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Tom Monto

What is Canada?

The question of what Canada was touched on by the Edmonton Bulletin (Frank Oliver) in a discussion of a Salvation Army farm colony scheme to transport slum dwellers from London to western Canada.


The Bulletin criticized Salvation Army's farm colony proposal saying that the work of "caring for the wreckage of a congested civilization is one thing, and laying the foundation of a new colony or country or kingdom or nation or empire as you please is another...


The business of [western Canadian] citizens to choose the best materials to build a strong and healthy and vigorous and prosperous nation... in laying the foundations of new country, the influence of one man is equal to the influence of ten or a hundred in an old and populous country." He said if the Salvation Army decided it is going to go ahead with its colony scheme, then so be it but the government should not take on the responsibility for making it succeed. (EB, July 25, 1895)


One could also add that Canada is a subcontinent like India as it takes in so much geography.


The bottom-line is that Canada is an arbitrarily-drawn section of North America and a remnant of the old British Empire, an artificially-drawn area that takes in old New France and old New British North America, created at a time when the land and the few (white ) people on it had little power of self-determination, and at a time when the Natives were disregarded almost totally.


Another answer - a greater answer - is found by listening to Roger Whittaker's song "Canada Is." That by rights should be our national anthem.


"And that 's what Canada is...."


Thanks for reading.

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