This newspaper used to print a Canadian flag in the edition before Canada Day.
It was meant to be displayed in residents’ windows or waved at the former Canada Day parade.
We stopped a few years ago when the flag came to be both associated with a particular and polarizing ideology and as our collective reckoning with Canada’s dark colonial past of harms done to First Nations and other racialized citizens was front and centre of most minds.
Fast forward a few years, and some of us hesitate to say "Happy Canada Day," and many don’t celebrate July 1 with a display of the national flag.
Shame over the flag and the country—or fear of backlash if seen as being patriotic—seems common.
In a recent Ipsos poll conducted for Global News, seven in 10 Canadians said they feel the country is ‘broken.’
Given the pain of the past years, and a recognition of historical wrongs, that is understandable.
(For example, 2023 marked the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which came into effect, on July 1, 1923, and was known as Humiliation Day by early Chinese immigrants.)
While there is much to reconcile and improve, we would argue that, like with any painful fissure, Canada can and is healing stronger—rather than that we are permanently damaged, as “broken” implies.
So, is there a way forward where we can acknowledge and be horrified by harms done and current ongoing injustices and still feel proud to be Canadian?
Is it possible, too, to detangle the flag from any political ideology and embrace it as a non-political symbol of us all, regardless of the politics of the day?
The many lining up to come here from other truly shattered places, and those fighting to make us better right here in Squamish and beyond, would seem to say that we may be an imperfect place, but we are still a place with a lot going for it and great potential.
Perhaps we can think of the last few years as an unravelling of the old “idea sweater” of Canada.
The old sweater was a less inclusive, more paternalistic Canada.
Now, shoulder-to-shoulder, we are knitting a new sweater with more threads sewn by those who weren’t given enough yarn in the old garment.
Some of the threads remind us of the shameful actions of the past, while some of the solid threads that we have always been proud of—our stunning landscapes, wildlife, talented youth, valour in the name of peace, adventurous spirit, cultural diversity, free press, and more—remain.
Efforts at reconciling, as seen everywhere, from classrooms to boardrooms, are surely healing us all.
And so maybe our flag, stitched on the new figurative sweater, can be a symbolic bridge between our past and our future that we can wave with hope, humility—and pride.
