Why Celebrate?

(Flag flying protocol dictates that country’s flag should not be displayed upside down “except as a signal of distress in instances of extreme danger to life.” The upside down flag recognizes the role that our country had in the ultimate consequence of extreme danger to life — death; the deaths of so many young Indigenous children in the care of the state.

In the wake of the discovery of even more bodies in unmarked graves near former Indian Residential Schools, our country sits at one of those notable crossroads of history. As the annual Canada Day anniversary approaches, how can we best celebrate the country we call home while acknowledging our complicated and, too often, shameful history?

Behind us is the road already traveled – our story. Sadly, the ones we’ve told ourselves about Canada’s founding, its leaders and its peoples are riddled with inaccuracies and, too often, lies.

Rewriting History

It’s been said that history is written by the victors. Judging by the sanitized school textbooks of my own education, that adage seems about right. My dad taught us Social Studies in grades 7 and 8. I remember a unit on the Indian (that was the term of the day) presence in North America. We dutifully learned about the Cree and the Iroquois, the beautiful carved totem poles of the west coast tribes and the nutritious Indigenous invention, pemmican, that became a staple for fur traders and settlers across the Prairies.

In this telling, explorers like Cabot, Cartier, and Champlain braved the unknowns of the New World, paving the way for future waves of European settlers to occupy the mostly empty lands ripe for economic exploitation. My own grandparents were beneficiaries of the ‘opening up’ of the Prairies to white immigrant farmers.

No mention was made in those middle school classes of Indian Residential Schools, a number of which would still have been operating in the ‘70s when my young mind was receiving its dose of approved history. Nor was I remotely aware of the Sixties Scoop, a series of provincial child welfare policies that removed (a sanitized word for stole) Indigenous children from their families to be placed in foster homes and ultimately adopted out to white families.

If we had had a current events class, this last abomination could have/should have been a recurring subject for discussion since those policies lasted for decades, from the mid-50s into the early 80s. It’s no surprise that it was curriculum non-grata. Even today, our provincial government grinds its teeth when present day policies such as the proposed education reforms are discussed in the classroom. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Scaling it Back

In a split screen example of the gulf between our political elites, Conservative leader Erin O’Toole last week condemned ‘cancel culture’ and the ‘radical left.’ He was bemoaning the decision by some cities and municipalities to scale back or simply drop altogether their Canada Day celebrations this year considering the recent discovery of, by now, nearly 1,000 unmarked graves at just two former church-run schools.

On the flip side are the Liberals, NDP and Greens who have encouraged a more muted approach to this year’s July 1 commemoration. With flags still at half mast in honour of those recently discovered and those yet to be found, a full-throated party would seem jarring and out of touch with the mourning of our Indigenous brothers and sisters.

There are sure to be many more unmarked graves still to be discovered, possibly thousands. As tuberculosis ravaged the country in the early part of the last century, the crowded conditions in the residential schools resulted in many, many deaths – from a quarter to well over half of the student populations in some facilities.

From a 2007 Globe and Mail story, ‘an Indian agent for Duck Lake, SK wrote to his Ottawa colleagues: “The department should realize that under present circumstances about one-half of the children who are sent to Duck Lake boarding school die before the age of 18, or very shortly afterward.”’

Funding was on a per head basis, and the ‘market’, doing what it does best, encouraged the schools to operate at max capacity and beyond. No doubt those institutions had more than a few well-meaning individuals working and teaching there, but the legacy of harm is now impossible to ignore.

Wider Effects

The sobering stories of the past weeks are having impacts beyond our borders. US Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, herself of Native American descent, wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post a couple of weeks ago in response to the Kamloops graves discovery.

The founder of the Indian School her great-grandfather attended came up with the phrase, “kill the Indian, and save the man.” The phrase echoes the sentiments of our first prime minister who advocated ‘taking the Indian out of the child’ to solve the ‘Indian problem.’

Secretary Haaland has committed to provide funding to locate and put names to as many unaccounted-for children of that country’s Indian boarding schools as possible. They, too, have a truth and reconciliation journey to travel.

Unfortunately, the #cancelcanadaday campaign suffers from the same sort of misunderstood assumptions as #defundthepolice. Since, no short phrase can capture the complexity of these issues some will legitimately misunderstand the reasoning or intention behind it. Others will deliberately incite division and confusion.

Perhaps, this year we can create some space to see our Canada Day celebrations as something other than business as usual. Rather than feeling like something is being taken away from us, we could acknowledge what has been taken away from others in the name of creating this country.

Like many this year, I’ll be wearing orange in solidarity with and recognition of those Indigenous families and their communities who are closer to finding some sort of closure, however imperfect or incomplete. My appreciation for the privileges and freedoms I enjoy in this land will be tempered by the knowledge that not everyone living here shares my experience.

Oh Canada. You quite literally have skeletons in your closet, and we’ve been avoiding the inevitable reckoning. Now is the time to get that work done. And then, we can truly celebrate.