We can do this. We can celebrate Dominion/Canada Day not just by shunning office and computer for dock and cooler, but by committing ourselves to a positive vision of the country. Rah-rah rhetoric about one’s nation is out of fashion these days, at least in nations worthy of it.
“From the river to the sea” is chanted with passionate intensity, while “From sea to sea” lacks all conviction. But it would be a mistake, a kind of weird anti-nostalgia, to assume that in days of yore the First of July oratory was smug, facile, and indolent. Well, undoubtedly some of it was.
No one who has attended speeches will deny that they vary greatly in quality, with many apparently designed to fend off somnolence only through irritation. But the real stuff had substance to it. In pointing to Canada’s glorious past achievements, our forebears were not inviting complacency or idleness.
A certain degree of contentment and recreation, sure. But recreation is “re-creation,” restoring us for challenges to come physically, mentally, and morally. It is not, or should not be, a matter of becoming so intoxicated as to be obnoxious or too intoxicated even for that.
It also does not deny the challenges. Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward, and a nation and culture that have achieved great things must be determined both to preserve and enhance. As that line from “In Flanders Fields” goes, “To you from failing hands we throw/ The torch; be yours to hold it high.
” And not .