Canadiana

At The Hundredth Meridian

Canadian identity at the end of an American myth

A sold-out crowd watches The Tragically Hip play Toronto’s Molson Amphitheatre on Canada Day, 2015.

In 2019, no Canadian political party attracted more than ~6 million votes. As a quirk of our voting system, most winning candidates had fewer than 30,000 ballots cast in their name. Three years prior, ~12 million Canadians watched The Tragically Hip’s final concert. We swayed in the same wind, sung through one microphone, and shared the burden of an enormous weight. Gord Downie embodied the silent aspiration of a hardy people — to meet the world’s strength with strength, its tenderness with tenderness — and allowed us to share it with one another. He asked us to face our past and embrace a common hope for our future. Gord asked us to be for each other what he had been for us: Canadian.

“Gord asked us to be for each other what he had been for us: Canadian.”

A favourite game of professors throughout the country is to split undergraduate politics students into groups and ask them to define Canadian identity. Everyone has the same half-serious discussion about hockey and beavers on their way to the same conclusion: we’re not entirely sure.

Our reputations for kindness and peacekeeping aren’t seen as shared personal qualities or uniquely Canadian aspirations…