Since the start of the FIFA World Cup, Toronto has been awash in foreign flags. And after each win some part of the city suddenly erupts in flag-waving euphoria. After Brazil's win over Chile yesterday, you could have mistaken a small area of Toronto for Rio di Janeiro. These repeated explosions of non-Canadian national pride have irked some commentators who complain about the absence of Canadian flags during these demonstrations. But I think these sourpusses completely miss the point.

And the cab driver I rode with yesterday completely agrees with me.

He was born in Ethiopia and immigrated as young man to Italy, which has a historic connection to what Benito Mussolini called Abyssinia. In Italy he never felt welcome, never felt like he had a chance to make it. Then he came to Canada.

I'd hailed his taxi on College Street because I was running late and had just missed the College Streetcar. All I needed was a lift to the College Subway. We started chatting--about the World Cup, naturally--and he told me in excellent English how much he loved the way Toronto contains all these different national identities within its multi-ethnic mosaic. "Everyone is welcome here," he told me. (This isn't as often true as it one was, but I was mightily encouraged by what he said.) The Brazil demonstration had forced him to reroute a fare, but he didn't seemed bothered. He simply loved the diversity of his adopted city in his adopted country.

I told him that some "patriots" had been complaining about all the flags of other countries. He laughed. "But we're all together here," he said. "Not like in Italy." Togetherness in diversity, that's the ideal for sure. Nice to know that a young, newishcomer still believes in the real Canadian dream. All the more important for those of us who have any influence on the people who make the decisions to keep fighting against the dream's continual narrowing and shrinking.

We never made it to College Station. As we approached Bay Street, we saw that our way was blocked by barrcades and lines of cops, beyond which a big crowd filled the street in front of Police Headquarters. We both laughed, as if to say to each other, isn't it great that we live in a city where people can fill a street in protest and not get beaten over the head for exercising their democratic rights? Ironically, the crowd was protesting some of the police tactics used against the G20 protesters over the past weekend, tactics that certainly stretched our constitutional guarantees of free speech and free assembly to the limit--if not beyond.

As I walked along the crowded sidewalk toward the subway, I could feel the energy and righteous outrage of the crowd. I didn't join them, but I felt buoyed and excited by their collective presence. I am so grateful I live in a country where you can protest police tactics and not get thrown in jail. (I believe the protest ended peacefully, the crowd dispersed and the nightly news got all the video clips and soundbites it needed.)

O, Canada. You still rock!

Unless you've been living on another planet, you know that the official anthem of the 2010 FIFA World Cup was written by Somali-born, Canadian rap artist who goes by the name K'naan. The tune of "Waving Flag" is catchy and the lyrics are haunting--but just what do the first two lines of the refrain, which give the song its title, mean?

"When I get older, I will be stronger,
They'll call me freedom, just like a waving flag,"

The text of the song evokes Somalia's tragic history: "So many wars, settling scores,/ Bringing us promises, leaving us poor." K'naan yearns for the day "when we'll be free."  And what is this freedom he dreams of for the country of his birth? All the refrain tells us is that it will be "just like a waving flag."

The first time I heard "Waving Flag" I puzzled over K'naan's freedom flag. It can't be the flag of Somalia, one of the least free places on earth. And surely it can't be merely the appearance of a flag  snapping in the breeze? A flapping piece of fabric tied to a pole is an inadequate metaphor for something as profound as freedom. Which leaves me with the flag of K'naan's adopted country. Although the song makes no mention of Canada, I believe the freedom the singer discovered in Canada is implicit in his lyrics. A "waving flag" can stand for freedom only if it flies over a country whose people are free.

I'm turning this blog entry over to an old friend of mine, Paul Delaney, who many years ago--when I was a high school student and he was a history major at Trent University--nurtured my interest in politics and history. Paul has continued to be one of the most politically engaged and thoughtful people I know. Over the years we've hashed out many a topic, from Trudeaumania to Harperphobia. Now retired from elementary school teaching, he recently researched and wrote a family history of the Delaney family, doing his bit to keep one square of the Canadian historical quilt in good repair. Here are his thoughts on the Vimy Day ceremony that was broadcast on April 9, the 93rd anniversary of the start of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, where Canadian soldiers earned--at terrible cost--the first Allied victory on the Western Front. Here's what Paul wrote:

This morning I was glued to my TV watching the ceremony in Ottawa at the National War Memorial to mark the end of an era - the passing of the last veteran of the Canadian forces who served in the Great War (WW I). As I watched I realized that on my father's side there were at least ten family members (eight Canadians, one American and one Brit) who served in France. All but one survived the war. One of those was my grandfather, Regimental Sergeant-Major William Robert Delaney.

 

As I watched the ceremony I couldn't help but feel incredibly proud to be a Canadian. I was proud of my ancestors who were such an active part of that terrible conflict. What courage it took at that time to leave home - their wives, girlfriends, families, jobs - and what difficulty there must have been trying to fit in after the war.

 

It all sounds so familiar, doesn't it?

 

We know now how counter-productive that war was (it lead directly to WW II) and most of us realize how pointless the present war in Afghanistan is. But in both cases young men and women believed in what they were and are doing, and they deserve our respect and gratitude. 

 

What was so special about this morning's ceremony? I guess I'd have to say that as a student of history it was special because there were so many qualitative symbolic aspects. In no particular order I think of

 

·      the presence of so many veterans ... and the torch that was passed (after an aboriginal smudging) from that generation to the present   

·      seeing our Governor General doing what she does so well ... interacting with everyone in such a kind, touching and real way

·      hearing the Prime Minister speak and realizing that on such occasions he does speak for all of us with much intelligence and grace

·      seeing the Red Ensign flying alongside the Union Jack - surely most appropriate at such an occasion

·      hearing the fiddle playing of “The Warrior's Lament” by a young Metis woman, the bagpipes, the Last Post, the 21 Gun Salute

·      the release of the "doves" symbolizing peace

·      the fighter jet flypast and especially the WW I biplane that flew over

·      the WW I re-enactors who stood silent vigil throughout the ceremony

·      the War Memorial itself (every time I see it I'm awed by its terrible beauty and detail) and the equally impressive Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and

·      the new custom that has emerged in recent years where visitors leave poppies on it

·      seeing sharpshooters standing above the Chateau Laurier keeping an eye on things below was understandable but creepy ... BUT one could also see in the background curious cyclists walking by and children playing (Where else but in Canada?)

·      the presence of Dr. Tim Cook at Peter Mansbridge's side as guest commentator/WW I expert (Tim is an active and proud alumnus of Trent University)

·      the involvement of so many young people in the ceremony - readings, choir, cadets etc.

 

Only four other things and then I'll let you go.

 

First, only an hour later (after seeing the Governor General, the Speaker, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition sitting civilly together at the ceremony) the Prime Minister has just dealt with the embarrassing spectacle of Ms Guergis on Parliament Hill and now Mr. Ignatieff is trying to score political points. There they go again. Why can't they (and Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe) figure out that most of us in Canada are truly sick and tired of such personal pettiness, nastiness and silliness? 

 

Second, I am so disappointed knowing that most school children were not watching that ceremony. Certainly here in Ontario it's much more important to teach to the curriculum. School administrators want to make sure that their nutrition breaks, Phys. Ed. classes and French planning times are not messed around with by something on TV from Ottawa. When the Prime Minister made his official apology to the survivors of the residential schools in the House of Commons there was a woman present from Moosonee - the great-granny of two of my brother's grandchildren but no one up there was watching it in their classrooms ... just as (I'm sure) few students in Canada today saw this powerful ceremony, such a fitting and memorable part of our heritage.

 

Third, (and on a lighter note) you should have seen the chaplain (must have been a Protestant) with his Superman/Johnny Canuck Geneva gown. It was blue and had a giant red maple leaf across the front (like a target!) and a dove somewhere above it. (No Catholic priest, rabbi or imam.)

 

Fourth, I wish I'd been there and I sure hope that some of my friends in Ottawa were there!  

Thanks, Paul! I wish I could have been in Ottawa watching the ceremony with you and then repairing afterwards to the Chateau Laurier to deconstruct its historical and political meanings.

It reached its peak following the gold-medal match between Team Canada and Team USA with an explosion of flag-waving Canadian patriotism in the streets of Vancouver and from coast to coast to coast. To many observers it seemed as though “true patriot love” had reached its apotheosis. A few weeks have passed now, and some of the glow has faded. So it seems a good time to reflect on the lasting impact of this second-ever Winter Olympics on Canadian soil.

A scriptwriter couldn't have come up with a better narrative than the one that unfolded. In the beginning there were so many glitches--will anyone forget the torch pillar that failed to rise during the climax of the opening ceremonies?--and so many genuine problems, most of them due to the unseasonably warm weather. After a few days some members of the foreign press, notably the gutter-dwelling denizens of Fleet Street, were calling these "the worst Games ever." The storyline began to turn with the first gold medal--Canada's first-ever on home soil at a summer or winter Games. It didn't hurt that the gold medallist's brother--and biggest fan—was courageously and gracefully battling cerebral palsy. There more highs and more lows--Canada's wipe-out in downhill skiing taking the honours here—but the story began to take on an inevitability that could have only culminated in a hockey classic, a game that wasn't settled until a dramatic overtime goal by one of Canada's brightest emerging sports stars.

The Vancouver Games had a storybook ending, but were they myth-making? Political commentators began to talk about Vancouver 2010 as a “nation-changing” event, in its own way as far-reaching as the now-legendary Expo 67 of Canada's Centennial year. I wonder.

Such shifts in a country's psyche are seldom evident at the time. To my eye, one of the major themes of these Games was older than Confederation: the Anglo-French divide. One of the early "glitches" was the lack of French in the opening ceremonies. a Quebecker, Alexandre Bilodeau, won our first gold, and a courageous Québécoise, Joannie Rochette,  captured its emotional heart with a figure-skating bronze won mere days after the sudden death of her mother. Quelle ironie!

Did these Games somehow galvanize a new, more diverse 21st-century country? Well, the faces of the Canadian athletes who “owned” the podium were still mostly white--so not on that score. Can a great gathering of professional athletes--the Olympics stopped be a tournament of amateurs quite a while ago--really represent a country? Our impressive haul of gold medals--big sigh of national relief--grew out of federal dollars not from some noble, collective effort.

Still and all, there sure were a lot of Maple Leaf flags. And who can complain about that?

Today is National Flag of Canada Day. As I write these words, I'm listening to K. D. Lang's Hymns of the 49th Parallel. (Without a doubt the highlight of the Olympic opening ceremonies was Lang's rendition of Leonard Cohen's "Halleluja.") But in these parts (central Canada), you wouldn't know this was the 45th anniversary of the official proclamation of the Maple Leaf. We're too distracted with the Olympics, maybe. (Thank god we won that first gold medal. The suspense was becoming too much.) Hardly a Canadian flag to be seen around here, except the usual ones flying from official flagpoles.

I'll be staging my own minor ceremony with some close friends, including two of the cutest kids you'll ever meet. In true Canadian fashion, the setting will be a backyard skating party in Scarborough. (Nice to know that dads still flood backyard rinks for their kids. I can still remember my dad coming home from work and dragging the garden hose out into the cold and dark to to give our rink its nightly flooding.) I've skated only once or twice in the last few years and I haven't owned a pair of skates I could actually fit into since my teens. But I've decided to rectify this situation immediately. I've always loved to skate so why don't I do it? And one of my abiding ambitions is to skate early one morning on the Ottawa canals, to be the first skate blade on an endless stretch of new ice. (The best feeling in the world.)

At the skating party, I'm going to give everybody a flag to wave. The two kids will wear these silly Canada Flag hats that I bought a few years ago. And we'll career around waving our flags and maybe singing "O Canada" while someone snaps pictures. If any of them come out, I'll post them here.

So, Happy Flag Day to you all.

And for those of you who have the day off, remember that whatever it may be called in your province, it should be called Flag Day to commemorate and celebrate one of the most pivotal moments in our country's coming of age.

Did you watch the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver/Whistler Winter Olympics last night? A spectacular display of patriotism, no? Hard to imagine any Canadian watching our athletes march into BC Place and not feeling a surge of national pride. But let's step back for a moment, before the first medals have been won, and consider the context in which this patriotic adrenalin rush is taking place.

There are two kinds of pride in one's country. One is very positive, the other often dangerously negative. Let's call the good kind "true patriot love" and the bad kind "us against you." (The bad kind sometimes masquerades under the deceptively innocent word "nationalism" but is encapsulated by the phrase "my country right or wrong.") The wars and genocides that marred the 20th century and threaten to scar the present one almost all owe their origins to negative nationalism. By their nature, competitive sports pit individual against individual and team against team. At the Olympics (and other lesser gatherings where athletes wear their national colours such as the PanAm Games) the competition also--primarily?--pits country against country.

At the 2010 Winter Olympics Canada will win its first-ever Olympic gold medal at home. (In Montreal in 1976 and in Calgary in 1988 we managed silver but no gold.) That's a given. But we are being promised much more. Early on the Canadian Olympic Committee announced that Canada would win at least 30 medals and would for the first time in the history of the winter Olympics come first overall in the medal count. What's more, Own the Podium, the organization created to support athletes training for these games has backed up this promise with heaps of money for aspiring competitors--more than ever before--and words--the most brash and boastful this country has ever uttered outside of the hockey arena.

I don't know about you, but this kind of hype makes me extremely uncomfortable. It feels, well, unCanadian. It also happens to be contrary to the philosophy that founded the modern Olympic Games, which emphasized the importance of the competition not the winning. But then the founders of the modern-day Olympics would be horrified by the professionalism that has overwhelmed what was always intended to be a purely amateur endeavour--amateurism in the best sense. The word, after all, comes from the Latin verb "to love" and in the Olympic context connotes love for a sport for its own sake--not for glory or wealth. According to Ian Brown in a thoughtful essay in today's Globe and Mail, the founding Olympic charter expressly prohibits an athlete from profiting for his or her performance.

I hope Canada does really well at these Games. But I agree wholeheartedly with Brown, who argues that it's the Olympic torch that encapsulates what the Games are, or should be, about: "It's the idea of the torch, of course, that captures everyone's attention: the primal, prehistoric idea of a flame passed hand to hand, collectively keeping something fragile--aflame that could not go out--alive and burning. It is communal, and it entails care, not triumph."

Those sound like the words of a true Canadian patriot. Let's try to keep them in mind as we cheer on our athletes in the days to come.