Canada is my home country and I am proud of it; I am a patriot. That does not mean that I am blind. The 20th century was touted to be Canada's century and it made a very good showing, outstripping it's weight on the world stage and then it faltered dropped to its knees and embraced the darker side of humanity while claiming to be its savior.
At the turn of the last century, most of North America had been explored and most of America had been settled; Canada was a narrow strip of inhabited land unified with a police force and a railway that traveled through mostly unsettled land from coast to coast. It was a mere thirty-three years old and was very much the colonial backwater that everyone perceived it to be. But there was strife in the world and poverty and Canada was offering cheap and in some cases free land for anyone that would clear it and grow things. And the people did come, from England and Ireland and from the States, but they also came from countries where they did not speak English and there were all welcomed, as long as they did not settle in Ontario or any of the other provinces and only settled in Manitoba and the then Northwest Territories, which later became Saskatchewan and Alberta. But nothing really happened in Canada except for the migration. There were moves to get a free trade agreement with America, but that did not actually happen for nearly eighty years. But something did happen in Europe to wake Canada into action.
World War One, or the great war was declared and Britain declared all of its colonies at war with it as one, not that Canada would have had it any other way, because we were British in our minds. Canada at this point was starting to achieve great things, the new provinces in the west were starting to supply the world with grain and Britain looked for Canada to supply the war with food, and Canada did comply in this way. But Canada had a much greater affect than just providing the food for the war; it supplied men too. Canada at the start of the war was small with a population of eight million people, one million people volunteered to fight in the war, many thousands of women volunteered as well. If that were all then Canada would have been punching above its weight, but it was not. At the start of the war, Canada was a nation of farmers and lumberjacks, but by the end of the war it had changed, it had mechanized. By the end of the war, Canada was producing ships, guns, and munitions by the fleet load. Every year of the war Canada doubled to tripled its production until the last year where Canada was producing twenty billion shells a year. As an example my present town of Boonieville, present population of the area is under ten thousand people, consisted of three towns two of ten thousands and one of twenty thousand people and in there they produced munitions, war supplies and was a very important distribution point between the west and the east.
Of the soldiers, sixty thousand of whom were killed, they distinguished themselves greatly. Firstly whether because they were innocent lambs or believed in the cause so much that they stayed at their posts when Mustard gas was first used, when their allies all fled. It was because they stayed that the attacking enemy was surprised when resistance was put up after the attack. Because of this bravery and many other acts like it the Canadians were allowed to form units apart from their colonial leaders and eventually given their own Canadian leaders. Canadian troops, from what I hear told, gained a measure of respect from their opposition and confrontations with them was said to put a little fear into to opposition. This may be because many Canadian volunteer had experience with rifle prior to the war with hunting and farm pest management, indeed the most deadly marksmen seemed to come from Canada, one was a native from Boonieville who was the allies best sniper.
Whatever the case, by wars end, Canada had made a name for itself in the world. After the war, the ships were carved up and beaten into plough shares, and the people went back to working the fields and felling their lumber and disappeared off the world stage. Overly simplistic, but basically true. It was not until the next world war did Canada come back to the world stage.
When the war broke out, England asked Canada and its other former colonies to join this time. Canada did join, this time a week later. That time was used to secure deals with the Americans, so that America could remain neutral in appearance. Canada trained soldiers and built weapons, just as it had done before, but it trained pilots and built airplanes for the most part by the end of the war canada was in an enviable position of having the fourth largest air force, the fifth largest army and the third largest navy on the whole planet, but when the war ended, the ships were dismantled, the soldiers got jobs and most of the airplanes were put to civilian uses; Canada, just melted away again.
Economic prosperity was coming to Canada though, with most of the industrial world in ruins and Canada and the United States untouched by the war, wealth poured in. The resources that made Canada strong fueled its growth now and things were good.
Years afterwards the good will of Canada went up several notches as bests moment came when Lester B. Pearson suggested Peacekeepers to the world and Canadians and other nations sent troops to other countries as neutral peacekeepers, to keep wars from happening and inflaming. That is what Canada became known for, but it was just a bright display for the public and the world and allowed politicians to ignore the real problems of Canadian society.
The Canadian dream became an idea that Canada was a fresh pristine land filled with peaceful people willing to put ourselves in harms way to help others. And this was true for awhile. Every Peacekeeping mission involved Canadian troops, Canada almost had a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and our people could cross the world feeling safe, warmed by world wide adulation, but we canadians began to believe it and believed that nothing could tarnish our image and entitlement crept into our minds. We have the image in our minds that this is a great place to live and that we are better than the Americans. We are not them. Is this how we should compare ourselves?
Our crime rate is lower than America. Our prison rates are lower than America. We produce less pollution and garbage than America. We are better than America. That is how people in Canada think and they are wrong. Yes we are better than America in many ways, but America is the worst in most of these ways and Canada is second worst in the world. But we are better than America. America does not compare itself to Canada, it compares itself to itself, it compares itself to the best. Canada should look at the best and ask how it can be better, but instead it looks to America and does nothing.
Our image of a peacekeeper is gone. We were peacemakers in the former Yugoslavia, we stood by in Rwanda and did nothing, we entered Afghanistan as aggressors, we participated in the first Gulf War, we attacked Libya. Yes Libya was a good thing and everyone else was doing it too, yes Iraq should not have attacked Kuwait, but we started imposing ourselves on others and we started being looked upon by the world as one of Them. You know, Them, the Americans, but we are not them, ask any Canadian. We are them in more ways than we are not. For the last 25 years our government has been mirroring American more and more until we get to our present government takes its orders from America.
Greenpsychopomp, how can you say that, you have no justification for that statement. Wikileaks released documentation from the American government on how we would word our new copyright rules. Tony Clement, MP for Boonieland, wrote the "Canadian" law and it was identical to the American law, to the degree that when it was pointed out that the law did not make sense he would not budge until his American masters changed their law, because the same part was pointed out as unworkable, then the Canadian law was amended. America sends foreigners to other countries to get tortured, so Canada does the same. America locks up Americans without charging them because they think they might have a link to terrorism, Canada quickly does the same. America arrests foreign soldiers and calls them terrorists, Canada does the same, even if they are fifteen years old.
Canada ratifies the Kyoto Protocol and puts into law that it will reduce emissions by 6% by 2011 and instead increases emissions by 17%. but we are better than America right? They did not ratify the law and they increased emissions by 7%. Oh wait, we are worse, we are dishonorable dirty people at the bottom of the heap.
If we are going to repair our image, there is only one thing we can do, compare ourselves in terms of the best countries in the world and if we are ever the pinnacle, we have to ask how we can be better. We have to be altruistic, we must help our follow humans, if the poor can not build clean technology, then we should provide it to them and ask nothing for it.
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