A good song to listen to while (and definitely later) reading this is For the Good Times by Johnny Cash.
By this time next month we’ll be back in Canada and I’m still not sure how I feel about it. For a while I’ve been saying to myself and others that I haven’t really missed much about home. Ever since the Olympics I’ve been re-evaluating my feelings and my sadness about leaving Canada almost five year ago. I’m a Canadian and I always will be but since moving to Norway I think I’ve become what they call Norwegianized. I’ve adapted to its culture after a long period of refusal but there are so many things about my life and my values that won’t go down.
For the past week I’ve been re-watching the opening ceremonies (thank god for our enormous HD dard disk!) and been crying at all of the performances. I suppose it doesn’t matter which generation you grew up in, being a Canadian in any decade has somehow and always be the modern and the classics. Whether it be brief heritage moments on tv, Hockey Night in Canada, or Roll Up the Rim, the small things are big parts of who we are. I used to cringe at those horrific commericials featuring Rita McNeil and her friends but now small memories like that bring such a warmth to my heart. I miss watching David Suzuki on CBC, I miss documentaries about Pierre Trudeau, and I miss how everything has to be written in both English and French. As a Hamiltonian of over 18 years Niagara Falls and the CN Tower never seemed so big because I must have visited them more times than I count, but when I see photos from people that have visisted them for the first time I feel somewhat sad. To me these places were small and insignificant and hardly worth photograping, but today I realize they involve some of the greatest memories of my life.
I grew up speaking French and even won French awards at school but today I can barely form a sentence without having to think about it. I read and understand it perfectly but when I try to say something simple I blurt out Norwegian instead. I spent a good three years of highschool obsessed with Margaret Atwood, Carol Shields, and Leonard Cohen and found such inspiration from their beautiful and provoking work. Unfortunately today none of my shelves house their work. It’s a little sad.
If you ask me (or Canadians in general) what it means to be a Canadian there is no real one answer. I can only tell you what my Canada means to me: My Canada is true patriot love. I love my country because it has given me so many opportunities to fulfill my dreams and realize who I am as a person. I grew up as a typical Canadian with mixed ethnicity – I embraced both sides and found many communities to welcome me. My mixed heritage gave me inspiration to learn and love the different and new. I grew up speaking English and French, and then later German. My mum tried teaching us Chinese but I quickly gave up after I realized it was much easier to read cyrillics and speak Slavic languages. Despite this looking back I now see that multiculturalism wasn’t just a concept that was shoved down our throats at school, it was something we lived. Sure, Canada and all its politics aren’t right, but it’s a country that respects its people as well as its land. As a Canadian I do say, “Eh”, but it’s nothing to scoff at. We say it to be polite which is something to be proud of. I don’t even know what a canuck or a hoser really is but the only thought that comes to mind is SCTV’s McKenzie brothers. As a Canadian I say thankyou and think Rick Mercer is one of the best entertainers of all time.I grew up knowing that Canada Day wasn’t fireworks and a family bbq, it was a family day and a Canada Day special at Parliament in Ottawa with Shania Twain. My Canada will and always be Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chretien. I have some very fond memories of being able to bum around studios thumbing through sheet music while listening to Sarah Slean and Glenn Gould on my gigantic cd/mp3 player. My Canada was staying up late doing mathhomework while watching latenight reruns of Just for Laughs and flipping through Canadian Living and Chatelaine while waiting in the dentist’s reception room. I could go on about how wonderful free healthcare is and what are taxes really paid for, or that we own hockey, but it seems irrelevant when there are so many great gems from my country. We are skyscrapers and the wilderness, we are generations of proud heritage, and we are a people that embrace changes and our differences.
I’m not sure where I’m going with any of this. If you didn’t catch him at the opening ceremonies, this sums up perfectly how I feel.
And you know what, I know all the versus of our national anthem in both Englisn and French. Ørjan says I’m a geek but that’s ok.
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