Column: National Identity - being you being a Canadian
By Charles Jeanes
“[A Canadian is] someone with a logical reason to think he may be one.” – Mavis Gallant
“George Grant viewed the authentic Canadian archetype as deeply conservative and nostalgic—a tragic figure attempting to preserve a distinct, ordered British North American culture on a continent dominated by American liberalism.” — cited by Globe and Mail
“Aside from the small and shrinking number of Canadians born prior to the Second World War, we have all lived our whole lives in a privileged little bubble above a superpower. We enjoyed peace and abundance no matter what we said or did: Our decisions simply had no consequences. And so, in time, gradually, our political discourse, and the policies it informs, detached from reality. We became unserious.” — Dan Gardner
https://dgardner.substack.com/p/the-unbearable-lightness-of-being
Introduction: there’s nothing like an outsider threat to unite insiders
When I was an undergrad at Trent University, and later at Guelph University, a hot topic in the cultural and academic circles in the years 1970-78, was ‘The Canadian Identity’. I made my own miniscule contribution to the discussions in essays I wrote for my history courses, and in a few letters to the editors of newspapers. Already I was preparing a future path as journalist sage.
In 1967, Canada celebrated its Centennial. I was 16 years old. I loved the country as a teen would, as my home, as a place I was flourishing. I went to Expo ‘67 and was inspired. I was a nationalist.
Also in 1967, Charles Taylor – who has now become world-famous as a philosopher – wrote an incisive essay about the Canadian national identity. He addressed circumstances which no longer exist for Canada.
https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/nationalism-and-independence
I recommend this essay for those who want to have a sense of the history of nationalism unfolding since the centennial. It is not everyone who has an historical curiosity, but if you do, read it.
In 2026, Canadian Nationalism is once again an unavoidable hot topic. Canada might be under threat of a serious offensive against our national independence by the one state credibly able to ruin us, the United States of America. An invasion is inconceivable. Isn’t it? Ask Ukrainians…
One cannot say with secure conviction that Americans will not invade us. Our tribe, Canadians, are circling, back-to-back facing out, preparing to repel the foe. Therefore it becomes the self-appointed mission of people like myself who write for public consumption on political, social, and cultural issues, to take up the torch of Canadian Identity.
Please read that last as an ironic remark. I am not particularly qualified to speak about that huge abstract idea. No-more-nor-less than my readers are.
The Knowledge of Identity and the Feeling of Self-hood are not the same
I offer an observation here about identity, individual and collective, personal and cultural.
When we consider Canadian Identity, our thinking is being formed by an elite caste of mental landscapers. We follow the leadership of our “betters” – those important people of Canada who spin the cultural fabric with their knowledge of Canadian affairs: politicians of course, literary leaders like Atwood, filmmakers like Sara Polley, journalists like Andrew Coyne, and musicians like Tragically Hip. They are the shining lights who tell us about Canadian-ness. Their voices are very, very loud among us. That is what a cultural caste is for, according to intellectuals.
But YOU, reader, and me, are also 21st-century modern (and post-modern) Western individualists We enjoy a long, strong tradition behind us of finding out “who I am” in ways personal, idiosyncratic, libertarian, spiritual, and psychological. We are “finding ourselves” day by day.
For the purpose of knowing our Self, we accept no authority higher than our own intuitions and feelings, no leadership from some elite. You alone know your soul.
I wanted to make that point for myself, airing for my readers an insecurity of being a writer: I know that I have no more claim than the next person to speak to your identity when it comes to describing what a Canadian is supposed to be. “The next person” might well be someone who knows you personally and whose opinion about being Canadian matters more to you than mine.
In pointing to this need for humility on the part of writers/ ‘culture-makers,’ I admit limitation.
I can claim one distinction of education — I apply the methods of an historian having a broad education in the humanities; this differentiates me from “the next person.” I am convinced that knowing some history matters in this discussion of Canadian national character.
But other than an historian’s special training for history, your opinions about what makes a Canadian are as valid as anyone’s. Identity is personal. Nationalism is ideology, not truth.
There are many opinions: a few thoughtful books about Canada and national identity
There are many books about Canada and its nationalism. Some authors seem to me to demand attention, so I will note them but say nothing about the content or opinions in the books. I offer them for the reader who wants to delve deeply into the question of our identity as Canadians.
The authors are three Canadian men of profound erudition; George Grant wrote in the Sixties, Richard Gwyn in the Nineties, John R. Saul in the Aughts.
Find them here:
https://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2009/04/are-we-a-mtis-nation/
https://www.booksincanada.com/article_view.asp?id=1018
https://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2011/09/finding-our-reflection/
https://thehub.ca/2025/07/12/ben-woodfinden-lament-for-an-elbows-up-nation/
Self-criticism: Canadian Identity and historic injustice
Historically, Canadians were colonial. The word is drenched in feeling, and in 2026, most of the feeling is weighted with judgment of our failings. On Canada Day, I asked my daughter – she is 42 years old – how she might mark the day; she texted back she did not want to celebrate a country founded on the theft of indigenous land, and added an emoticon of a nauseated green unhappy-face. I replied that her attitude to history is pretty shallow and she needed more education. We left it at that: I might refer her to past issues of The Arc on this topic, but I know she’ll not read them.
There’s nothing necessarily defective with Canadian self-criticism as we admit ugly ingredients of our past — so long as we are not wallowing in some wrong-headed shame for things done then that do not now measure up to moral human-rights standards of 2026. Our responsibility is plain, to make amends and atone where possible for wrongs done to indigenous people. We don’t own the shame of the people who made the past miserable for natives. We only have to make restitution. Set things to rights. Euro-Canadians created the state that rules Canada, under a European empire that no longer is our guarantor, and no matter our weakness, we owe natives some justice.
This is where Canadian national identity becomes aspirational, when we embrace justice, liberty, prosperity, and peace as national values – but not asserting we have achieved them. We’re involved in a process rather than arrived at a destination.
All the complimentary things our prime ministers have said (see Appendix 1) are what we want to make Canada. We know that is not what we are, yet. Charles Taylor was articulating the same fine vision in 1967 (see his essay I cited above) and called our national values “prospective” – we aspire to be better but we have limits to what we can do to make Canada better. The limits are political.
Something Unspoken in Canada’s Conversation about Identity: our weakness
Canadians aren’t able to talk about the meaning of ‘being Canadian’ without at some point using Americans and the US as reference points, for comparison, to define who we are. (If we do, it is likely that someone challenged us to do that, to speak of our identity and to not use comparison.)
I am not alone in finding this disturbing. It seems to me we should know who we are in a general way without the necessity of a comparison to another nation. American nationalism is exemplary, a potent paradigm. We seem to fall into the gravity of their nationalism, to use the “not-like-them” method to describe ourselves.
It behooves us to keep a low profile in the world if our neighbours are terrifically powerful and we have no ally who can credibly deter the neighbour’s aggression. Ireland suffered for centuries when England was a world power and no other state could stop English misgovernment of the Irish. Ireland is only independent today because the British Empire faded into a memory. We have reason to fear the US in a way Ireland once always feared England. Who can stop US aggression?
Canada has been lucky. That is what it amounts to – luck — that since the British have fallen into weakness and divested itself of empire, Canada’s neighbor, who is just as inclined to empire as Britain — is benign toward “Canadian independence.”An American Empire did not annex us from the previous British empire, even as it was assuming the global role of the British imperial state after 1945. The US was willing, however, to patrol a protectorate over Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and world oceans. The West, especially Europe, took comfort in American might – until Trump; he seems to think a lot like Putin, who recently said, “Orcas eat polar bears” – summing up why Russia is at war with Ukraine. https://kyivindependent.com/orcas-eat-them-like-little-fry-putin-compares-russias-war-in-ukraine-to-orcas-tearing-apart-polar-bears/
To leave the point hanging, I will quote a former prime minister who had this to say to “our American friends” on September 11, 2026: “Never mistake our tolerance for lack of determination. Never, never mistake our kindness for softness… Never mistake our generosity for weakness.” (Jean Chretien in Gander, NL. https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/video/9.7341220 )
My personal take: the definitive limit for Canadian Independence
Here’s my uncomplicated generalization on the parameter of defining Canadian identity.
A people like us – with a short past, a history of immigration, of appropriation of indigenous land, of high idealism – and of substantial limits on our capacity to assert ideals against the realities of power in the world – is a people self-aware of our limited means. We are hard-headed about what we can accomplish toward aspirations of sovereign, independent self-definition.
Canadians are realists. Idealists too, but we know the world we live in. Power is no joke, we know.
Power’s reality has been known for millennia; it was summed up 2400 years ago by Thucydides the Athenian as he surveyed the lessons of the Peloponnesian War: strong states can follow their own will, and weak ones will do only what they’re free to do – until strong ones limit that freedom.
Our neighbour’s democratic citizens are not ill-disposed to us, for we are a democracy with similar values; that sympathy is not guaranteed to help us. The worst among them – the large number who care little for democracy and a lot for power – might one day rule. When the worst rule in the US, their aggression toward Canada is certain. Have Canadians come to depend upon always having morally-enlightened neighbours? That’s a mistake I don’t think we make. We know better.
The world of 1945 to 2020 is likely irrecoverable. That era of “law-and-order” with the UN as the lawmaker and the US empire and its NATO allies as the police force, has fallen to unbridled new outlaws on the global stage: Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, and the wars they now pursue — in total contradiction to moral norms of 1980 or even 2000 — are evidence that former world is in pieces.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/AEIHxTOyDoE
The contingent nature of independence
A 1972 CBC contest asked Canadians to complete this statement: As Canadian as ____________.”
No doubt they were inundated with words like “hockey” and “maple syrup.”[see all you need to know about Canadian identity as defined by Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_identity ]
The winning line was,“As Canadian as possible, under the circumstances”—from a teen-aged Canadian. Brilliant! The key phrase is “under the circumstances.”
The formula captures our reality. Our national existence is contingent. A weak state dependent on one vastly-swollen great imperial power whose border with our state is immense, can only be independent to a point. That point moves, like goal posts in a street-hockey game, depending on what geo-political realities we live in.
Canada is free, independent and self-governing. An intelligent realism adds one straightforward qualifier to that assertion: Free, yes – but dependent on an orderly world and peaceful neighbours. Nationalism was always a construct, not solid like earth and water. An idea, with its context in history arising with modernity. And when the context changes, so must the ideas.
Justin Trudeau is not profound thinker, and I feel pretty sure someone other than he came up with the “post-national” label (his good friend Gerald Butts, perhaps.) Canada is entering the post-modern era and all nation-states are undergoing the post-national transition. We are not the first, but we are among the most affluent, an affluence most of the world envies – while our indigenes are still not sharing in that affluence equally. (see Appendix 2)
Conclusions
“As Canadian as possible under the circumstances” is a succinct summary of our situation. Canada is like many other states whose dependency is simply not talked about very much. The moral restraint on powerful states, keeping them from invading weak neighbours, has always been dependent on international order in existence since 1945 and was never other than a temporary circumstance: Time moved on, and a replacement for that security is an urgent Canadian need.
Look at the tiny states of Europe with potent neighbours, existing because the latter decide not to invade. The Baltic states know, Poland knows, being annexed or partitioned by great powers has been on the agenda in the past – and can be put there again. Ukraine is not tiny – yet found out what vulnerable means; Taiwan may well find out the same applies to it. Saudi Arabia, requesting air-force assistance from its mightly US ally against Yemeni forces (Houthi) on the Red Sea, was told “no”. The US, despite its awesome power, isn’t reliable, not defending a key ally. Aggression may be, under the right conditions, permissible again. “If you are not at the table, you are on the menu,” is the summation of Canada’s reality – according to none other than Mark Carney.
I’m going to end on a note of praise for Canada, in the words of a UBC political scientist, Maxwell Cameron. He notes that nationalism is different for a great power; it’s likely to be imperialist when the nation in question is supremely powerful in one region and boastful of its superior culture; the UK, France, Russia, the US and Japan have all exhibited such imperialism rooted in nationalistic identity. The parties of the political Right have exalted The Nation much more than the Left; Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany are the outstanding examples. In Canada, never. Canada, like Europe at this moment, is experiencing some fierce far-right voices whose like hasn’t been heard since the Second World War. Cameron goes so far as to finger Alberta separatists and Freedom-Convoy Ottawa-occupiers as far right ideologues. Europe has Farage, Le Pen, Orban and the German Af D; Canadian nationalism has never shown the blood-and-soil, racist taint of these.
“Canada symbolizes what the far right most detests: an imperfect but functioning social-democratic state with egalitarian institutions and independent regulators; worse still from their perspective, we are a thriving multicultural society.” (see Appendix 2)
What will ensure Canada is not slowly undermined, fragmented, and annexed by the US is not our military, not civil disobedience against invaders, nor defence alliance with another Power — It will be a return to what was normal among Americans: a culture of liberalism and respect for moral law. As American culture unravels, Canadians can still cultivate friendship with the better Americans; they too want a return to a kinder culture, a moral order, a democratic society.
Meanwhile, “you do you” — be a human being no matter the national identity imputed to you.
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Appendix
- Basic Themes: Three Prime Ministers declare what it means to be Canadian
Justin Trudeau, our P.M. for almost 10 years, at the start of his time in power:
The prime minister… articulated this when he told the New York Times Magazine that Canada could be the “first postnational state”. He added: “There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada.”
A prominent Canadian intellectual, Charles Foran, reacted this way to Trudeau’s remarks:
“The remark, made in October 2015, failed to cause a ripple … For a European, of course, the nation-state model remains sacrosanct, never mind how ill-suited it may be to an era of dissolving borders and widespread exodus. The modern state – loosely defined by a more or less coherent racial and religious group, ruled by internal laws and guarded by a national army – took shape in Europe. Telling an Italian or French citizen they lack a “core identity” may not be the best strategy…. Trudeau could, in fact, have been voicing a chronic anxiety among Canadians: the absence of a shared identity. He was outlining, however obliquely, a governing principle about Canada in the 21st century. We don’t talk about ourselves in this manner often, and don’t yet have the vocabulary to make our case well enough…. Canada may finally be owning our post-nationalism.” [ – The Guardian, Jan. 4, 2017]
Mark Carney, our current P.M., has said these things about Canadian Identity:
Canada has what the world wants. … we have capital, talent… immense capacity to act decisively. And we have the values to which many others aspire. Canada is a pluralistic society that works. Our public square is loud, diverse and free. [speech at Davos Forum, 2026]
“We do not welcome the world’s hatreds. When you come to Canada, you bring your faith, your tradition, your language, your story. You leave behind your animosities.” [ – public speech, Ireland, 2026]
“Choices made by each generation determined to keep building – not on blood or soil – but on something more demanding and more durable: a shared commitment to live together, to accommodate differences, to pursue the common good. … Canada has become richer, more inclusive, and fairer.”
It’s a great country for everyone. It is the greatest country in the world to be a regular person. You don’t have to be born rich, or to a landed family. You don’t have to be a certain colour or worship a certain god. … Our history traces an arc of broadening inclusion from bi-culturalism to multi-culturalism, from being British subjects to becoming Canadian citizens, from being two founding peoples to many peoples committed to living in true partnership with Indigenous Peoples.” [ – public speech, Quebec City, 2026]
And finally, from a prime minister of the last century known to all, Pierre Trudeau: “what Trudeau believed sat at the heart of what it should mean to be a Canadian; strongly focused on the idea of human rights and equal treatment for all people, the Speech from the Throne [1968] leaves the reader with the strong impression of the need to cherish and protect this aspect of Canadian identity.” https://www.saskoer.ca/primeministers2020/chapter/pierre-trudeau/#sdfootnote12sym
Readers might have uncritical respect for prime ministerial opinion, or not. I include the opinions for the sake of laying some basic background to what nationalism looks like “from the top”.
You may add any adjectives to what you think is typical of a Canadian. No one has the last w
- Negative Voices: Canada is unworthy etc. Self-criticism of our nation by Canadians
It has been noted, mostly by Canadians themselves, that we are a people of self-effacing modesty and unassertive “niceness.” And we have laughed at ourselves for it, and ridiculed our humility. But under the amusing stereotype of the polite, insecure Canadian, there are people who seriously dislike the Canadian identity – as they define it – from within our own nation. Stephen Marche has been a recent standout of such people.
You may have a look at his essay here. https://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2024/07/canada-daze/
I will save readers having to wade through all of Marche’s critique and give you the gist of his dislike for his own people: “If Canada is to be loved now, it is to be loved in silence.” Stephen Marche lives in Toronto and writes a great deal on Canadian subjects, and is a typical voice of those who find our national identity somehow pathetic, inferior, and in urgent need of a total reimaging. We Canadians fail his tests of what a high-quality sense of nationhood should be.
It is the colonial past which most upsets our critics. Dan Gardner is another such trenchant critic of our Canadian being: https://dgardner.substack.com/p/the-unbearable-lightness-of-being
Dan Gardner lives in Ottawa, has degrees in Law, and was a “senior advisor” to the prime minister’s office. He is an author, speaker, and consultant. https://www.dangardner.ca
