Patrick Brethour Vancouver — There are the birthdays of childhood, full of splendid noise and frantic activity. There are the birthdays of youth, with the joy of barriers that have fallen, and of ones about to be breached.
And then there are the birthdays of adulthood – at their very best, a celebration of the emergence of the person you had always wanted to be, the fully formed you that has been years in the making. This year is one of those birthdays for Canada: 2010 has been the year that our country grew up.
It took a while to hit maturity; at 143, Canada is one of oldest democracies in the world. “We’re not a new nation,” says historian Jack Granatstein. But there are a constellation of forces at work this year that show Canada is finally acting its age. “We’re growing up a bit,” he says.
Canada, the adult version, was on show at the Winter Games in February and March. Yes, there was a brash, sometimes rash, edge to the celebrations. Beneath that exuberance was something else, a surefooted competence that took delight in not demanding plaudits, indeed in not being noticed at all.
The tragedy of a death on the opening day of the Olympics, and the farce of the warmest February on record, could have become an excuse for recriminations or for boasts.
Instead, it was a time of quiet confidence from organizers, even when others, including the media, rumbled on about disaster. That same mood flowed from the street party, where Canadians embraced the world – and without the tedious need to draw any comparison to the United States. We were the world’s gold medal nation, with no pedestal higher than ours.
First among equals is not how Canadians have thought of themselves, but it became true at the Olympics, and it has become the story of this country this year. At the G8, it was Canada that pushed for a serious effort to fight for maternal and child health in poor countries, Canada that committed a fifth of the total $5-billion pledge. It would have been easy enough to revel in the juvenile pleasures of moral posturing, and say Canada was too small and too deficit-ridden to make a difference.
Instead, the G8 negotiations over maternal health became a time of serious intent and purposeful work, the sign of a mature country discovering itself, with the confidence and competence to be an example to the world. The protests at the G20, and the resulting police crackdown, each raise disturbing questions; how we answer them will be a fresh test of our newfound maturity.
That confidence and competence is not fleeting. On banking reforms, Canada has found common cause with the emerging powerhouse economies around the globe to blunt the wrong-headed effort to punish all the world’s banks for the grievous errors of a few countries. On deficit reduction, Canada has been the model for those looking to restore fiscal sanity. Britain, parent to our country, looks to us for counsel.
What we tell to others has changed; so has what we tell to ourselves. There is a moral seriousness growing in Canada this year. It can be seen in the pages of the new citizenship guide, that tell new citizens (and by extension, all of us) of their duties, not just their rights. It can be felt in the new respect for the Canadian military, and its guardian task in Afghanistan. And it can be heard in the words of a prime minister’s heartfelt apology to the families of the Air India attack – and his condemnation of those who bring their blood feuds to Canada.
This is merely our 143rd birthday, not an anniversary that any country marks for special celebration. But for Canada, it should be special: a moment to celebrate our emergence as the country we have always wanted to be.