O Canada!

 

"I, Mark Carney, do solemnly and sincerely swear that I will be a true and faithful servant to His Majesty King Charles III as a member of His Majesty's Privy Council for Canada." With these words, the new leader of Canada's Liberal party became Prime Minister of Canada. In explicitly promising "true faith and allegiance" to His Majesty the King of Canada, the Prime Minister implicitly rejected any contrary or competing allegiance to King Donald of the United States.

I spent six happy years stationed at a parish in downtown Toronto. So I likely have enjoyed more on-site personal experience of Canada than many other Americans have. Also, even back when we still seriously studied history in our schools, the snippets anyone learned about Canada were likely few and far between - and almost certainly U.S.-centric. So it is safe to say that few Americans really know enough about our peaceful and friendly neighbor to the north. Some seem barely aware of its existence as an independent nation, from whom we long ago separated when the two parts of what was then British North America divided and went their very separate ways.

That said, Canada and the U.S. are neighbors, who have peacefully shared a common border since the War of 1812. We are different, but we have much in common. Only now, thanks to the Trump Administration's unaccountably aggressive policy of rediscovered Manifest Destiny, do the differences seem to matter so much more. Those differences are not only real, they derive from the very different histories of our two countries and our different founding experiences.

At the time of our initial separation - the successful revolt by British colonists located largely along the eastern seaboard, who were unwilling to pay their share of taxes, the event that we now remember as the America Revolution - the European colonists in what is now Canada were largely Quebecois, that is, French settlers and traders, whose mother country had been defeated in the Seven Years War (known among English-speakers in North America as The French and Indian War) and who were now suddenly subjects of the British Crown. Presumably, such subjection was reluctant initially, but it was hardly intolerable, thanks to the Quebec Act of 1763, which guaranteed free practice of Roman Catholicism and restored certain of the Church's legal status, as well as maintaining some aspects of French civil law. This incensed the largely Protestant British colonists to the south and was one of their complaints in their 1776 Declaration of Independence: "He [the King] has combined with others [Parliament] ... giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation ... For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province." 

It was no wonder, therefore, that, when a delegation of American rebels tried to persuade Canadians in Quebec to join in our revolution, their efforts were roundly rejected. The American revolutionaries had already attempted a military conquest of Quebec in 1775-1776 and failed. A more peaceful approach followed in the negotiating efforts of the delegation, which included Benjamin Franklin, Charles Carroll of Maryland, the best known Roman Catholic in the Colonies, and his ex-Jesuit cousin, John Carroll, the future first Bishop of Baltimore. The intense anti-Catholicism of the Continental Congress and the secure status Quebec's Catholics already enjoyed under British rule guaranteed the futility of all such efforts on the part of the revolutionaries.

The American Revolution was really a civil war between revolutionaries and loyalists (with as many as one-third of the colonists sitting on the fence). After the war, many of the loyalists left. - either for Britain or for Canada. (Unlike the U.S. in Vietnam in 1975 and Afghanistan in 2021, the British remained in New York until they had evacuated as many loyalists as possible.) Many loyalists settled in what is now Ontario, and became the basis of Canada's bi-lingual founding identity. (One of our parish staff when I was a priest in Toronto was a descendent of United Empire Loyalists.)

The separation between the two countries was solidified after the U.S. unwisely declared war on Britain in June 1812. Once again, the U.S. invaded, and once again the attempt ended in catastrophe. In April 1813, American troops occupied York (now Toronto) and burned Upper Canada's Parliament building. In retaliation, the British occupied Washington, DC, and burned the Capitol and the White House. The pointless war ended inconclusively, but it conclusively created a distinctive Canadian identity which has ever since remained different from that of its southern neighbor.

In 1841, the Webster-Ashburton Treaty definitively settled the border between eastern Canada and the U.S., and in 1846, the 49th parallel was set as the border between the rest of Canada and the U.S. A final border treaty was signed in 1908. For most of the time since the end of the War of 1812, Canada and the U.S have lived next to each other in peace, each country developing in its own way. Canada became noted for "peace, order, and good government," and more recently for its national health care. The U.S. in contrast has emphasized individual liberties, like virtually unrestricted gun ownership and the right to  be victimized by inadequate health care controlled by for-profit insurance companies. 

I am an American, born and bred, happy to be so. But my years working in Canada have  given me an appreciation of the particular paths Canadian national development has taken, from which we self-regarding Americans could learn some lessons.. 

Despite our differences, the historical and cultural similarities between our two nations have mattered more. Canada and the U.S. are each other's principal trading partner, are NATO allies, and have forged the closest cooperation possible militarily for the common defense of North America. None of that should be forgotten or ignored, which suddenly seems to be happening thanks to an amazingly unwise turn in the U.S. posture toward Canada in the current administration.

Et ta valeur, de foi trempée, Protégera nos foyers et nos droits, Protégera nos foyers et nos droits.