July in North America This Year is Turning Out to be Less a Celebration of Nationhood and More a Vigil

In the first four days of July, the two most northerly countries of North America have national celebration days. In Canada, it falls on July 1st. In the U.S. on July 4th. Understanding the history of these two nations and present circumstances may lead you to be less celebratory.

America was born of a revolution by colonies breaking away from Great Britain beginning with an independence declaration read to gathered Americans in towns and cities on July 4th, 1776. America’s revolution was one dominated by white males, largely of Christian faith, who were concerned about preserving their freedom to worship, to gain wealth, to obtain property, to be represented by peers in government, and to preserve slavery. Women, indigenous people, and, of course, the slaves had no say in the outcome.

Canada was born from a variety of disparate groups with a single thing in common. They did not want to be Americans. They were French Canadian. They were United Empire Loyalists who left revolutionary America to find a safe haven. They were Acadian survivors of British attempts to implement mass deportations in the 18th century.  They were slaves brought to Canada from American they were freed black refugees looking to start anew after escaping America. And they were the indigenous people of the country who had signed treaties with the British Crown, and who had aspirations for a future of peace and opportunity guaranteed to them.

Those parts of the land where the colonists settled spread continent-wide from east to west skirting the U.S. border. They came together in Confederation on July 1st, 1867, to ensure their survival from a militarily aggressive post-Civil War America. It wasn’t about rebellion and individual rights. It was a search for a collective peace, order and good government, the words enshrined in the British North America Act which today form the basis of Canada’s constitution.

Left out of citizenship in this new country were women, slaves, freed blacks, indigenous people, and Metis (a French-Indigenous community). Canada’s citizenry and leadership were male, white, Christian, and the antithesis of Americans.

In 2021 on this July 1st the celebration of Confederation has been tainted by the revelation of mass indigenous graves found on the grounds of former residential schools, a program initiated by the post-Confederation government to “kill the Indian in the Indian” and turn indigenous Canadians into the equivalent of good white British citizens. It appears from these mass graves that the killing wasn’t limited to the spirit of the original human inhabitants of the Americas.

Was the Canadian government policy in the past egregious, racist, and genocidal? Absolutely. Was it much different than the policies of European, British and American governments? No.

The policies were the product of the time when European civilization saw its purpose as being the “white man’s burden.” It saw Europe seize much of Africa to civilize its native black population. And when Charles Darwin published his theory of natural selection, it manipulated it into a Social Darwinist creed to define European civilization’s place in the human pecking order. White and Christian on top, and everyone else beneath.

Remember this was a time when phrenologists determined human superiority and intelligence based on head shape and bumps on the skull. This was a time when people were measured for their worth and standing by place of origin, skin colour, religion, and ethnicity, and not by what was between their ears.

But these times in Canada are gone for good. The legacy, however, remains to this day and reconciliation has become the chosen path for Canada to heal its historic failings. It is not easy to fess up to a tainted past and on Canada Day. Many are wearing orange and not Canada’s red and white colours today to remember the lost children and the genocidal policies of our country’s past.

South of the Canadian border, the United States’ celebration should be more muted with the ongoing story of a condominium apartment building’s collapse in the suburbs of Miami and the mounting death toll. This event should be a reminder to Americans about the crumbling state of infrastructure and that the nation’s sense of exceptionalism appears to have reached a limit. A country that could put humans on the Moon less than a decade after its first human spaceflight, appears to be unable to create a safe infrastructure for its citizens such that they die in their beds at night as the building they live in pancakes to the ground.

We don’t know as of yet why this building failed. One of President Biden’s cabinet members suggested anthropogenic climate change was a contributor. I would think probably not. Others speculate about lax standards in Florida’s building code and the laws governing building and maintenance requirements for condominiums including mandatory minimum contingency funds to be used to keep structures and the people living in them safely.

If this were a single instance of failure we might call it an exception. But in the last week a pedestrian bridge across an interstate in Washington, DC, collapsed with several people injured. This one bridge is symptomatic of a nationwide problem. More than 617,000 bridges cross America’s roads, rivers and ocean coasts today. Some are pedestrian, some are for cars and trucks, and some are for trains. Of these, 42% are more than 50 years old, with 46,000 of them deemed structurally deficient. On the latter, 178 million trips are taken daily by people, in cars, trucks and trains. Is it only a matter of time before the next one fails?

Part of America’s ethos has been the individual pursuit of property and wealth, rights not to be trivialized or inhibited by government getting in the way. Unfortunately, safety and good governance take a back step to rights such as these that let:

• Americans build in flood zones (Hurricane Harvey, Katrina and Sandy), or along seacoasts repeatedly being inundated by rising ocean waters,
• Americans refusing to be vaccinated during a pandemic even though a vaccination would make all Americans safer,
• Americans carrying guns as a constitutional right in a country where 54 are shot and killed daily with 270 mass shootings this year alone as of mid-June.

If Florida’s weak condominium laws turn out to be among the failings in this building collapse tragedy, it shouldn’t be surprising. It is a metaphor for the entire country’s failings as a nation that presumes to lead the world to a better place in the 21st century, a world that is facing an ongoing pandemic, and the growing threat of human-caused global warming.

These are sombre thoughts for Canada Day and for the week when America commemorates its Declaration of Independence.