Canada July 1st 2016

When I think of Canada I think first of my home, its quiet street, its gardens, and the people who it cradles, my family. I don’t think of the safety minute to minute but that’s what I mean, it’s safe. Canada is safe.

I think of community next. Ingersoll is not my birthplace but home for the majority of my life and the hometown of all my Kids. I see pitfalls in loving Ingersoll unconditionally but it’s in my heart, it’s under my skin. Ingersoll is Southern Ontario in a nutshell, industry, agriculture, infrastructure, sports, and heritage. Southern Ontario isn’t Canada, but it’s my Canada.

Summer is starting, and off to the beach this weekend. Great Lakes waters, Erie, Huron, Port Burwell, and Grand Bend, these greatest of lakes are massive in my Canada. When it is mid-September and temperature and time insist that the beach is done I gaze out over Lake Erie as the sun drops off to the west and I say a deep silent goodbye for this year, there would be a catch in my throat if I spoke and a tear might be seen in my eye. The Great Lakes are symbolic of all the fresh water that dominates Canada. Great Lakes are my Canada.

Canada is also trees to me, much of what I see in my mind’s eye is trees. When I drive to work in the morning from Ingersoll to London I see the rolling farm lands to be sure but it is the woodlots that take my attention. Algonquin Park, Grundy Lake are my tree places but so is the Lawson Tract. Highways 400, 11, 69 as they enter Muskoka. Trees are not present in many large areas of Canada, but trees do it for me.

The flag waving over our Nation is meaningful but not in itself. The flag represents our peace, our reluctant readiness to fight when needed, our self-determination. The flag represents our ideals protected by our Charter of Rights that is in turn defined by the judicial system, and that definition enshrined in law by the House of Commons elected by the people and finally when necessary the Senate forces the duly elected Parliament to think again from time to time.

We trust our cops, say what we want, and for all its imperfection can use our democratic rights to toss out governments that do not meet the ideals we cherish. We are a model for what a Nation can be, imperfect to be sure with plenty of room for improvement, but when I stand on the beach protected by our Provincial Parks system, after arriving on roads built using our collective tax dollars and I know that if I have a problem there is an entire emergency service that works. There are lots of systems protecting my family, my home, the lakes, the trees, and my community. I know that no matter who I am Canada works.