The Resplendent Canadians

Look at these people.  I love them.  I'm one of them.  We all are.  We are the resplendent Canadians.  

Resplendent Canadians

 I sometimes wonder if newspaper editors request copy that is inherently offensive.  A congratulatory piece about Canada would get a general yawn from even the most patriotic Canadians.  Kevin Libin's self-loathing year end  feature in The National Post had the opposite effect.  The article was designed to raise my ire and the formula worked perfectly.

The photo above was taken during the historic Gold Medal Hockey Game between the United States and Canada at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.  Which red blooded wild eyed Canadian wasn't hooting and cheering the moment this picture was taken?  The title of Libin's article, the de facto caption for picture was "The Ugly Canadian."

Hey!  That's me right there.  Well not me exactly but someone exactly like me.  A Canadian.  A proud Canadian.  Boy.  It takes a real weenie to pout about so many happy enthusiastic citizens.

Libin actually suggests at one point that instead of enjoying pride and patriotism we should try "abolishing war or eliminating world hunger," as if those things were mutually exclusive.  So lets do that.  I hearby abolish war forever so long as nobody starts a war.  Done.  World hunger?  That one is tougher.  Every Miss Universe has tried and failed to crack that one.  I'm sure if we just stopped cheering at curling events the solution would present itself.  Call it the Libin Anti-Hunger Doctrine.

Listen to this:

The Economist observed a “jingoistic mood” in Vancouver. A Dallas columnist notoriously compared the display of Canadian “chauvinism” to that of the Nazis in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. He raised some valid points—that Canada, at times, forgot to act graciously to the world’s Olympians; that organizers dwelled too much on local winners and not enough on the memory of a killed Georgian luger—but being a sports columnist, not an academic specializing in group dynamics, he was forced to apologize after Canadians erupted in outrage. “[It] doesn’t excuse me from making what may have been seen as an insensitive comparison,” Gil LeBreton wrote. But in all the previous 14 Olympics he’d attended “never were the cheers for the visiting countries’ athletes drowned out so ferociously.”

The cockiness of Sport Canada’s “Own the Podium” program left the world cold—especially after it was fingered as possibly one reason the luge track had been made deadly fast, and so unavailable to non-Canadian athletes for practice—wondering how we had become so cutthroat. The U.K. press lashed out at our “lust for glory” and the “perversion of the Olympic movement for national gain,” ours had become a “culture of worthless aggrandizement and pride.” The Olympic hosts had “mislaid their manners.” Canadians had grown so obnoxious, British skeleton champion Amy Williams recalled: “other nations began looking at it as the Rest of the World versus Canada. You wanted your own country to win, but beyond that you didn’t care who it was as long as it wasn’t Canada.”

Call it sour grapes, except Canadians saw it, too. How could they miss it in those extravagant ceremonies so dripping with pro-Canadian propaganda? This “hayseed, own-the-podium nationalism … was excruciatingly embarrassing,” wrote one Hamilton columnist. “When my beloved Canada resorts to cheap patriotism, when Canadians lay phoney claim to being the best country in the world, I feel a little ashamed,” added another, from Guelph.

Wow eh?  Take a wild guess who the unnamed Hamilton columnist probably votes for?  Imagine for a second what their politics is like?  Our Prime Minister gave us all explicit permission to sing and wave our flags and cheer for our athletes.  Thats what its really about isn't it.  What sort of person refers to true patriot love as "cheap patriotism?"

That my friends is your typical self hating liberal. That individual is ashamed we aren't ashamed at our shameful lack of shame.   

-And what is this about a "phoney claim to being the best country in the world."  Excuse me but most of us like it here a whole lot.  Every time I go abroad I'm relieved to be back home when its over.  I love visiting other countries and I love returning.  I know Canada is the best country on earth precisely because I've seen a lot of it.  Do we really care if someone who doesn't like Canada is embarrassed by the rest of us?  Even if this person happens to like Canada it would only be because they think it sucks enough for them to feel suitably low. 

No Thanks.  These people have nothing to teach us.  There is no nobility in self righteous misery.  Humility is not self loathing.  Canadians are the hobbits of the world.  We like to have fun whatever it says on the scoreboard.  If the score is favorable then so much the better.  The competition is no more entitled to success than we are.  Why not set out to win and forget the pouters and doubters. 


We are winning too.  That is the best part.  Shall I list the real successes and advantages there are to being Canadian?  Thats more like gloating.  I'll leave it to you.  Just look at the picture above and you'll see what we've got is love and we are willing to share.

2010 was a historic year for Canada and more than that.  2010 was a fantastic opening to our greatest decade yet.  It is a decade that will see Canada resplendent in the eyes of her proud citizens.