Bonfire Of The Pieties: Tearing Down Canada Day Is The Left's Next Statue

When I was growing up in Montreal in the 1950s/ 60s we used to say that Toronto is a nice place to live but you wouldn’t want to visit there. Like its signature newspaper, The Toronto Star, the city was uptight, upright and ever so preachy. No drinks on Sunday, ladies wearing mink to the Maple Leafs games, intolerant of ethnicity. (Conn Smythe was fond of saying things like, “Ladies, gentlemen and Frenchmen.”) 

Then 100,000 anglo Quebeckers migrated to Ontario and millions of immigrants arrived from around the world. Next thing you knew Toronto was a big film festival of a city, cosmopolitan to distraction. Anything seemingly went. The ancestors of Orangemen giggled when CBC produced a show named Schitt’s Creek.

But lingering beneath the glittering condo laissez-faire of today’s Toronto there was still a Methodist heart beating in the Hogtown breast, a guilt-ridden pilgrim fearing hellfire and damnation. (A fear not shared, however by the newcomers to Canada who think the place is swell compared to Mogadishu or Amritsar.)

The undeserved spoils of their efforts torture them. So does the perceived environmental price of their glittering palaces by the lake. The capricious results of their capitalist system. The new hellfire is not from God, of course. No, the new secular soul of Toronto fears the damnation brought down by the global cool kids like Greta and Gore.

In all of this the Toronto Star has been the touchstone for a people begging to be flagellated. So the latest admonishment from 1 Yonge Street should come as no surprise. In light of the latest rearrangement of history’s deck chairs, this Star editorial says happy is out for July 1 . Canada Day must now instead be a day of atonement and self-reflection on the evil concept that is Canada.

From native cemeteries to income distribution to climate there’s no hair shirt too abrasive to relieve the sins of their past. (Funnily, this editorial fails to mention the PM firing the highest-ranking native Cabinet minister for defying his wishes to subvert judicial practice.)

It asks, “Should Canada Day be a point of celebration? Or a day of mourning and sombre reflection?” We’d belabour the sentiment, but anyone with a pulse understands why The Star and its political allies are disgusted by the nation in which they live. Mostly they’re appalled that not everyone wants to recognize their obvious moral superiority— or that another reality even exists in Canada.

Clearly the dolorous combination of media, academics and government bureaucrats no longer feel Canadians are worthy of the legacy they created come July 1. The only citizens of value are victims of moral turpitude (except Jodie Wilson Raybould, of course) . The territory needs to be ceded to native bands whose own claim stems from slaughtering the people they replaced.

Anyone who is surprised by any of this has not been paying attention. Back in March of 2018 we wrote about one of the “sombre” merchants of guilt. “I have unfairly benefitted from the colour of my skin,” sobbed a woman named Teresa Downs, superintendent of  B.C.’s  School District 74 (which covers many communities in B.C.'s Interior). She produced posters demanding penance from her like-minded staff.

We observed , “In their vigilance they’ve decided to tell their white students they are worthless hulks because… white privilege. And racism. Like Nurse Ratched these stern matrons are looking out for us, whether we asked for help or not. And they believe that the only reasons Canada exists is privilege. Unearned merit. Fake accomplishment. If we knew what they know, we’d fall on our knees in shame.”

Our column pointed out the sacrifices and accomplishments of the people in my own family going back four generations who risked death for principle. “It’s unfathomable to conceive of today’s grievance merchants— who blanch at the thought of sacrifice-- giving up everything for a notion of how a free people should comport themselves. 

“What the pinch-nosed Hillary Clintons in the posters are doing is not hard work. Bastardizing history to satisfy some void in your soul is the lightest of lifting. Attaching your need for self abnegation to identity politics is the easy revisionism. Assigning guilt to young people who have no possible connection to these events is contemptibly simple.

“The idea that Canada’s youth is subjected to these perverse pathologies is made worse by the fact that the people who risked something more precious than a teachers’ certificate are paying for it with their taxes. Dressing up this revisionism using glib emissaries like Justin Trudeau or Barack Obama or Teresa Downs doesn’t make less odious.

“The smug teachers and administrators in the posters think they’re owed respect by the mere fact of birth in a democratic nation. They believe they have a right to politicize the schoolroom. They feel passionately that they’re on the cutting edge of a new day and their students and students’ families must heed them.”

Sadly, there has been a willing audience for this in Canada, led by the Star’s crepe hangers. At least Americans need the censoring social media to herd the crowd. These people just want to feel bad for its own sake.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand is also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his new book Personal Account with Tony Comper is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx