O Canada

It's interesting to me to see the differences between the United States and Canada, especially in the ways that we celebrate holidays. For us up north, we almost pride ourselves in our reserved, peaceful, quiet Canada Day Festivities. Unless a visitor happened to see one of the few parties or fireworks displays downtown, he might not have even known that Saturday was our National Holiday. We have never been big on blowing our own horns. We are not fighters--we , I guess, must be lovers.

Americans are fighters. They fought to be free of English domination--we just continued on under British Sovereignty, embracing both the queen and also keeping the peace with the USA. Americans fought with the Indians, while we had the RCMP to keep peace,order and good government. They had some serious gunslingers and goldrush battles. We don't even like guns. Americans have had race riots, internal rebellions over the many wars they've fought, college campus riots. We have not . Rather we tend to smugly mock their enthusiastic expressions of their strong opinions.

In America, their motto is "liberty". That's a word that carries a meaning of fighting for what is good and right. Our motto is "freedom". It's much more passive. Of course we too want our rights, but we'll let our neighbours fight for us; we'll ride on their coattails. It's actually worked for us too. Canadians, around the world are respected as being peaceful, polite, yes even nice. Americans, for all their fighting for what is right, and their lavish generosity, are often seen as pushy, arrogant and interfering. I think we're really just as prideful as they are, but we're more subtle about it (and then were proud of our subtlety)

So when it comes to Independance Day (note that the name of their holiday infers fighting for liberty) there will be a lot of noise, Flag waving, bigger fireworks and marching bands--we meanwhile will sit quietly, watching them do their thing, maybe even feel a bit of emotion when they stand, hold their hand over their heart and sing with gusto "America, America, God shed his grace on thee..." .

I really do love being a Canadian. I too am quietly proud of our peaceloving, beautiful, quiet people, but sometimes I wish we had a "little" more of the raw emotion of our southern neighbours.