On This Day in History: July 1

Canada Day

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Oh, Canada. It’s your birthday. And things are pretty awesome here. So long as you don’t mind the cold. And you’re white.

Canada didn’t fight for independence; it was granted. On July 1, 1867, Canada went from being three British colonies into a federation of four provinces called the Dominion of Canada. Since then, six provinces and three territories have been added.

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: July 1, 1867--

There are myriad reasons why Britain finally said, “We’re out. Be a country.” One reason is ‘Murica. It’d just finished a big-ass civil war and had a lot of men who knew how to fight. There were Americans who did not like Britain and wanted to take Canada from them. But if Canada was independent, the international optics of conquering a sovereign nation of mostly white people were far less favorable than taking colonies from those limey imperialists.

When looking southward, it’s hard not to be grateful for living here. We’ve had universal healthcare for several decades, but it didn’t come about overnight because some mitten-wearing curmudgeon who styles his hair with a balloon waved a wand; it was a long battle. We also outrank the U.S. by a considerable margin on economic freedom, quality of life, test scores, and percentage of people with university degrees. Crime and suicide are lower. Lots of rural folks own firearms as tools, but we don’t have any of that concealed or open carry bullshit. Owning a handgun in Canada is a restrictive bureaucratic nightmare and most of us prefer it that way. We live longer, have more money, less economic disparity, and few feel the need to send their kids to private school because the public system is pretty good. There is maternity leave and paid vacation, and we have more sex. We also legalized gay marriage a decade before you. We’re not nearly so religious and there are no legal restrictions on abortion.

But there is much Canada has to be ashamed of.

We’re good at sweeping racism under the rug. Treatment of Indigenous populations has been and remains horrific. We removed Indigenous children from their homes and put them in assimilation camps called “residential schools” in order “to kill the Indian in the child.” The last such school didn’t close until 1996. We had Japanese internment camps too. In 2017 a white man murdered six people and injured 19 others in a mosque shooting. That same year, Quebec banned face coverings. Then in early 2022 we had those white supremacist bags of foreskin cheese Freedumb Convoy fucknuts invade Ottawa, and now the assholes are at it again.

And our police can be just as racist. The Black population of Toronto, our largest city, is 8.8%, and yet Black people account for 61% of deaths from police use of force. It climbs to 70% if the cop used a gun.

As a white man, it’s great to be Canadian, so long as I bury my head in the snow about how it’s not so good for those with more melanin.

Happy birthday, Canada. Let’s do better.

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