CIVIC RELIGION.
The late Mordecai
Richler was one of Canada’s leading 20th century novelists. From
the Jewish community in Montreal, Richler fiercely opposed to the narrow French
nationalism of Quebec. He was equally dismissive of what he called “sentimental,
milquetoast” nationalism of English Canada. A lecture delivered on the Big Ideas program on TVO, Ontario’s educational
television network, featured Charles Foran, author of a recent biography of
Richler. Yet Foran had difficulty describing the kind of nationalism exhibited in
Richler’s numerous novels, magazine and newspaper articles, and television
commentaries.
Foran believes that
Richler rejected all sense of tribalism, whatever its source. Instead he belonged
to a brand of moral individuals springing from Judaism “whose duty is to
question and confront” every position that does not meet the highest standards
of justice. Without saying so, Foran described a man who was a prophet of his
time in the midst of Canada’s struggle to remain a united country.
Canada has a long
history of nationalism, particularly in relation to the United States of
America. Our first prime minister, John A. Macdonald (1815-1891), was perhaps
the greatest of those who could be said to be Canadian nationalists. He was
determined to do everything possible to maintain the whole of Canada’s vast
geography from east to west coasts as “British North America.” It was his
driving motive for striking the political deals that brought about Confederation
in 1867. Later he negotiated the entry of Manitoba and British Columbia in the
west and Prince Edward Island in the east, as the next provinces to become part
of the new “Dominion of Canada” as part of the British Empire.
Today Canada is a vast
country stretching from sea to sea to sea, with a very limited population of
only 33 million. Our constitutional monarchy expresses a value system that
recognizes our place in the world as a nation that seeks to help others protect
democracy or achieve freedom and independence. In global geopolitics we have
served many times as peacekeepers or peacemakers for the United Nations.
Most everyone may be
proud of their own country’s particular brand of nationalism. Some may
criticize or condemn it as an extreme form of patriotism. I prefer to call it
our civic religion. Each brand of civic religion has its own liturgy, beginning
with a national anthem and a constitution that declares the nation’s basic
values and system of government. In this country our national holidays and
memorials are essential to our civic observances. Our Canada Day celebrations on
July 1st and Remembrance Day parades to the national and local
cenotaphs on November 11th also evoke the liturgies of our civic
religion.
One of the more powerful
instances of civic religion came little more than a week ago in the marking of the 10th
anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. We in Canada
marked the anniversary too by recalling how we had helped the many airline
passengers who had been forced to land at airports far from home. We welcomed
several thousand passengers from those aircraft into our homes for up to a week
while they waited to be cleared to fly on to their destinations in the USA. All
this was done without any cost to the passengers. We feel proud of doing more
than might have been expected of us. Those simple acts of kindness were a
supreme expression of our civic religion.
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