Happy 141st Birthday!

As you may or may not be aware, July the First is celebrated every year in Canada as the founding day of our glorious constitutional monarchy. Essentially it is akin to the American Independence Day, but we celebrate it early and typically drink more. We didn’t gain our independence through rebellion. We gained it through careful and sternly worded letters! The origins of our nation are no secret and some of our fiercely independent neighbours may look upon them as weak-willed, but Canadians never demand anything of our friends. Nor do we shun the origins of others.

I say ‘we’ because, and this may or may not come as a shock to you, I am a Canadian. I’ve been Canadian since the day I was born and I will patriotically remain a Canadian until the day I die. Where does the Canadian identity lie? It lies within the heart of every single person who left their homelands and emigrated to the ‘Great White North’ in search of a better way of life. We are a nation of tolerance and understanding, our national attitude has always been one of ‘live and let live’. Canadians have always been a fixture on the world stage and our numerous contributions to the Earth are understated and rarely bragged about.

That’s not to say that Canadians retain no sense of national pride, in fact quite the opposite is true. Canadians are fiercely patriotic and we are more than proud to tell you about how great of a country we are fortunate to have when traveling abroad. A Canadian need never fear hatred or persecution around the world because our conduct as a nation on the world stage has never been less than civil and excellent. Our military has been scoffed at in recent years but we’ve been instrumental in peacekeeping campaigns worldwide and retain a strong sense of pride in our nation’s Forces. Our country isn’t perfect though, but if you examine our history you will find that our mistakes are far out-weighed by our successes.

For all of those reasons and more, I am proud to be a Canadian citizen and there’s no country in the world that I would rather have been raised in. Here’s to you Canada; Happy 141^st Birthday! May you have many more to come.