated Canada Day-themed festivities.  When I was a kid we looked forward to this event all year; it marked the end of school and the beginning of summer-proper. Each local family donated pies to sell at the concession and volunteered to flip burgers for a few hours, while others played ball and the teenagers routinely attempted to pull alcohol from the beer grounds without getting caught.  It was a free-range kind of day that distilled the culture of the community in one grand event; it pulled all members of the community together regardless of how well they got along throughout the rest of the year.    

It's important to note that the community I'm speaking of here was exclusively populated by white settlers.  Indigenous people had been so thoroughly erased from the region that, to many townsfolk, I'm sure it was like they had never existed in the first place.  The Canada Day celebrations were celebrations of homesteading, of settler grit, and community resilience -- in other words, of land theft and cultural domination.  The celebrations were fun only for those who belonged in the circle of colonial supremacy, and in retrospect I see that they implicitly and almost violently reinforced local colonial norms.  

So, it became clear to me that I could let go of Canada Day.  However, I found that this was not so straightforward for many.  The "cancel Canada Day" movement is widely considered unpatriotic, especially during present times where people are shouting "elbows up" and reinforcing Canadian patriotism at every turn.  I believe that this is symptomatic of yet another colonial mind-trick; that of binary thinking. The inherent problem with binaries has begun to pop up everywhere, in conversations about everything from human gender to artificial intelligence.  If I were thinking in alignment with a colonial binary, I could either be patriotic or not, and nothing in between.  I beg of you to consider how this binary is insulting to human intelligence.  

I firmly believe that we are capable of holding two or more complex ideas in our heads at once.  This means that I can cancel Canada Day and still be glad to live in Canada.  I can identify deeply problematic Canadian dynamics like racism and cultural genocide, and still recognize the good things like low cost health care. I can seek out Canadian-made products while also critiquing colonial consumerism.  I can hold Canadian governments and citizens accountable for harm perpetrated against Indigenous communities while simultaneously experiencing gratitude for my relative safety.  

If this is not robust enough an argument to abandon Canada Day, perhaps relational accountability is.  Canada Day is experienced as hurtful and traumatizing to most of my Indigenous friends and colleagues.  Why would I celebrate something that causes harm to people I care about?  I can contribute to strong and connected local communities without relying on Canada Day as a crutch to do so.