Honest patriotism

Donald Trump is a hard guy to ignore, even for us Canadians. Lately it’s been even tougher because he’s been talking about us. And featuring in Donald Trump’s bloviations is almost never a good thing. In case you’ve missed it (lucky you!), he’s moved from threatening massive tariffs against Canada (unless we solve a largely non-existent problem) to musing about annexing Canada into the United States by means of “economic force.”

In the face of these threats, Canadians need resolute, grown-up and unifying leadership (which has been hard to come by, if you ask me). But we also might need to draw on a resource that Canadians are not famous for having in abundance: patriotism. Standing up to Trump and defending our national sovereignty will almost certainly come with costs (in lost trade and higher prices at least) and we need to be willing to bear those costs, and that willingness depends on our commitment to the thing we’re protecting: our national identity and independence.

Recognizing that this may be a moment for patriotism, some commentators have taken the opportunity to pour scorn on the way that Canadian identity and history has been discussed and even taught over the past few decades. Focusing on the nature of Canada as a “settler-colonial” state premised on the dispossession and even genocide of Indigenous peoples, they say, undermines our sense that – in the words of David Frum (a conservative commentator who is stalwartly anti-Trump) – Canada is a “good and generous country.” He says “Trump and Canada’s ultra-progressives may not like each other much. But they share the same project of Canadian annihilation.”

Blinkers

It’s true that having a greater awareness of the constitutive role that colonial dispossession has played in Canadian nation-building makes it harder to “wave the flag.” And – as revealed when I recently had a group of high school students listen and respond to Gordon Lightfoot’s “Canadian Railroad Trilogy” – our young people are learning a version of Canadian history that exposes the optimistic nationalist mythmaking of 1960s as culpably, even deliberately, blinkered about the harms that this country has done. It might be true that it will be harder to get these kids to beat their chests (or moisten their eyes) with patriotism than it was with their grandparents.

But, if we need patriotism, we also need to make sure that we don’t fuel that patriotism on half-truths and denial. Canada really is a settler-colonial state, whether that sounds good to us or not. Our present need for shared purpose should not lead us to being dishonest about who we are or where our history has brought us. I don’t fully know how to reconcile the imperative to defend what is “good and generous” in our country and the imperative to be honest about it. But, as a Christian, I can’t believe that we have to choose between our duties as citizens and our duties to the truth. We’re going to have to learn to love our country for what it is – a pretty good country, as far as countries go, which is pretty bad, on the whole, but with the promise of better. That’s worth sacrifice, but not sacrifice of the truth.