" ... we shall sink into insignificance and adversity if we suffer it to be broken."

If I had influence over the minds of the people of Canada, any power over their intellect, I would leave them this legacy: ‘Whatever you do, adhere to the Union. We are a great country, and shall become one of the greatest in the universe if we preserve it; we shall sink into insignificance and adversity if we suffer it to be broken.’

 

(Sir John A. Macdonald) 

 

Too late, I'm afraid.

 

While the Americans celebrate two hundred and fifty years of being a successful social experiment, Canadians shuffled off yet another Canada Day, a now meaningless, forced event stripped of its meaning and history.

Below is an account of the Fathers of Confederation (characterised by certain wags as inferior in many respects) and what they thought of their southern neighbours:

In a landmark 1864 speech, Sir John A. Macdonald, the future first prime minister of Canada, admonished listeners who might be inclined to see the neighbouring United States as a “failure.”

“On the contrary, I consider it a marvellous exhibition of human wisdom,” said Macdonald. “It was as perfect as human wisdom could make it.”

(Sidebar: why would he say that? Because the idea of a unified Canada was being bandied about and would soon happen.) 

Macdonald would of course come to be the central figure in the creation of Canada, a country whose entire purpose was to prevent the top half of North America from becoming the United States.

Despite this, there’s little if any America hate to be found in the various speeches, letters and debates that led to Canada’s founding. On the contrary, Canada’s creators admired and respected their southern neighbour, and sought their own country in part because they thought they could build a better version.

During an 1865 Confederation debate, Quebec politician Henri-Gustave Joly de Lotbinière referred to Americans as a “great people” whose example “dazzled” the average Canadian.

That same debate would have another representative reference George Washington as the founder of a “great country.” Yet another would praise the U.S. Constitution as a document “laid down by some of the wisest and ablest statesmen.”

The Legislature of Nova Scotia began its own Confederation debates with a tribute to the United States.

U.S. President Abraham Lincoln had just been assassinated, and after passing a resolution expressing their “most profound regret” at the “atrocious crime,” they suspended legislative proceedings for the week out of respect.

In his own landmark 1865 speech making the case for an independent Canada, Father of Confederation George Brown read out a series of U.S. economic statistics in order to argue if Canada did everything right, they might be able to match the “wondrous material progress” of their American neighbours.

George-Étienne Cartier, Quebec’s main representative on Confederation, had even lived in the United States for a time as a political exile. As a younger man, he had needed to hide out in Vermont after participating in the 1837 Lower Canadian rebellion against British rule.

When British Columbians met in 1870 to debate their entry into Canada, they acknowledged that their prosperity up until that point had been owed to a “powerful and active” United States.

“The United States hem us in on every side; it is the Nation by which we exist; it is the Nation which has made this Colony what it is,” said B.C. representative Dr. John Sebastian Helmcken.

This was an era in which Canadians had no shortage of legitimate grievances against their U.S. neighbour.

The U.S. and Canada had enjoyed a kind of early free trade agreement starting in 1854, only for Canadian industry to be sidelined by the U.S. Congress suddenly cancelling the agreement in 1866.

What’s more, in this era British North America was regularly plagued by miniature invasions of their territory staged from U.S. soil. Those would be the Fenian Raids, a series of armed invasions of Canadian territory by U.S.-based Irish nationalists.

And yet, the era’s discourse is mostly free of bitterness and resentment towards the U.S.

The signature pitch for Confederation was that it was the only alternative to eventual annexation by the U.S. As Cartier would argue, “we must either have a British North America Federation or else be absorbed into the American Federation.”

But this wasn’t framed as some imperative to escape American tyranny. Rather, British North Americans simply wanted to keep their system instead of being forced into an American one.

If there was still bonhomie with the United States, it’s because the average British North American often had more contact with the United States than they did with neighbouring British colonies.

Then, as now, the United States was a major buyer of Canadian exports. In many cases, the colonies of British North America did more trade with Americans than they did to each other.

(Sidebar: what's changed?) 

“All the commercial transactions of the district of Montreal are with the United States,” one Quebec delegate said during an 1865 debate over Confederation.

Newfoundlander Ambrose Shea told delegates at the 1864 Charlottetown Conference that “a very small portion of our imports come from Canada while a very considerable portion come from the United States.”

Shea added, “our people have no facilities for trade with Canada, they had to go to the United States.”

Newfoundland would ultimately reject offers to join the new country, and keep its quasi-independent status until 1949.

Adding to Canada’s enmeshment with the United States was there were large sections of British North America that couldn’t be accessed without first passing through U.S. territory.

“Canada it must be considered was for several months of the year entirely dependent on a foreign country for access to the ocean — for access to her own mother country,” said Father of Confederation Sir Alexander Galt in an 1864 speech. “To approach the seas in winter we must pass through the United States.”

This was a state of affairs that would last long after Confederation. After British Columbia joined Canada in 1871, it had to send its first MPs to Ottawa via California, where they boarded the Transcontinental Railroad.

But if Canadians of the 1860s admired and even appreciated the presence of a hegemonic United States, any desire to follow the American example was checked pretty strongly by the fact that the U.S. experiment had just finished spiralling into all-out civil war.

The Charlottetown Conference, the first major milestone towards Canadian Confederation, occurred over the exact same weekend that General William T. Sherman burned down Atlanta, Georgia, as part of his “March to the Sea” to subdue the Confederate states.

And this, too, would end up being one of the most compelling pitches for Confederation.

The U.S. system might have brought its people greatness and prosperity, but at the apparent cost of ruinous internecine violence less than 80 years into its existence.

This was the point that Macdonald was trying to make when he praised the U.S. as a “marvellous exhibition of human wisdom.”

“The American States greatly prospered until very recently; but being the work of men it had its defects,” said Macdonald.

“It is for us to take advantage by experience, and try to see if we cannot arrive by careful study at such a plan as we will avoid the mistakes of our neighbours.”

 

For a while, we were doing alright.

If I had influence over the minds of the people of Canada, any power over their intellect, I would leave them this legacy: ‘Whatever you do, adhere to the Union. We are a great country, and shall become one of the greatest in the universe if we preserve it; we shall sink into insignificance and adversity if we suffer it to be broken.’ 

 

Too late.  

Decades of wearing Canada down into irrelevance has made us, like Hobbes,  "nasty, brutish and short", willing to tolerate any political incompetence and corruption and accept the wearing down of the national character and fabric in favour of spite, hatred and envy.

Why would we celebrate that?

Not even natural and catastrophic hints can be taken that we are not as we should be. 

 

We have disappointed ourselves and our founders. 

We can only look at the festivities down south and think that their joy should be ours if only we strove to make and keep a country worthy of it.

 

Mid-Week Post

 

Your middle-of-the-week Canada Day post.

Whatever.

Only One in Four Canadians Think That Canada Will Still Be Here Fifty Years From Now

Personally, I won't give it fifty months:

 While Canadians are a patriotic lot, one in four are not overly confident in the country’s long-term future, according to a new Postmedia-Leger poll.

Fifteen per cent of Canadians said they do not think Canada, “with its current borders and provinces will still exist 50 years from now.”

Another 11 per cent aren’t sure what to think.

“It’s an interesting time to ask the question, because it’s not just internally that there are questions around our territorial integrity,” said Andrew Enns, executive vice-president of Leger’s Central Canada operations.

In addition to Alberta’s looming referendum on separation, United States President Donald Trump continues to taunt Canadians with his “51st state” rhetoric.

That American aggression “hasn’t disappeared from our national conscience,” Enns said. “It still kind of preoccupies our psyche a bit” and may be fuelling Canadian pride. In 2024, 76 per cent of Canadians called themselves proud. After a year of Trump’s “51st state nonsense” that number is now into the 80s, Enns said.

(Sidebar: aaahhh, yes - the American bogey-man. Where would Canadian jingoism be without it?) 

However, while most Canadians are “quite bullish” about the country’s national unity, a not insignificant number aren’t so optimistic.

The Leger poll found 84 per cent of Canadians say they are “very” (51 per cent) or “somewhat” (33 per cent) proud to be a Canadian, compared to 13 per cent who responded that they are “not very” or not at all proud to be Canadian. One per cent of poll respondents were not Canadian citizens; two per cent didn’t know how they felt, or preferred not to answer.

“Total proud” (“very” plus “somewhat”) numbers were highest among residents of British Columbia (89 per cent) and Manitoba and Saskatchewan (87 per cent), but also high among Albertans (82 per cent).

Enns thought he’d see a dip in Canadian pride in Alberta, given the separatist movement in the province. “But we don’t really see it,” he said.

The October referendum will ask Albertans whether they wish to stay in Canada or begin the process of holding a binding vote on separating.

While Quebecers show similar levels of Canadian pride overall, they are “a little less enthusiastic,” Enns said, with only 38 per cent saying they are very proud, compared to the other provinces at 51 per cent or higher.

(Sidebar: because they've resented being in a once-functioning nation.) 

 “Total pride” is stable, up one per cent since last June, but the share of the “very proud” increased by six points in Canada.

The Leger poll was conducted “the day after Canada won a pretty big soccer game,” Enns said, referring to Canada’s 6-0 win over Qatar. It’s possible there was some extra pro-Canada enthusiasm and sentiment over the men’s national soccer team’s first-ever FIFA World Cup win.

Canadians aged 55 and older (90 per cent), women (87 per cent versus 80 per cent of men) and Liberal voters (96 per cent versus 76 per cent of Conservatives) are the most likely to report being proud.

(Sidebar: read - public servants and bots. Ask them how they feel about Sir John A. Macdonald or the idea of Canadian exceptionalism.) 

The youngest Canadians polled (18- to 34-year-olds) are the least proud age cohort, with only 75 per cent very (31 per cent) or somewhat (44 per cent) proud to be Canadian.

 

It's probably because Carney et al saddled them with so much debt and hopelessness that they can't see a way around it.

It can also be that Canadians simply don't emphasise any actual exceptionalism we might have, instead preferring to let grifting groups brow-beat (read: extort) us into paying more taxes for them:

This Canada Day, let’s celebrate our great nation unequivocally without the obligatory nod to guilt and grievance. We have just one day a year dedicated to the celebration of the free, democratic, tolerant country our predecessors built for us, and plenty of other days each year to focus on the endless social justice causes favoured by politicians on the left.

We live in a beautiful country forged by generations who tamed a vast and unforgiving land, gave their lives in defence of freedom, built prosperous communities and established the stable democratic institutions we take for granted today. Millions of prospective newcomers seek to come here every year for refuge, for opportunity, for the promise of a better life.

Yet, our political leaders seem incapable of saying “Happy Canada Day” without an accompanying diatribe condemning our past.

B.C. Premier David Eby’s most recent Canada Day statement in 2025 couldn’t help but refer to our “troubled and complicated history” and referenced Canada Day as “ an opportunity for reflection on the impact of colonialism on generations of Indigenous Peoples.” His 2024 statement bemoaned that “Canada’s historical wrongs against Indigenous Peoples make today difficult for many.” And in 2023, he lectured that Canada Day is “an opportunity to acknowledge the impact Canada’s colonial history has had on generations of Indigenous people.”

(Sidebar: a nation of running water.) 

While this doesn’t come as a surprise from a Premier who has lamented B.C. as a “colonial mistake,” whose government describes the phrase “British Columbians” as exclusionary, and whose MLAs refer to non-Indigenous Canadians as “uninvited guests,” he is hardly alone in tying our one day of national celebration to guilt-laden reprimands.

Our museums, the bodies responsible for quite literally telling our story as a country, have long contemplated scrapping Canada Day celebrations altogether.

The B.C. Museums Association explains: “Questioning colonial narratives and seeking to respond to the needs of Indigenous, racialized, and marginalized communities applies not only to Canada Day but to the majority of statutory holidays in Canada as well.”

(Sidebar: what's a "racialized".) 

They helpfully provide a multi-step explainer on “How Museums Can Support Reflection, Reconciliation and Redress on July 1st.” Step 1: “Take action on reconciliation and decolonize your space;” Step 2: “Acknowledge your role as a settler;” and so on.

(Sidebar: as a citizen, and a tax-paying one at that, might I assume some temerity and suggest that I don't owe anyone a g-d- thing?) 

The Association even warns against flying the maple leaf itself: “The Canadian flag is a symbol that holds different meanings for different people. What can represent freedom for some can represent oppression for others.” Thus, “If you are going to use symbols like the Canadian flag to decorate your site, reflect on the different — and often conflicting — meanings this symbol can have and how its use might exclude participation from certain groups and individuals.”

 

Like Americans?

When will there be Aboriginal Guilt Day for all the times they subjugated other tribes and murdered Christian missionaries? 

Isn't guilt what it's all about? 

 

"Canadian" Values, Apparently

Canada was once a nation of explorers and builders.

We knew who we were.

Not anymore:

On June 12, 2026, the eyes of the nation were fixed on a stadium in Toronto where Canada met Bosnia in a soccer game; the result was a 1-1 tie. Great was the rejoicing in the tents of Canadian fans of the sport. Never before had Canada gained a point in a World Cup tournament!

In two previous tournaments, we lost all six games we played and only managed to put the ball in the opposing net twice. Clearly a tie with Bosnia was a massive improvement. The CBC reported that it “should be a point of pride for Canada ... a huge confidence booster for the co-hosts.”

Colour me unimpressed. Celebrating a tie against a nation of three million ranked 65th in the FIFA rankings seems to be setting the bar at a very low height.

The problem is not soccer. The problem is that lowering the bar has become a habit across Canadian institutions.

Consider the case of recruiting to the Canadian Armed Forces. The military has struggled for years to fill thousands of vacant positions. Our government discovered that, despite the generous provision of tampons in male bathrooms, a life of low pay, substandard housing, and obsolete equipment was not appealing enough. To woo troops, it was deemed necessary to lower standards. Security screening was relaxed, fitness standards lowered, and aptitude tests ditched.

How did that work out?

Well, how did you think that accepting more of the less-qualified would work out? More training resources were wasted on those who were going to fail. Allowing in those with mental health issues required more support downstream. Many recruits lacked the language skills needed to follow orders in either French or English. Some had problems adjusting to Canadian cultural expectations and resisted heeding female officers.

Need another example?

Witness the fruit of lowered standards in our educational system. A flight from standardized testing in high schools has gone hand-in-hand with a rise in grade inflation and numbers of students graduating with a distorted sense of their own accomplishments. Having been on the honour roll in high school, they believe they are prepared for success at a university level only to discover that they cannot do basic math or write an essay without the help of artificial intelligence. That sound you hear is the noise made by professors tearing out their hair and banging their heads on the wall in frustration.

Will universities respond by requiring admission tests to screen out the unprepared? Of course not. Such tests would be termed inherently discriminatory with a disproportionate effect on marginalized groups. Rather than invest in bringing up the level of those groups earlier in their education, it is deemed better to let them into university where they will fail and drop out at higher rates.

Canadian indifference to excellence is also built into the criteria for Canada Research Chairs and university professorships. Many of these positions now specifically bar healthy, white, heterosexual males from even applying, reserving them for “women, 2SLGBTQIA+ people, Indigenous peoples, racialized persons, and persons with disabilities.”

This is regrettable for two reasons. Firstly, it assumes with soft bigotry that professionals from these groups could not compete in an open market and leaves them open forever after to the condescending stigma of the “diversity hire.” Secondly, by cutting the recruiting pool in half, we have dramatically reduced the chances of finding the best-qualified candidate.

Historically, Canadians have been an easy-going people, never demanding much of ourselves. Our Olympic motto has always been “Go for the bronze!” or “It’s an honour just to compete!” Only in hockey do we care about being the best.

In the 21st century, if we don’t want other countries—more ambitious, harder-working, and better educated—to eat our lunch, that has got to change.

 

Is this the same country where people carved out the land using only their wits and their brawn? 

** 

Rather than inviting Canadians to wrestle with one of the world’s most complex conflicts, it teaches visitors to understand the conflict as solely a consequence of Israel’s creation. In doing so, genuine Palestinian suffering is transformed into a perpetual weapon targeting everything related to Israel, and encourages the public to view millions of Jews as the beneficiaries and defenders of an ongoing historical injustice.

This is not the pursuit of historical truth. It is a toxic political instruction delivered with the authority of the Canadian state.

Walking through the museum, located in the heart of Winnipeg, one design choice immediately stood out. The Nakba exhibit is physically positioned after the museum’s Holocaust gallery, meaning visitors move directly from one of history’s best documented genocides into a highly politicized presentation of the 1948 Arab Israeli conflict.

That transition creates a subtle but unmistakable emotional and interpretive bridge between two entirely different historical contexts, carrying visitors from a universally recognized moral framework into a contemporary political narrative with the implication that the same categories of understanding naturally apply. While the implicit promotion of Holocaust Inversion certainly informs the conclusions visitors are invited to draw.

Inside the exhibit, that framing quickly becomes more pronounced. The material is not presented as a set of competing historical interpretations or unresolved debates. Instead, it is organized around a single guiding premise: that Palestinian displacement in 1948 is not simply a historical event with several causes, but the beginning of an “ongoing” Jewish Israeli-imposed tragedy that entirely ignores Palestinian suffering when Israel cannot be blamed.

 

These Palestinians: 

1953: Yehud attack

1970: Avivim school bus bombing

1972: the Munich massacre

1974: the Ma'alot massacre

1976: the Entebbe raid

1985: the murder of Leon Klinghoffer 

July 1989: the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem bus attack 

1994: the Dizengoff bus bombing 

1997: the Mahane Yehuda bombings

October 2023: the October 7th attacks

 

Hardly a comprehensive list and my hands got tired from typing the multitudes of violent acts perpetrated by the Palestinians.

** 

A Liberal-appointed trustee who quit the Canadian Museum for Human Rights over an anti-Israel exhibit says he was “berated by board members for my views.” Mark Berlin, former director with the federal Department of Justice, told a B’nai Brith podcast the Museum was “a tool of propaganda.” 

**  

Among Canadians who say they have become more negative toward Jewish people in Canada since the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel, 51 per cent strongly agree that the Holocaust is mostly an issue of the past. This view is also held by 41 per cent of those who strongly agree that Israel’s military actions in Gaza justify negative attitudes toward Jewish people in Canada. Among those who strongly agree that Jewish people in Canada are responsible for the actions of the Israeli government, 55 per cent strongly agree that the Holocaust belongs to the past.

What explains the connection between endorsing antisemitic tropes and the desire to “move on” from the Holocaust? It’s that its memory gets in the way. For those seeking to justify hostility toward Jews in Canada as a legitimate response to events in the Middle East, the Holocaust remains an impediment: a moral, historical and political warning against collective blame, demonization and the normalization of antisemitism. Declaring the Holocaust irrelevant to the present helps remove that obstacle.

But this does not usually stop at forgetting. More often, it involves displacement: pushing the Holocaust out of the centre of historical memory and replacing it with an alternate version of the past, one in which Jews are no longer primarily remembered as victims of hatred but recast as beneficiaries of excessive sympathy, privilege, or even as perpetrators whose suffering has been overemphasized. In that reframing, Holocaust memory is not merely neglected; it is contested, minimized, inverted, or turned against Jews themselves.

This helps explain why antisemitic attitudes and the desire to “move on” from the Holocaust are connected. The Holocaust stands as a rebuke to the mindset that antisemitism depends on: treating Jews as collectively responsible, imagining Jewish influence as insidious and presenting hostility toward Jews as a form of moral or political resistance. ...

In this sense, the desire to consign the Holocaust to the past is not simply amnesia. It is often an attempt to reorder memory in the service of a present-day political agenda — one that requires Jewish vulnerability to be forgotten, relativized, or replaced by a narrative in which antisemitism can be justified.

On Canadian Multiculturalism Day, June 27, the survey results are especially insightful because they reveal how fragile the boundary can be between celebrating diversity and tolerating narratives that undermine it. Multiculturalism is not only about recognizing difference; it also depends on a shared refusal to hold communities collectively responsible for conflicts abroad, and on the willingness to protect minority communities from being judged through political grievances directed elsewhere.

 

The Holocaust isn't a stumbling block. 

One could omit it from the discussion but all that one would be left with is the knowledge that ONE pervasive and repugnant ideology is responsible for the incomprehensible hatred of international Jewry.

It's not "mental illness" and we know it.

Furthermore, political multiculturalism - the idea that all cultures have something of equal value to offer and are equally beneficial (regardless of what some aging, double-talking, irrelevant, unaccomplished creep might think)  - is not just demonstrably false, it serves to divide the public instead of uniting it under the banner of common causes and ideas, especially if those coming do not see themselves as even residents of the host country but willing to live off of it and bring their old hatreds with them. After all, there is no impetus to acclimate or get along.

That would be causing a fuss. 

 

Political multiculturalism is a moral and political failure, a cancer on the country which must be excised if there is ever to be unity.

The bleating against throwing political multiculturalism into the dust-bin of history is a lazy and inflammatory misdirection and deflection.

No country was founded on political multiculturalism and no country can survive with it. No country can benefit from elevating one group over another and no country can run smoothly by creating elites and purported victims of injustices, real or imagined.

Look no further than Canada to see political multiculturalism's "success".