It's Canada Day.  Another birthday for one of the world's unlikeliest countries.  And an odd birthday it always is.  You see, unlike our American neighbours, we have not been trained in the fine art of patriotism.

I've done July the 4th at the Capital in DC.  I have seen patriotism.  I've heard symphony orchestras play an orgy of de Sousa marches as the Washington sky lights up with fireworks, and tears fill every eye on the Mall and beyond.  It's true it's a little frightening to me.  But it's also impressive as hell.  I mean, I always find myself wondering: Where did they learn to do that?

Since then, I've considered the possibility that they learned it in school, where they pledged allegiance to their flag every day.  Now, we have a flag.  In fact, our flag  -- over very own flag -- was a modern development that I remember.  On our 100th birthday, we finally gave up the British flag and unfurled our own.  But no-one, not a single Canadian young or old has ever pledged allegiance to anything, much less the flag.

When I was a child (lo, these many decades ago), in Quebec, we sang "God Save the Queen" every day. (More about that particular irony another day.) There was a picture of the Queen in every classroom.  But even then, we didn't pledge anything; we just prayed for her to be saved. Saved from what? one wonders now.   (Maybe she was to be saved from the embarassments visited upon her by her unfaithful children, and this is proof that there isn't a God.)

In any case, we also, occasionally, sang "Oh, Canada!", our national anthem.  There was a lot of "standing on guard for thee" in that song, which always reminded me of our ceremonial guard in their big black furry hats and red jackets that I'd seen in pictures of Ottawa, our national capital. (I'd also seen them in pictures of London; I think that as a child, I thought Ottawa and London were the same place. Ha!)  And there was that annoying line about our son's commands, as though daughters didn't matter.  And we all knew that we were northern, strong and free.  But all we promised to do was stand on guard.  No allegiance, no love, no loyalty.

I have come to believe that most Canadians are embarrassed by patriotism.  I mean, we don't like to demonstrate our emotions to anyone anyway.   And then there is the added difficulty of not really having any emotions to display, when it comes to Canada. 

Don't get me wrong.  I am very grateful to have been born Canadian.  I believe that having been raised in a middle power has been a useful and humbling experience.  We never had the power to destroy the world, and yet we had influence over those who did.  It doesn't get much better than that, I figure.   We never thought we were the centre of the universe, but we never thought that what we did made no difference.  

I'm even proud that we entered World War II when we did, even if we did so out of silly colonial loyalty to the Mother Country.  I've been proud of our general abhorrence of guns in our society, by our publicly funded health care system, by our "early and often" participation in peace-keeping forces when they really were expected to keep peace, and more.  I, more than most, have sharp criticisms of my own country, but on most occasions, they stem from knowing we can do better than we have, not from any sense that another country is doing it better than we are. 

Canada, as noted above, is an unlikely country. Geographically, it's the biggest country in the world, but four out of five of us live within a hundred miles of the US border.  We have as much as common with the states immediately to the south of us as we do with the provinces immediately to the east or west of us.  Yet we wanted to do things differently.  And we have.  One of those differences is that Canadians don't "do" patriotism.  But we sure give a good imitation of faking it, every Canada Day.

Happy Canada Day!

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