Canada is systematically erasing its national heroes
‘A nation without heroes quickly becomes a country without stories, or without inspiring ones’
Can a nation exist without heroes? Canada seems to be attempting just that.
Dominion Day — its proper, original name — has become an annual occasion to catalogue the latest civic silliness. Last year, it was the Forks in Winnipeg that imagined “Canada Day” out of existence. This year it was Calgary city council, which cancelled the city’s fireworks display in order to advance “reconciliation.” That was something of a wet firecracker, so council reversed itself in the face of public outrage.
Neglect of proper public ceremony needs to be pointed out, and Canada has become quite practised at that (witness the anemic coronation ceremonies in Ottawa). Yet more insidious is the systematic removal of heroes from our history.
Under the current federal government, the targets have been Conservative figures from the past, Sir John A. Macdonald principal among them. But soon the wheel will turn and grind up Liberals, too — beginning with Wilfrid Laurier and ending, perhaps, with Jean Chrétien, the last of the Indian Affairs ministers of the assimilationist school.
