Red Deer Reality Rant #62 - What it Means to be Canadian
Hello and welcome back for another Red Deer Reality Rant! I am proud to call Red Deer home and consider myself a proud Canadian too. This coming long weekend is a great one with Canada Day happening on Saturday. It is highly likely that I will check out the Bower Ponds Canada Day celebrations, although the weather may or may not cooperate. However I do believe in being patriotic and celebrating our national holiday. Considering this, the focus for today’s post is on what it means to be Canadian.
Most people I know would say that Canada is laid back and not boastful. If you ask other Canadians what makes them proud about our country they would likely be polite but shy away from the question or say something like Freedom which is a sentiment often boasted about by Americans. We do have much to be grateful for here in Canada, a lot of people have taken refuge here and travelled here to escape much worse places, or to start a new life.
But why live in Canada? Americans brag that they are the greatest country in the world. Canada has never made such a claim and that is just one of many reasons people come here with like minded ideas. If you want quiet and peaceful people, come to Canada. If you enjoy drama and danger, you go to the States. It is our reserved nature that keeps us a small country, but I believe that is a good thing.
We have a lot of space. Our land is not crowded and there’s many parks along with much undeveloped land and plenty of room for everyone. We are generally welcoming to newcomers although some of the far rightists are not. To be a good Canadian, I believe you should welcome everyone and people of other cultures and countries because many of us are descended from immigrants anyway.
Canadians really are a polite people, although there’s a lot of complaining about our government by most of us we should take a step back and look at what we have and give ourselves and our country credit for what we have built. Everywhere has it’s problems but ours are few, and not so bad in the scope of the world.
We truly have freedom here in Canada. Anyone is free to speak, free to choose their gender and/or orientation, their religion, their friends and our government. This Canada Day, we should reflect on what we have and why we stay here along with celebrate our country. We do have dark times in our past, as all countries do, but it is important to look to the future as we are acknowledging and repairing our past.
Be strong, be encouraging, be happy, be grateful and proud, yet stay humble because Canada is a great place to live and our quiet and peaceful life is not enjoyed elsewhere in the world. Here’s to the future of Canada with prosperity and peace. Thanks for checking out my words, and as always stay safe and Stay Brutal!
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