Oh Canada

It's Canada day today.  Happy Canada Day.  

We are a flawed country with a challenging past, and we are also a country that has a lot of beauty, both physical and human....

Over the weekend I went for a walk and ended up in our local capital P park.   We have a lot of parks of varying size and complexity but this is kind of like the main one in this area.  I walked through it a lot during quarantine but haven't really been back to it since, so when I headed out on Saturday, I let myself wander that way and what I saw really made me feel so happy to be living in this country.

There were two teams playing cricket on the cricket field.  Teams made up of folks who are most likely immigrants or the children of immigrants.  (And from what I could read of the score board one team seemed a lot um.... better than the other... d'oh!)  There were some young folks nearby, mainly white, playing some sort of SCA game (Society of Creative Anachronism).  There was a group of latinos carrying a soccer ball to find a pitch.  There were families celebrating birthdays or playing lawn bowling together.  A choir singing motown and other covers with hundreds of people listening, singing along and dancing.  There were probably tourists visiting from who knows where.  I saw folks of all races and colours and ages and genders and it was so very much how I see Canada.... that collection of people who have come here and are welcome to be who they are and how they are and to celebrate our collective differences together.  

I was thinking about it on the way home, how I would bet that if you travelled across the country there would be variations of this in other places.  With cultural differences and social differences aligned with that part of the country.  How we on this coast are different from those on the other coast.  From the big cities.  From the oldest cities.  From the center provinces.  From the northern spaces.  But that we all, at least in my mind, feel like we're one.  

I know we're not perfect.  I know we have so many here that we don't treat well.  I know things could be improved.

But I'm also very glad I'm here, and very glad that, at least in my town, people seem to feel free to be who and how they are.  That made me happy.  

Happy Canada Day.  Eh?