With Glowing Hearts

Today is Dominion Day in Canada and the Feast of the Sacred Heart everywhere. I'm going to Mass this evening for the Feast of the Sacred Heart, but I'm not doing anything in particular for Dominion Day. Edinburgh is not like Rome, where Canadians of a feather flock together doing fun things and seething over the lackluster performance of the Vancouver Canucks.

That's an ice hockey team, peeps.

I am trying to think of something intelligent and original to say about my native land, but all that comes to mind is "It's not the United States."

This is, in fact, one of the two unofficial mottoes of Canada. The other one is "Just who do you think you are?" which Canada inherited from Scotland. Canada inherited a lot from Scotland, including my mother's grandparents. As various triumphalist books about Scots-Canadians underscore, Scots had a disproportionate effect on Canada, having started (and kept) the banks and showing up there en masse at the start of a lasting British obsession with Sir Walter Scott.

Oh yes, Canada was British. That's a good place to start. The province of Quebec likes to ignore that, but for a solid two centuries, Canada was intensely British and pro-Empire and cheerfully sent its menfolk to be slaughtered in such ridiculous Empire-building endeavours as the Boer War. But this led to more of a Canadian Canadian identity because the menfolk tended to blame their slaughter not only on such enemies as Dutch African farmers, but on generals and politicians born in England.

Every nation needs its mythology, or it will rot spiritually and die. One of the great battles in Canada's mythology is the Battle of Vimy Ridge. This took place during the First World War, and to sum it all up, after the French and English failed, the Canadians succeeded in taking Vimy Ridge away from the Germans. And this was a big deal, so much of a big deal that Canadians whose ancestors actually were in or fighting for Canada at the time sometimes call themselves "Vimy Ridge Canadians."

This, incidentally, is incredibly politically incorrect. It is considered very bad manners to consider yourself more Canadian than the refugee who arrived last week just because your family arrived a hundred years ago. And the First Nations people have a put down for such Canadians that goes something like, "Why don't you go back to Europe?"

It was a great mental burden trying to feel that immigrants were so holy that they were instantly as Canadian as fourth-generation Canadian me and knowing that hundred-generation Canadians thought I should "go back" to Europe, so you have no idea what a relief it is to live in Europe. Now I am both a holy immigrant and aboriginal at the same time.

"Let's walk down your ancestral street," said my native husband after Mass on Wednesday.

"Oh goodie, goodie," I said with glee.

So we took a left onto William Street and had a look at the domicile of my Edinburgh great-great-grandfather in 1881. It now looks onto a fancy cake shop.

The house is part of an 18th century row that was designed by Robert Adam, I believe, so it will never be destroyed. When every last building ever owned or worked in by my family is erased from Canadian memory--as it inevitably will be--the house on William Street will still be there.

That said, Canada has splendid forests and things, so--er--go there on holidays and stuff. It is also a great place for immigrants. Whatever language you speak, you will know what day to put out the recycling. Local governments fall over themselves publishing such information in every language known to humankind. Whether or not you can get a good job is definitely up to you, though.

Indeed, Canada is the opposite of Scotland. Scots who flee Scotland say that Scotland is a great place to be from. Canada is not necessarily a great place to be from. However, it is a great place to move to--unless you need Georgian architecture in your life. If you need Georgian architecture in your life, you'd better stay in Scotland.

Now I am asking myself why I am being so cranky about my native land. What's my problem? Why am I not playing "The Maple Leaf Forever" over and over again on my computer as I bet Hilary White, bedridden in Lazio, is? And I think it is because the nation that came up with "The Maple Leaf Forever" was killed by PC and no longer exists except in patchy memory. "It's by our lack of ghosts we're haunted," said our poet Earle Birney, and he never said a truer thing. Our ghosts, like our buildings, are wiped away, and one day few will remember dead white male Earle Birney either. We are a nation of parricides.

Also, childhood July 1 celebrations in Toronto parks were so intensely boring it hurts just thinking about them.

Update: Okay, now the Inner Child will write more story.