The awakening of a nation

How the threat of annexation can reforge Canada’s unity and purpose

One hundred and fifty-seven years into our national story, we find ourselves faced with an existential crisis unlike any we have faced in our sovereign history. The reality of today is that Canadians have been unforgivably betrayed by our neighbour. Even before his inauguration on January 20th, President Trump and his fellow partisans have openly fantasised about the annexation of our country. Now they have threatened to use an unprovoked economic war to subjugate it. Though it may seem surreal to say, just over a month into Trump’s second term, the United States of America is now a real and serious threat to our sovereignty.

This is not the first time that the United States has posed an existential threat to Canada. The excesses of American exceptionalism and imperialism are not new—they have a storied and dark history. The framers of our Constitution knew the perils of continentalism well, with the attempted invasion and occupation of this land in the War of 1812 in recent memory. For decades, Canada’s leaders knew to mind this peril, aiming to maintain a balance between continental engagement with the United States, maritime engagement with Commonwealth and other allied partners, along with the need to develop a certain level of self-sufficiency. 

However, in time, we forgot these dangers. As time passed, successive leaders fell to the temptation of easy continentalism which set us on the path of peril that the framers tried to avoid. Eventually, we ended up with all our eggs in one basket. Our leaders did not plan for the situation we find ourselves in now: where the close relationship and the trust between the Canadian and American nations has dissolved.

So, here we are. In many ways, we are unprepared for the challenges ahead. Yet, in these past few weeks, we have uncovered that the bonds that unite us remain unbroken, and the Canadian nation is not dead—far from it. 

Today, against the odds, we are witnessing the rebirth of our nation.

Tens of millions of Canadians from coast to coast now find themselves wanting to support their homeland. However, most are left searching for a concrete Canadian identity to rally around—a flag and anthem can only go so far. The post-national identity pushed in the last decade is, at the end of the day, an identity detached from the everyday experience of Canadians. It is not concrete enough to unify us for the struggle ahead. The misguided experiment of an ideology-based identity, no matter how well-intentioned, worked to dismantle much of our nationhood as it relied on distorting and erasing parts of our history and heritage in favour of uninspiring theoretical abstractions. This, unsurprisingly, has degraded the social fabric of this country in recent decades.

We do not have a spotless history, but in the face of the challenge that we are confronted with, we can ill afford another decade of self-flagellation. With the majority of Canadians alive today having been largely starved of our history and deprived of the concrete symbols of our nationhood, we now have to remind ourselves of who we are—not who we want to be, but who we actually are. At the end of the day, though imperfect as all nations are, the peoples of this land have walked side by side in building a nation that has become the envy of the world. 

The founding tricultural inheritance of Canada—Indigenous, French, and British—has provided us with a unique foundation that has resulted in an equally unique nation. This inheritance has been strengthened by the many Canadians who come from every corner of the globe, adding to the richness of our national mosaic throughout history. In recent years, we have begun to correct our nation’s original sin, returning the first peoples of this land to their rightful place of honour and primacy in our national story. In doing so, we are reintroducing Indigenous ways of living and believing back into the mainstream.

Throughout our history, we have believed in loyalty instead of revolution, the pursuit of peace instead of conquest, the need for order instead of libertinism, and in good government instead of self-interest. While the United States was founded on the libertine principles of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” we were founded on the communitarian principles of “peace, order, and good government.” What binds us together above all else are these three founding principles that echo through our history and define the experience of being Canadian even today.

Ultimately, despite our many subdivisions, we are one nation. Our unity and our nationality are hidden from us not because it does not exist, but because it is concealed in our everyday lives and in our rituals—meaning that we may not consciously think about it. Canada is showing your health card at a walk-in clinic and not having to pay a dime. Canada is the Army servicewoman getting ready to deploy as a U.N. peacekeeper. Canada is the aisle of bilingual cereal boxes in every grocery store. Your grandmother tuning into CBC News every Christmas Day at noon to watch the King speak? That’s Canada, too.

We have this extraordinary inheritance all around us, all because the framers of our Constitution rejected the idea that it was the destiny of our nation to be a footnote in the history of the United States. It is now our turn to build the maritime, communitarian, loyal nation they envisioned— and to recognise how far we have already come in building it. 

Above all, we owe it to ourselves and future generations of Canadians to succeed in defending our country these next four years, as we cannot lament for a nation that is not yet lost.