Jabberwalker Jabberwalker:
Canada might easily fracture into three or four pieces. Even Saskatchewan considered separation during the last referendum. I guess that it was because of the UNFOGIVEABLE OUTRAGES committed against Saskatchewan by Canada, I guess.
I really don't like living in a nation of whiny victims. Just how far up your asshole can you bury your head, anyway?
The thing for me is remembering these "old injuries" not so much to dwell on them and cite them as reasons why those Easterners/Anglos/white people/etc. hate whichever group was supposedly wronged so much as it is trying to understand how these things fit into a larger sense of frustration and alienation many Canadians in different parts of the country feel, and for different reasons.
For Francophone Quebecers, it's part of a larger sense of the unique situation they face not being really recognized by other Canadians; for Albertans it's part of a feeling that we're treated as a second-class hinterland that can be exploited by parts of the country further East; for many Aboriginal people it's a sense that their rights and even their identities are seen as a "problem" that needs to be gotten rid of by "educating" the supposedly backwards peoples.
That's why the study of Canadian history has been so important to me, and why French has been a far more useful language for me to learn than Mandarin, Spanish or any other. What kind of common threads can be found in these different incidents? How do they fit together into the larger sense of how Canada has developed? What can they suggest about what needs to change in Canada, and what common ground exists between them?
That's the mentality of guys like Peter Lougheed and Claude Ryan, I think. The reason they cite supposed old grudges is because they're trying to make their fellow Canadians aware of these problems, and show how various actions have caused problems for the different peoples and regions of the country. No one who knows Lougheed would doubt his patriotism and his loyalty to Canada-but when federal action caused serious problems for Albertans, problems that seemed to be part of a larger pattern of Ottawa always shafting Alberta in favour of Ontario and Quebec.
That's the sort of thing I've tried to study to determine how Canada can be made to work better for
all of its peoples. Complete consensus and agreement is never possible, of course, but at the same time there are still some serious problems that need to be addressed, problems that have their roots in Canadian history. By actually seeing what Quebecers have to say for themselves about the national unity issue, I've become much more sympathetic to their views, just as I have come to better understand the perspectives of Newfoundlanders, Aboriginal peoples and more. Simply dismissing their views outright won't necessarily get us any further to dealing with the challenges we're facing today-oftentimes, people have protested because, from their point of view, various actions have hurt the country. The alternatives they propose are oftentimes with the intent of strengthening Canada, not just reopening old wounds.
People often ask "who speaks for Canada" in these types of debates. Well, one could just as easily argue that we have all spoken for Canada at one point or another, as each of our own voices are important to the whole. My signature quotes Sir George Etienne Cartier in mentioning how countries are formed from the union of communities have similar interests and sympathies-if there's this much frustration from this many of our communities, then it's worth studying what they have to say to see how we can fix the problem, and what they offer as solutions.
That was one of the main ways that the Fathers of Confederation ultimately created Canada. We could do worse than to follow their example.
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