O Canada!

 

I lived and worked in Toronto, Canada, for six years from 1994 through 2000, an effective and fulfilling parish ministry which I remember fondly along with so many wonderful people I got to know there and a sovereign country I came to appreciate in so many ways. While hosting visitors in 1995, I was asked why I thought Canada had never become part of the U.S. I reminded my guests that the U.S. had tried on two occasions to conquer Canada and had failed both times, and that the Canadians were really quite content to be their own very different country, with very different political institutions (e.g. a parliamentary system) and many social benefits (e.g. health care).

After the British defeated the French in what Americans remember as the French and Indian War (1763), French Canada became part of British North America. In the Quebec Act (1774), the British parliament formalized the governmental structure for Britain's new French-speaking North American colony. Importantly, the Act also granted Roman Catholics religious freedom and allowed them to hold positions in government, which would become a major point of contention with the English-speaking Protestant colonists to the south. They in turn famously expressed their resentment in their Declaration of Independence, which attacked Britain "For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighboring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies." So it was no wonder that efforts to persuade their Catholic French-speaking neighbors to join in the revolution failed so abysmally, as did subsequent military efforts to accomplish the equivalent by force!

The American War of Independence was also very much a civil war within the colonies themselves and within the larger territory of British North America. In the end, it created not one country but two. Many “United Empire Loyalists,” who opposed the revolution, fled the new United States, some to Britain, many to what is now Ontario, whose coat of arms still includes the words Ut incepit fidelis sic permanet (“As she began loyal, so loyal she remains”).

By the War of 1812 (the second unsuccessful U.S. attempt to conquer Canada militarily), almost three-quarters of the inhabitants of "Upper Canada" (Ontario), were people who had left what became the U.S. or were the children of those who had done so. These experiences helped forge a distinctively non-U.S. Canadian identity. This sense of Canada as a self-conscious alternative to the U.S. is reflected in the famous Canadian phrase “peace, order and good government,” which is in obvious contrast to the American Revolution's "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

Much has changed in both our countries over the years, but the sense of Canadian distinctiveness has perdured. If anything, Canadian nationalism has been given a new injection of energy by recent U.S. rhetoric. It may be understandable, given the unique trajectory of U.S. history, for Americans to think everyone else would like to be like us, but the fact is that that is just not the case - clearly not in Canada!

In his beautifully bi-lingual Speech from the Throne in Ottawa today, Canada's current King noted "a renewed sense of national pride, unity, and hope" and invoked "Canada's unique identity." As the King said, "The True North is, indeed, strong and free."

Photo: Canada's King Charles III opening the current session of Canada's Parliament, May 27, 2025. (Image from BBC News)