It's been months since I've made an entry in this blog--but not for lack of topics to write about. In fact, I put my long absence partly down to my sense of discouragement. I can't begin to express how disappointed I am with our current government's recent meddling--without any kind of popular sanction--with our symbolic legacy. I'm referring, of course, to the recent decisions that restore pre-1965 names to our armed services: Royal Canadian Navy, Royal Canadian Air Force, etc. And to the conscious and very public moves to emphasize the British component of our national heritage.

Why did we have the Flag Debate in 1965 except to supersede the only colonial-based names and symbols with names and a primary symbol that could stand for a much more diverse country? Can your imagine Expo 67 being called The Royal Canadian World's Fair. Had someone told me a year ago that these moves would be made, I'd have laughed and dismissed the notion as patently ridiculous.

To use a cliché that seems mild given the situation, I'm shocked and appalled.

What's almost as appalling is the lack of protest--except from a few members of parliament. If ever there was issue ripe for the Liberal rump to seize and make their own, this is it. It was the great Liberal prime minister, Lester Pearson, who gave us the flag. It was his successor, Pierre Trudeau, who consolidated our post-colonial identity. What the government is doing is the equivalent of creating symbolic mud. This when it should be building on our 21st century identity as one of the most diverse and tolerant countries on earth.

I'm not a card-carrying member of any political party. But I have to say, "Shame on the Harper government for playing petty politics with our national emblems."

This is my first blog entry since Flag Day, February 15. Why the the long silence? It's certainly not because of an absence of great events: the Arab Spring (now a discontented summer); the Canadian federal election (with its radical re-alignment of our political party system); the announcement of the beginning of the American withdrawal from Afghanistan (a beginning that may never end); Canada's official retreat from its important combat role in that same conflict. Ordinarily, any of these developments might have sparked some thoughts about Canada's sense of self and its place in the world. Yet my electronic pen has been idle.

Yes, I've been busy, too busy--it's the way of our contemporary world. But so are most of us and so am I most of the time. No, the reason clearly lies deeper than surface distraction.

In thinking back of the past few months, one theme takes the foreground: my growing awareness of the malaise in our body politic. I'm not only talking about our recent national election, possibly the shallowest federal electoral contest in my lifetime--which is saying a lot!--but about Canadians' increasing disinterest in politics and politicians, a mass civic disengagement that bodes ill for our future as a healthy, functioning democracy. Voter participation in elections at all levels continues its downward trend and our political discourse has degenerated almost exclusively into image management or image annihilation. (The systematic destruction of Michael Ignatieff's credibility--based on misrepresentation and half-truth--is only the most egregious recent example of this pandemic of mean-spirited negativity.)

Whether or not you support the policies and admire the overall competence of the Stephen Harper government, you should be outraged at the continuing erosion of the power and effectiveness of our elected representatives that Harper has nurtured. Our current PM is not the first to hoard power in the PMO or diminish the responsibility of the individual members of parliament, but he has taken this trend to an alarming extreme. (And no PM in Canadian history has run such a one-man show or shown such disrespect for the crucial notion of ministerial responsibility.) A recent series of exit interviews with retiring MPs sound two major leitmotifs: 1)  They are treated like movie extras by their political parties and their particular talents and expertises habitually ignored; 2) They detest  the on-camera antics expected of them during  Question Period and almost uniformly assert that their most important work is done in committees away from the media eye. (But try to imagine our current PM entrusting an all-party committee with a task as sensitive and momentous as the selection of a design for the new Canadian flag--as did Lester Pearson in the fall of 1964.)

By general media estimate, Michael Ignatieff ran an excellent campaign. The crowds who greeted him were large and enthusiastic, but the only story that the electorate could hear was the phony one about the guy "just visiting" that the Tories had so cleverly brainwashed us with. (I'm not a Liberal or a particular fan of Ignatieff but he's a man of great accomplishment and enormous talent who would probably have made a pretty good prime minister. He certainly deserved a fair hearing.) Jack Layton ran exactly the same campaign he ran last time, but his party spent real money in Quebec for the first time and ran a very clever advertising campaign that positioned him as the soft nationalist alternative to Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc. Then during the French TV debate he got off a single sentence that pushed the right nationalist buttons. Now he's got more MPs from Quebec than any other province--many of the embarrassingly unqualified--and stuck with a position on Quebec that is, for a national leader who hopes to actually form a left of centre government, untenable.

I could go on. But I think I'll dig out my Canadian flag, dust if off and display it proudly--but sadly--in my front window.

More on Canada's "democratic deficit" in future blogs.

Happy Canada Day to all!

And happy 46th birthday to our national flag.

If you haven't already, get out your own flag and fly it or display it in solidarity with the many who would like to see this day turned into a national statutory holiday for all Canadians.

On Tuesday, February 15, the Maple Leaf will celebrate its 46th birthday as Canada's national flag. In various towns and cities across the country there will be ceremonies, both public and private, to mark the occasion. The biggest of these will be the official ceremony on Parliament Hill. (No doubt in a few corners of the land one or two will raise the Canadian Red Ensign in atavistic opposition.)

A few days before the 15th, I get out my own flag and mount it to fill one of the front windows of my house in Toronto. The window isn't quite big enough for the whole flag, which means that the design overflows the frame-- a nice metaphor of how the flag has grown in stature and in meaning. But when I walk around my neighbourhood, I don't see many similar signs of celebration. And it's hard not to conclude that, like their flag, Canadians take Flag Day for granted.

As I've often argued , it shouldn't be that way. With its single red maple leaf, the flag is the one truly pan-Canadian symbol, the bridge that links every citizen, regardless of heritage or ethnicity. And its birth represents one of Canadian democracy's shining moments.

If you've got a Canadian flag folded up and stored somewhere, bring it out for Flag Day. Drape it from your apartment balcony or display it through a front window or, if you're lucky enough to have one, run it up your flagpole.

Flag Day is a reminder of how blessed we are to live in such a fortunate country with such deeply embedded democratic institutions. It should also remind us that without an engaged citizenry, those institutions will ultimately wither.

In the ongoing campaign to establish a statutory Flag Day national holiday there has always been one crucial question lacking a decent answer: What's Flag Day About? Yes, it's the birthday of our national flag, but we already have a perfectly satisfactory annual celebration of Canadian nationhood: Canada Day. Flag Day has got to be more than just a cold-weather version of our national birthday party.

I believe there's a much more powerful answer.

In recent years many people inside and outside the political process have remarked and lamented the increasing disengagement of Canadian citizens from the process by which they are governed. Politicians seem to have lost all respect--despite the reality that most of them are dedicated, incredibly hard-working patriots; it would be hard to find a kid today who dreams of becoming prime minister (as I did during the exciting, nation-building 1960s). As a result, many people are looking for ways to engage Canadians from a very young age in the democratic process.

Let's dedicate Flag Day each year to a celebration of Canadian democracy--one of the most successful democratic societies in the world, so far--and to promoting citizen engagement, above all among young people. The Maple Leaf is a superb example of our democracy at work: the flag design was, after all, the compromise choice of a parliamentary committee. That we were able to come up with a unifying symbol in such a turbulent time testifies to this truth.

What better reason to wave the flag?

Over the past couple of months, I've received several emails from individuals inquiring about a flag in their possession. In each case, the flag in question is a venerable Canadian Red Ensign (henceforth CRE). And while none of them ask me outright, the unstated question behind each inquiry is: "How much is my flag worth?"

No mystery as to why the sudden interest in old ensigns. Last spring Sotheby's Canada auctioned a CRE that could have been as old as 1868--but this was purely guesswork--for the astounding sum of $120,000. (See Flag News for June 2). Before the auction, I popped over to the Royal Ontario Museum where the various auction items were on display--including quite an impressive collection of paintings by various members of the Group of Seven--to take a look at the flag being auctioned. It was in good condition, despite some obvious evidence of moth damage, and its shield was the earliest version, so it could have been as old as 1868. Beyond that, however, nothing. It came with no record of provenance.

Based on my recent emails, I can only include there are quite a few old CREs out there. But I doubt any of  them was actually flown from the Peace Tower. By the time such a flag was retired from service, it would have been close to tatters.

In the next while, I plan to feature some of these flags. Maybe we'll start a secondary market in slightly used Canadian symbols!