I’m not on Twitter (are you actually going to make me name it X?) anymore as a result of I’ve shit to do, however periodically I prefer to verify my mentions. The newest tweet I acquired got here from a fellow Canadian (based on their consumer bio) irked by a latest piece I wrote about Hillary Clinton: “For a CND wanting in you will have some robust opinions and guarded tweets … How about taking part in an actual democracy within the decrease 50?”
Good level! As a Canadian with everlasting residence in New York, I typically discover myself within the position of outsider, making an attempt to make sense of no matter you lot are doing down right here. School? As costly as doable. Deductible? A phrase—and idea—that by no means ought to have come into frequent parlance. Taxes? Greater than in Ontario, and but with even fewer companies supplied. Treading on me? Don’t.
This 12 months will likely be my fifth Fourth of July on file. I by no means take part within the festivities—as a result of the great thing about America is that you’ve got the liberty to shit throughout it, even on its birthday—however I’ve developed one annual custom of types. Each July 4, I ask myself the identical query: Why didn’t anybody want me a cheerful Canada Day?
Sure, it could shock you to study that yearly, Canada Day is July 1, at all times a number of days earlier than the Fourth of July. But it surely at all times goes unacknowledged by each American I meet. My option to stay in the US is exactly that: a selection. But it surely forces me to acknowledge an unalienable truth, which is that you just guys are annoying. America does practically all the pieces worse, noisier, and, broadly talking, extra. What stings probably the most—much more than the American crime that’s cheese in a can or the way in which you make a meal out of the phrase pasta—is that you just neglect that we exist in any respect. This Fourth of July, after one other Canada Day has floated on by with nary a touch of recognition, I demand penance. I demand self-flagellation. Be Canadian for as soon as and simply really feel dangerous!
America’s Independence Day is perpetually beneath harsh criticism; in spite of everything, it celebrates a nation that continues to be divided, in debt, with racial inequity a load-bearing pillar of nationwide life. However do you know that on July 1, Canadians even have fireworks, police drones, cookouts, arguments with our conservative relations over how harmful right-wing politicians truly are, road festivals, little flags to wave round, and a handy mass amnesia over the truth that our nation was filled with Indigenous folks earlier than we gave them smallpox? We’re simply not as flashy about it as Individuals are. You suppose you invented being jingoistic a couple of vacation predicated on colonialism and the tried eradication of people that have been there first? Please! We’ve been doing that since John Cabot ruined Newfoundland within the 1490s. This shameful historical past is so dangerous that, in 2022, my alma mater needed to rename itself in spite of everything these murdered Indigenous youngsters have been discovered buried beneath a faculty the earlier 12 months; seems my college was named after the man who helped develop the residential faculty system in Canada.
I’m not asking for a lot. Just a few acknowledgment that the US doesn’t have a monopoly on being a crumbling society constructed on the foundations of genocide and oppression. Possibly throw in some ketchup chips at your Fourth of July cookout. Discover ways to make a Caesar (scrumptious) as an alternative of a Bloody Mary (salad juice). A bit of one thing to remind me of how a lot dwelling right here is like being again residence. It’s simply humorous we’ve a lot in frequent, with out even actually making an attempt in any respect.
I offers you this, although: You guys make a pleasant sizzling canine. Love the recent canine tradition down right here. You get that canine in me, and I’m Googling the phrases to “The Star-Spangled Banner” and rooting for these gallantly streaming ramparts. Everybody has their value.