I find it a melancholy thing to contemplate our flag which is an astonishing thing because I belong to that generation which grew up without a national flag. We fought to have one that was designed and made and voted on by a Canadian Parliament. My first protest march was a walk to Parliament Hill with high school frends to demand Parliament support a Canadian flag and not a colonial leftover. It was a great day when this happened.
But at the end of the day, a flag is only a piece of coloured cloth, what gives it meaning is what it represents, the character of a people, their joie de vivre, their accomplishments. And we have had a government for what seems like these many decades now that is turning Canada into a hermit kingdom. A place tourists don’t want to visit. A place where accurate, national statistics are not welcome but electronic Watergate snooping is legal. A place where the right to buy and own a gun is more important than the lives of young women. A place where Canada is world famous as the ‘fossil’ nation, anxious to slurry tar to China or Texas or any place else that wants it. A place that the high tech industries are fleeing. A place that can’t afford its pensions and public services but can afford billions for a few war planes.
How many of the national politicians heard Justin Trudeau’s ‘cri de coeur’? He spoke for many of us old fashioned Canadians who love our country but despair at the primitive belief based politics which has its clawed hands around the nation’s neck.