I am not ashamed. Canada is a great country with a diverse and interesting history. I am not ashamed of it. The progressive left wants you to be ashamed. For them it is vital that you think of Canada as a terrible nation, guilty of horrendous historic wrongs, a genocidal and bloodstained place that needs to be reformed from the bottom up. I won’t buy into that and neither should you. Why? Because it is false, and we should not be either believing or honouring that kind of narrative. 

So Many Ways to Shame

Those intent on shaming you have a lot of ways to do so. They are nothing if not clever, and they focus on select points to make you think that everything you once believed, loved and were proud of is tainted and wrong. It’s called cherry picking. You would have to be blind not to see it. It does not matter if they reference history. Every country has events they are ashamed of and others they are deeply proud of. But then, informing you about history isn’t the goal of the radical woke progressive left. Their strategy is to make you renounce your national heritage, subdue or eliminate your pride, and influence you to the point where you don’t know what to believe. When they have accomplished that they can pour a new narrative into your head and you are theirs.

Euro Shame

One of the ways they do this is by making Canadians ashamed of their connection with European culture, in particular English culture. They call this process “decolonization.” It is an attempt to distort or eliminate history for political and ideological again, and it is wrong. Like it or not, European culture was the main force in this country we call Canada. It wasn’t perfect, but that’s the way it happened. We were once part of the British Empire. That is a historic fact. Most of our institutions come from British common law and the Westminster form of government. That, coupled with our French Canadian heritage, makes up the bulk of our history. It is not that other narratives should not be told or honoured. They should be. It is rather that it is neither good nor correct to revise history for political or ideological purposes. 

Endless  Apologies 

As I said at the beginning, I am not ashamed, but I am getting angry and concerned about what has been going on. Things changed for me when they started eliminating statues. In 2015 Wilfred Laurier University announced that it would not put up twenty two statues of Canada’s former prime ministers. They said it would be “culturally insensitive.” After that it was the elimination of John A. Macdonald from the ten dollar bill, removing Lord Cornwallis’s statue in Halifax, Sir John A.’s statue in Victoria, his statue in Kingston as well and so on and so on. From there things just got worse. Schools named after Sir John A. changed their names. Statues were vandalized, then removed by city councils short on courage but big on appeasing the mob. Ironically, all of this was attributed to a desire not to offend, but it was really just historical revisionism. 

History Will Always Offend 

Sorry folks, but history isn’t pretty. It will always offend. There will always be injustice in the historical narrative, and it will always be messy. Falsifying or revising history won’t change that, and playing the aggrieved or victimized special interest group won’t either. History has context and, although many people would love to erase it, context is important. We need to look at history in a balanced way, something we are most definitely not doing today. Instead we are shaming our way through the historical narrative and, as a result, lying about Canada’s history. 

The Power of Exaggeration

We are receiving  a deeply distorted view of our history. Canada is not a terrible place to live. It is not a genocidal nation, nor is it the kind of place that competes with Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia or Communist China in terms of human rights violations. We should not be shamed into believing such exaggerated claims, many of which are based on bending the facts, or failing to mention the excesses of other groups involved in those same historic circumstances. We are not a nation that should be despised. Our history, our constitution, our Bill of Rights and our Charter of Rights and Freedoms all reveal us as  a nation that deserves to be praised, not condemned. 

I Am Not Ashamed

So I will state again, in a way that so many other Canadians would like to, but are now perhaps frightened to, that I Am Not Ashamed. I am not ashamed of being a Canadian. I am not ashamed of being male. I am not ashamed of my ethnicity. I am not ashamed of having European ancestry. I am not ashamed of believing in the supremacy of merit. And I am not ashamed, to believe, as Martin Luther King Jr. did, that I and others should be judged, “On the content of our character, rather than on the colour of our skin” or any other biased belief system that seeks to shame us for its own purposes. That is not Canada, and that is not right.