They say be careful what you wish for.
For years now, I've been wishing that Canadians would stop the interminable commentary and debate about what it means to be a Canadian. It seemed that every time you turned on CBC Radio there was Shelagh Rogers' navel-gazing with some writer or artist or letter carrier or lawyer from Kamloops or Fredericton. These conversations always sounded earnest, and they were incredibly tiresome to listen to.
It wasn't just Shelagh and her guests; newspapers and other radio and TV indulged as well. The CBC in general was the worst offender, probably because of its mandate to nurture Canadian culture.
I'm from a province that was once a country; my roots are in cultures in which heritage and history are understood and valued. I know who I am. I've been involved in more than one discussion involving Newfoundlanders mystified about what Canadians were getting on with.
In this confession I reveal my own impatience, I know, as well as a lack of tolerance that does not suit the anthropologist --or the aspiring Christian-- in me.
I became aware of all this when the debate about what it means to be a Canadian came to a stop sometime this year. What replaced it shook me up and made me long for the good old days. In the past few months, the media, including the CBC, seems to have decided that they know what it means to be a Canadian. Canadians, we're implicitly told, wave the flag and support the troops. That's our new preoccupation. But what does it mean?
It means that our media regularly serves up stories about soldiers "serving" overseas; musicians entertaining the troops in Afghanistan; women baking cakes for the soldiers, and drivers sporting patriotic bumper stickers. There's very little questioning of it --not even on the CBC, a notable exception being The Current, which has proven more than capable of delving deeper.
There is a false feel-good factor to so much media coverage. There is also an assumption that Canada is basically a good guy in the international arena (we "pull our weight" in NATO was the message of a recent Brian Stewart report on television) and that if we question things, we don't "support the troops."
Well, I support the troops, including my 21 year-old cousin Ashley, who is being shipped out to Kandahar in February. I support them so much I want them to come home, where they'll be safe and maybe can engage in something meaningful and fruitful. Canadian Forces advertisements right now show the country's military rescuing drowning fishermen and fighting forest fires. Sounds good to me. Involvement in a faraway, little understood war --and it is a war-- does not.
Surely this is not what being Canadian means. From the endless conversations about national identity I learned that Canadians value inclusiveness, multiculturalism, tolerance, and sharing through Medicare. I learned the hard way that a national conversation about Canadian identity is not only not a bad thing, it's absolutely necessary, especially for a country as vast and culturally diverse as this one.
Bring back all the navel-gazing please. Or at least some of it. Enough to allow citizens to decide where we're going, and whether or not we should be in Afghanistan. Just let's leave out the smugness this time, and make the conversation challenging; Canada, and its citizens deserve no less.
Maura Hanrahan is a regular columnist to The Social Edge. Her latest book is Domino: The Eskimo Coast Disaster (Flanker Press).
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