I’m reverting to Happy Dominion Day - a day that Canadians celebrated BEFORE the socialist (communist?) Trudeau 1 started to wreck us by “fixing” us and Trudeau 2 continued by telling us how wretched we are, AND the “Elbows Up” nonsense Carney seems to “carry on”. I had occasion to be in Comox airport yesterday and, in the window of the gift shop, there was a sign which proclaimed, “Elbows Up Happy Canada Day”. I was not at all impressed! For the record, I have always felt quite happy to be a fourth generation Saskatchewan Canadian and didn’t require cheerleading from the lunatic fringe who do performative nationalism these days. Have a good day, Terry and all!
I'm not proud of being Canadian. We're a nation of proles who semingly prefer to be ruled than governed. We chose debt, inflation, addiction, homelessness, crime, corruption and incompetence for a FOURTH time, doled out by the same cadre of smiley-faced, Tilley-hatted authoritarian gangsters. We're idiots.
I left the CF in 2022 partly because of my shame in wearing the flag on my sleeve - not because of our sordid, racist/colonialist white supremacist misogynist slav-state heritage, mind you - but because we're a nation of masochistic simps. We're suckers. Wearing the Canadian flag on one's back is not unlike taping a big "kick me hard" sign there instead.
How deep does my anti-patriotism now run? I forgot it was Canada Day today. When I dressed I absently put on a red shirt, then rushed home after my first errand to change into a black one after being exposed to a sea of sheep all dressed alike and elbows upping.
I fall somewhere between you and Terry. I share many of the same sentiments regarding present day Canada while clinging to a vestige of hope that we can return to some semblance of sanity and common sense. As a 16th generation Canadian, I am proud of my ancestors and our history. Much less so in the current ideologues who seek to destroy that legacy. Ironically, many Canadians define themselves by how they are different from Americans. The current surge in the patriotic polling numbers is an emotional variation of the same theme.
Well said Gabbo. Near the end of my service, my loyalty was to my troops, my mates and immediate commanders. NOT the stratospherically entitled and grandiose striver class clerisy that demand they set policy for everyone else.
I cringed at the Tilley hat reference. Yes! I'm so glad I thought they looked irredeemably dorky when they first came out and never bought one. They do mark out a very specific personality type, don't they. In the States it would be those Democrats interviewed on TV who seemed absolutely convinced that Donald Trump staged his assassination attempt even to the point of having the guy on the rooftop get his face shot off as a patsy. In Canada they'd be Tilley-hat wearers.
I don't mean to make light of the rest of your comment, which raises serious and profound questions about our national capacity to survive and thrive.
I was in my 20s in Centennial Year and we were so proud of our country in 1967. I wish I could still be that proud today but I can't. It seems like all the promise we felt for Canada back then just got dribbled away.
I was 16 in 1967. I remember it well. The WW2 vets (including my father) were alive and well and wouldn’t have tolerated Justin’s nonsense. My dad couldn’t stand Pierre.
Happy Canada Day Terry! I am deeply and fiercely proud and happy to be a Canadian and I am very happy that many (most?) of us have survived the god awful last 9 years in which we were told we were horrid racist/settler people with no heart and soul. I'm not crazy about Mr Carney, and the jury is out about how he feels about Canada, but he is better than Justin Trudeau who damn near destroyed us. It will take at least one generation to recover from our healthcare crisis and our housing crisis brought on mainly because of his inane and reckless and ill thought out immigration actions. Our fragile democracy is still on life support too. He basically seemed to be against rules and regulations. "Anything goes" was the battle cry of his wrecking ball.
So yeah, I'm upset. But I had fun dressed in red and white and waving the maple leaf today watching the Steveston parade and mingling with enthused Canadians.
Happy Canada Day Terry. We all look forward to your columns. I hope your are able to get the fly rod out and do some trout fishing this summer. I'm not holding my breath waiting for any kind of substantive decision in Ottawa on anything serious. Lots of window dressing is what I'm suspecting.
A nation with so much potential, instead mired in mediocrity. All because of the grip that two provinces - I'll leave it to you to figure out which two - content with holding the rest of us back. Because, you know, it's their world and the other eight are just living in it. While I'm inclined to say what could have been, I'll just sign off by saying imagine what we could be.
The thing I never liked about "Elbows Up!" is that what we are really saying to Americans is that we are going to elbow them in the face in such a way that it looks incidental and we hope the ref won't call a penalty. To Americans who play football it would be like saying, "I'm gonna grab your facemask and try to break your neck if the referee's not looking." Who would want to play football with someone who was going to do that? Wouldn't you take the first chance to cream the guy so he couldn't act on his threat?
Canada says, "We're gonna play dirty, eh? Just so's you know." Gee, great. I'm so proud to be Canadian. What's next? Cross-checking? High-sticking? How about slashing? That's always a good one.
I continue to struggle with what this country now is.
We elect morons who engage in magical thinking, including and especially the nonsensical, nonexistent “climate emergency” that does not exist in reality.
In the glass half full front, we are rid of the worst prime minister in our history, he no longer has any official place in our country.
But in some ways we have replaced him with worse, all the same meaningless platitudes but without the socks and hair and so all the usual characters fall for it all.
I had my flag up yesterday, I’m proud of what canada was and can be again, not so much what it is today.
I remember arriving from a fellow Commonwealth state, eligible to vote for a few months, proud of the quiet confidence and absent jingoism, unlike the loud, uncouth, flag waving "ugly Americans".
Then the dissection began, severing one link after another with the existing "heritage" and the import of the disgruntled from south of the border, carrying their ideological baggage, many heading into our expanding post secondary education system where they were regarded as the exciting new wave to replace our dull occupants. Ideological redecorating began everywhere, cross border networks formed and as activist money went further in Canada with minimal rules, "causes" were identified and targets picked, because Progressives just got to "progress" to stay alive and they need aiming points. Justin the Unready went shopping south of the border to the fashionable left end of the Democratic Party's "Center for American Progress" idea shop and bought up bigly with staff advice. Trees are good, oil is good, in fact anything profitable is worth taking down and the latent anti-capitalism/Americanism crowd smouldering on since the red flag glory days were glad to help. Trump has permitted it all to surface and Carolyn Parrish's, (now Mississauga Mayor) "American bastards, how I hate them!" can be used to signal the "Two Minute Hate" and avoid introspection as to how we did this to ourselves, allowed the colonization of the political landscape, becoming the 51st state by default.
I can't tell if I like what you are saying or not. Your message is mixed. I like our American cousins, warts and all. (We have warts too.) I am pro North American. I am nervous about Carney wanting us to join the EU. Good grief man. Get grip. We are above all North American. Trump is a flash in the pan, albeit a very loud and visible one. But I'm not ready to dump the roughly 500 year history we have living with the Americans because of a few toddler temper tantrums.
I'm not sure that there are any policy actions by President Trump that I strongly oppose for their own sake. Of course the tariffs are bad for us, but he thinks they are good for Americans and that should be his guiding principle. He's not supposed to be looking out for us, not supposed to be taking policy decisions about how they might affect us or any other foreigners. We didn't elect him. He doesn't owe us anything.
It is a serious error to underestimate President Trump by belittling him with school-yard insult nicknames. ("Toddler" is a mild one.) I suspect that the United States will continue on much the same way in 2029 whether a Democrat or (much more likely) another Republican is in the White House. The U.S. economy is absorbing the tariffs without the inflation that all the experts predicted would happen, while our economy is faltering. Other countries are having to do more for themselves on defence. Canada is not going to join the EU. Our economy is and will remain almost totally integrated with the U.S. And Iran's nuclear program got seriously whacked, with Israel winning. What's not to like?
Trump did Canada a big favor in getting us to look at some of the long standing lunacy we inflict on ourselves.
Sec.121 of the 1867 Constitution Act may say, "All Articles of the Growth, Produce, or Manufacture of any one of the Provinces shall, from and after the Union, be admitted free into each of the other Provinces." but that is plain language easily understood by all and lawyers earn the big bucks by fashioning whatever the client wishes from such base material. Black is white" No problem.
Do all other people not see the world as we do? No they don't. Big huge problem.
Some of them are really, really bad. Read their history.
Living happily since 1955 in the US, I graduated from university, immigrated legally to Canada in 1967 at the start of the Great Northward Trek, returning to at first a familiar Commonwealth heritage, not missing the lingering 1776 anti-British sentiment that irritated me in the US, appreciating Canada's somewhat different political orientation. The C$ was at or above par with USD and magazines and books were priced, "Slightly higher in Canada" and NY born Barbara Frum, the world's best interviewer... ever, was at the CBC my still exclusive radio station. Then Canada seemed to begin losing it's confidence, making it in NYC or Hollywood was the real grade, US businesses were a success when they could buy out competitors, Canadians when they cashed out after being taken over and the immigrants began making Canada a stop on the way south. Always the comparisons and excuses for poor results, our medical system may not actually be the world's envy but "at least it's not the US", price fixed milk may be expensive, "but it's not toxic American muck" as the Saputo guy in Safeway called it. Activists in a San Francisco restaurant scratch out a plan on a napkin and relabel "The Great Bear Rainforest" in a campaign to "demarket" Canadian forest products in Germany where the romantic idea of the great Canadian wilderness has a long history. Young Justin and college buddy Butts hire Obama's Washington campaign strategy team under an NDA to steer his election strategy. It's written up in the PR industry trade journal "Campaigns and Elections" as "Challenges working North of the Border" in electing an unpromising candidate. No one blinks. Rockefeller Foundation spends a few $100,000s in 2008 to commision a plan to kill off the oil sands by blocking pipelines, making export unable to "reach tidewater and world prices". "Complex, multipronged, political, financial" strategy "to be kept invisible to the outside" is judged a complete success a decade later, no pipelines, several election victories and a PM disposed of. No one blinks and the Foreign Interference investigation, misses the huge elephant (actually donkey) in the room, the billionaire US activists playing away games. 51st state. QED
I’m reverting to Happy Dominion Day - a day that Canadians celebrated BEFORE the socialist (communist?) Trudeau 1 started to wreck us by “fixing” us and Trudeau 2 continued by telling us how wretched we are, AND the “Elbows Up” nonsense Carney seems to “carry on”. I had occasion to be in Comox airport yesterday and, in the window of the gift shop, there was a sign which proclaimed, “Elbows Up Happy Canada Day”. I was not at all impressed! For the record, I have always felt quite happy to be a fourth generation Saskatchewan Canadian and didn’t require cheerleading from the lunatic fringe who do performative nationalism these days. Have a good day, Terry and all!
100% Penny!
I'm not proud of being Canadian. We're a nation of proles who semingly prefer to be ruled than governed. We chose debt, inflation, addiction, homelessness, crime, corruption and incompetence for a FOURTH time, doled out by the same cadre of smiley-faced, Tilley-hatted authoritarian gangsters. We're idiots.
I left the CF in 2022 partly because of my shame in wearing the flag on my sleeve - not because of our sordid, racist/colonialist white supremacist misogynist slav-state heritage, mind you - but because we're a nation of masochistic simps. We're suckers. Wearing the Canadian flag on one's back is not unlike taping a big "kick me hard" sign there instead.
How deep does my anti-patriotism now run? I forgot it was Canada Day today. When I dressed I absently put on a red shirt, then rushed home after my first errand to change into a black one after being exposed to a sea of sheep all dressed alike and elbows upping.
We're a silly place.
I fall somewhere between you and Terry. I share many of the same sentiments regarding present day Canada while clinging to a vestige of hope that we can return to some semblance of sanity and common sense. As a 16th generation Canadian, I am proud of my ancestors and our history. Much less so in the current ideologues who seek to destroy that legacy. Ironically, many Canadians define themselves by how they are different from Americans. The current surge in the patriotic polling numbers is an emotional variation of the same theme.
Well said Gabbo. Near the end of my service, my loyalty was to my troops, my mates and immediate commanders. NOT the stratospherically entitled and grandiose striver class clerisy that demand they set policy for everyone else.
Now I'm just a citizen of a silly country
I hear ya. The worst part for me was discovering my CD was not actually chocolate wrapped in foil.
I cringed at the Tilley hat reference. Yes! I'm so glad I thought they looked irredeemably dorky when they first came out and never bought one. They do mark out a very specific personality type, don't they. In the States it would be those Democrats interviewed on TV who seemed absolutely convinced that Donald Trump staged his assassination attempt even to the point of having the guy on the rooftop get his face shot off as a patsy. In Canada they'd be Tilley-hat wearers.
I don't mean to make light of the rest of your comment, which raises serious and profound questions about our national capacity to survive and thrive.
I always thought Tilley hats were made for over 60 NDPers. Usually with beards but not always. Never worn one.
But only a certain type of beard...
I was in my 20s in Centennial Year and we were so proud of our country in 1967. I wish I could still be that proud today but I can't. It seems like all the promise we felt for Canada back then just got dribbled away.
It isn't simply Canada. There is a dearth of leadership in the Western world. Starmer? Macron? Albanese?
We have no accountable leadership, few politicians with convictions that aren't shaped in the winds of demographics, Re Mélanie Joly
I was 16 in 1967. I remember it well. The WW2 vets (including my father) were alive and well and wouldn’t have tolerated Justin’s nonsense. My dad couldn’t stand Pierre.
I was 25 then, but same here. My dad (WWII) couldn't stand Trudeau Pere either. He would have had a fit at Trudeau Fils.
I also remember that year so fondly. When we were busting with pride for our Canada.
Me too.. What happened to our country?
Progressives happened.
I hope you have a Happy Dominion Day, sir.
Happy Canada Day.
At least we’re not hearing that we are the worlds worst country a hell hole of racism, colonialism misogyny, etc.
I just returned from Europe where people were happy to learn I wasn’t from our southern neighbour. So there is that.
Best to all my fellow countrymen, we still have a country, it’s holding together and we can make it better for all of us!
Happy Canada Day Terry! I am deeply and fiercely proud and happy to be a Canadian and I am very happy that many (most?) of us have survived the god awful last 9 years in which we were told we were horrid racist/settler people with no heart and soul. I'm not crazy about Mr Carney, and the jury is out about how he feels about Canada, but he is better than Justin Trudeau who damn near destroyed us. It will take at least one generation to recover from our healthcare crisis and our housing crisis brought on mainly because of his inane and reckless and ill thought out immigration actions. Our fragile democracy is still on life support too. He basically seemed to be against rules and regulations. "Anything goes" was the battle cry of his wrecking ball.
So yeah, I'm upset. But I had fun dressed in red and white and waving the maple leaf today watching the Steveston parade and mingling with enthused Canadians.
Happy Canada Day Terry. We all look forward to your columns. I hope your are able to get the fly rod out and do some trout fishing this summer. I'm not holding my breath waiting for any kind of substantive decision in Ottawa on anything serious. Lots of window dressing is what I'm suspecting.
Dief the Chief had it right about polls.
A nation with so much potential, instead mired in mediocrity. All because of the grip that two provinces - I'll leave it to you to figure out which two - content with holding the rest of us back. Because, you know, it's their world and the other eight are just living in it. While I'm inclined to say what could have been, I'll just sign off by saying imagine what we could be.
It's never too late for a course correction...
The thing I never liked about "Elbows Up!" is that what we are really saying to Americans is that we are going to elbow them in the face in such a way that it looks incidental and we hope the ref won't call a penalty. To Americans who play football it would be like saying, "I'm gonna grab your facemask and try to break your neck if the referee's not looking." Who would want to play football with someone who was going to do that? Wouldn't you take the first chance to cream the guy so he couldn't act on his threat?
Canada says, "We're gonna play dirty, eh? Just so's you know." Gee, great. I'm so proud to be Canadian. What's next? Cross-checking? High-sticking? How about slashing? That's always a good one.
Thanks so much for your dedication to good journalism. Happy Canada day!
I continue to struggle with what this country now is.
We elect morons who engage in magical thinking, including and especially the nonsensical, nonexistent “climate emergency” that does not exist in reality.
In the glass half full front, we are rid of the worst prime minister in our history, he no longer has any official place in our country.
But in some ways we have replaced him with worse, all the same meaningless platitudes but without the socks and hair and so all the usual characters fall for it all.
I had my flag up yesterday, I’m proud of what canada was and can be again, not so much what it is today.
We are still on the downward slope.
I remember arriving from a fellow Commonwealth state, eligible to vote for a few months, proud of the quiet confidence and absent jingoism, unlike the loud, uncouth, flag waving "ugly Americans".
Then the dissection began, severing one link after another with the existing "heritage" and the import of the disgruntled from south of the border, carrying their ideological baggage, many heading into our expanding post secondary education system where they were regarded as the exciting new wave to replace our dull occupants. Ideological redecorating began everywhere, cross border networks formed and as activist money went further in Canada with minimal rules, "causes" were identified and targets picked, because Progressives just got to "progress" to stay alive and they need aiming points. Justin the Unready went shopping south of the border to the fashionable left end of the Democratic Party's "Center for American Progress" idea shop and bought up bigly with staff advice. Trees are good, oil is good, in fact anything profitable is worth taking down and the latent anti-capitalism/Americanism crowd smouldering on since the red flag glory days were glad to help. Trump has permitted it all to surface and Carolyn Parrish's, (now Mississauga Mayor) "American bastards, how I hate them!" can be used to signal the "Two Minute Hate" and avoid introspection as to how we did this to ourselves, allowed the colonization of the political landscape, becoming the 51st state by default.
I can't tell if I like what you are saying or not. Your message is mixed. I like our American cousins, warts and all. (We have warts too.) I am pro North American. I am nervous about Carney wanting us to join the EU. Good grief man. Get grip. We are above all North American. Trump is a flash in the pan, albeit a very loud and visible one. But I'm not ready to dump the roughly 500 year history we have living with the Americans because of a few toddler temper tantrums.
I'm not sure that there are any policy actions by President Trump that I strongly oppose for their own sake. Of course the tariffs are bad for us, but he thinks they are good for Americans and that should be his guiding principle. He's not supposed to be looking out for us, not supposed to be taking policy decisions about how they might affect us or any other foreigners. We didn't elect him. He doesn't owe us anything.
It is a serious error to underestimate President Trump by belittling him with school-yard insult nicknames. ("Toddler" is a mild one.) I suspect that the United States will continue on much the same way in 2029 whether a Democrat or (much more likely) another Republican is in the White House. The U.S. economy is absorbing the tariffs without the inflation that all the experts predicted would happen, while our economy is faltering. Other countries are having to do more for themselves on defence. Canada is not going to join the EU. Our economy is and will remain almost totally integrated with the U.S. And Iran's nuclear program got seriously whacked, with Israel winning. What's not to like?
Trump did Canada a big favor in getting us to look at some of the long standing lunacy we inflict on ourselves.
Sec.121 of the 1867 Constitution Act may say, "All Articles of the Growth, Produce, or Manufacture of any one of the Provinces shall, from and after the Union, be admitted free into each of the other Provinces." but that is plain language easily understood by all and lawyers earn the big bucks by fashioning whatever the client wishes from such base material. Black is white" No problem.
Do all other people not see the world as we do? No they don't. Big huge problem.
Some of them are really, really bad. Read their history.
Living happily since 1955 in the US, I graduated from university, immigrated legally to Canada in 1967 at the start of the Great Northward Trek, returning to at first a familiar Commonwealth heritage, not missing the lingering 1776 anti-British sentiment that irritated me in the US, appreciating Canada's somewhat different political orientation. The C$ was at or above par with USD and magazines and books were priced, "Slightly higher in Canada" and NY born Barbara Frum, the world's best interviewer... ever, was at the CBC my still exclusive radio station. Then Canada seemed to begin losing it's confidence, making it in NYC or Hollywood was the real grade, US businesses were a success when they could buy out competitors, Canadians when they cashed out after being taken over and the immigrants began making Canada a stop on the way south. Always the comparisons and excuses for poor results, our medical system may not actually be the world's envy but "at least it's not the US", price fixed milk may be expensive, "but it's not toxic American muck" as the Saputo guy in Safeway called it. Activists in a San Francisco restaurant scratch out a plan on a napkin and relabel "The Great Bear Rainforest" in a campaign to "demarket" Canadian forest products in Germany where the romantic idea of the great Canadian wilderness has a long history. Young Justin and college buddy Butts hire Obama's Washington campaign strategy team under an NDA to steer his election strategy. It's written up in the PR industry trade journal "Campaigns and Elections" as "Challenges working North of the Border" in electing an unpromising candidate. No one blinks. Rockefeller Foundation spends a few $100,000s in 2008 to commision a plan to kill off the oil sands by blocking pipelines, making export unable to "reach tidewater and world prices". "Complex, multipronged, political, financial" strategy "to be kept invisible to the outside" is judged a complete success a decade later, no pipelines, several election victories and a PM disposed of. No one blinks and the Foreign Interference investigation, misses the huge elephant (actually donkey) in the room, the billionaire US activists playing away games. 51st state. QED
I dunno where the elbows are, but there are a lot of heads well ensconced up, er, fundaments.