Pick-Me-Nation

Canada’s nationalism and struggle for identity

Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious.

- Oscar Wilde

Canadian soldiers of the Royal Canadian Regiment prepare to assault a trench at Paardeberg South Africa, 1900.

Canadian nationalism is a strange thing. Few nations are in deeper denial about their own nationalism, and fewer still center their nationalism on being a subordinate power. Denial is one feature common to many a nationalist, but few are so fluent in it as Canadians.

On October 11^th, 1899, the Boer Republics and the United Kingdom entered into a war that would be known to history as ‘the Second Boer War.’ It was a brutal, irregular conflict against flying columns of guerillas (Commandos).

In the book ‘Painting the Map Red,’ Carmen Miller discusses the Canadian Imperialism of the 1890s. We were enthusiastic Imperialists, and when the war broke out, Canadians were eager to take part. The actual causes of the war itself bore no inspection. The cause was not to debate the right of the Boers to declare autonomy, the cause was Empire. Canada’s identity was that of the first and finest colony; a proud constituent part of Empire.

This was obvious in the motivations and propaganda of the period. The express purpose of the Canadian deployment of soldiers to South Africa was to prove that Canada, the free Dominion in the Empire, was a contributing member that believes just as strongly in Empire as the British. The oldest and proudest of the White Dominions.

7,368 Canadians would serve in South Africa. They would fight in battles like Paardeburg, escort supply columns, and hold down the land for our British benefactors. Some became colonialist cops after the fighting was over. Canadian Army was not directly implicated with the British establishment of concentration camps during this conflict, but being a core part of the expeditionary force, and being eager volunteers to it, Canada’s hands were dirty enough to go around.

Maybe instead, we should have been asking ourselves why, having become an independent part of the Empire, we had chosen to act as an enforcer for it. A wildly racist colony in a harsh land, struggling for independence, might have seemed more alike to us than we’re willing to admit.

The same pattern repeated itself 101 years later.

I remember, as most people of my age do, the September 11^th attacks vividly. It wasn’t just the United States under attack, but us, in a very real, visceral sense. Our “friends” and neighbors had been attacked, and we had a duty to help the most powerful country in the world against the poorest.

Why? You can cite NATO obligations if you wish, but the idea that September 11^th somehow became an Article 5 issue is laughable. The fact is that we got into that conflict so eagerly for one reason: our overlord was attacked, and we wanted to show ourselves as contributing members of the American Empire. America’s first and finest friends. Of course, we didn’t consciously see it that way, just as we didn’t see any parallels with the Boers, but hindsight can be useful, can’t it?

This isn’t new, nor is it out of character. Canada tariffs Chinese electric vehicles in order to protect the American EV market. We also arrested Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer for the telecom company Huawei, in Vancouver on the behest of the Americans. In retaliation, they arrested the famous Michaels, of whom at least one may have been a spy. Having damaged our relations with China and caused untold hardships to the Michaels, the Americans decided to make a deferred prosecution deal with her, and she was released. They could have just told Canada to go fuck itself, it would have saved us the troubles.

The simple, if unacknowledged truth, is that Canada has never once actually fought for its own collective interests. The closest we’ve come is inflicting our military on Indigenous people inside Canada, and that is not something to be proud of. Korea, both World Wars, and South Africa were fought as a core component of the British Empire. Afghanistan, and our deployments to the Middle East, have been fought on behalf of the American Empire and American interests. In fact, every conflict in Canadian history is marked by a neglected, non-credible Canadian Military trying to reform itself enough to sit at the grownup table, be it a British or American table.

And of course the military is neglected; why wouldn’t it be? We have no enemies it can actually defend us from.

Did we have a choice in the Second World War and Korea? Yes, technically, but were we actually fighting for ourselves though? Only if you believe the Germans and Japanese or hordes of Communists were going to cross the oceans and invade North America. ‘The Man In High Castle’ is a good TV show, but lets not delude ourselves into thinking occupation by a foreign power was on the cards at any point in Canadian history.¹

Any point until this one, anyway.

With our dear friends the USA revealing themselves to be our dear frenemies, it has been interesting to watch Canadian nationalism get a second wind, or perhaps is it a first wind? What is it to be Canadian if not for our conscious subordination to foreign powers?

Is it our crumbling universal healthcare? Everyone should receive medical treatment as a fundamental right, but are we living up to that? Even if we are, then that just adds us to the long list of countries that have it. Freedom and democracy has been nice, sure, we get to pick between capitalist stooges every few years. We have some sports teams and some made-in-Canada products to hold up with pride, but is that a national identity?

Very little about the world beyond our shores would be different without Canada in it. Perhaps Haiti might be slightly less ravaged. Given our appalling track record of mineral exploitation in the developing world, it would be harder to find a nation more blatantly exploitative than Canada. People will cite inventions, but that presupposes the nation itself is instrumental in the invention. I would argue Sir Frederick G. Banting would still have discovered Insulin regardless of Canada’s international standing and choice of flag.

Prime Minister Pearson might have invented peacekeeping, but we’ve not actually even participated in that for decades now. We’ve been far too busy chasing our tails around in the name of the Global War on Terror. In fact, we rank 67^th in the world with just 43 soldiers deployed as peacekeepers, contrasting 6110 Nepalese, 6069 Indian, and 5910 Rwandan, peacekeepers.

The fact the Canadian Red Ensign is a far-right dog whistle should teach us something about our collective past. Fascists might be swine, but they have a more clear understanding about our dirty history than many; they just don’t see a problem with it. When they see the Red Ensign, they see the flag that help subjugate Indigenous people and create a nation for White men. Is that a sick appropriation, or is that an understanding of what the nation was and aspired to be when that flag flew? Both.

Nationalism and history are intertwined. One cannot exist without the other, and so much Canadian identity is based on denial of our collective history that our nationalism is a vapid shell. How can it not be? The alternative is to look hard at our past, and what we see from 1867-2025 is ugly.

So how do we square that circle? How can we defend our basic freedom, independence, and liberty while defending Starlight Tours?² Occupation by the USA must be resisted, but it cannot and should not, be resisted with this paper thin veneer of nationalism. This pseudo-American style flag-waving, blind patriotism is delusion, and it will not survive first contact with the enemy.

The only way is to create something better than this. However one fights, one must fight for something. Nobody should die or lose their livelihood so that we can continue to be the proud, genocidal American stooges of today, nor should they for a misremembered history of the proud, genocidal British stooges of yesteryear.

Canada has been granted, through the threats of the USA, a potentially once in a lifetime opportunity. We can separate ourselves from this Empire we hopped so eagerly in bed with, but we will need to do so much more than just “buy Canadian.” We’re going to need to look at the world through the lens of an actually independent nation, in a real sense for the first time. We’ll need to define what “we” actually are, and what “we” stand for. What Canada’s place in the world will be in this new era is open to debate, but we can’t look to the past and cover it in a veil of half-truths. We need to be clear eyed about where we’ve been and where we are.

Only then, can we know where we’re going.

Ian, Feb 16, 2025

1. There are plenty of pre-Confederation examples, and they are all the USA. See: The War of 1812 - by Ian Barclay - Avant-Garde Press

2. Starlight tours are the appalling practice in which Canadian police have detained Indigenous people and transported them away from town and abandoned them, usually in winter, so that they suffer from exposure to the elements. This can often be murder.