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I'D BE A GOOD CANADIAN, BUT.......

Writer's picture: Dan Held MinistriesDan Held Ministries

After now finishing our 3-week camping trip across Canada ranging from Cache Creek, B.C. to Sault Ste. Marie, ON, I’m ready to sign up for membership in this great land to our north.

 

Well, almost.

 

Most of what I previously knew about Canada was learned from watching Red Green episodes on PBS every Saturday.   After a few years of gathering info from Red and his Possum Lodge brothers there, I already knew the advantages of hoarding Duck Tape for all occasions and making the best of all life-opportunities as necessity demanded.   My little touristy forays into Canada off cruise ships and the like, and even a week in Vancouver and another in Whistler years ago, did little to inform.   Red Green was my true mentor where Canuck living was concerned.  He taught me to always keep my stick on the ice.

 

But now I have expanded my knowledge base.   

 

Now I can say that the Canadian Rockies are even more beautiful than those in my beloved Colorado.  Their mountain lakes are unsurpassed.  Most beautiful I’ve ever seen, even when compared to Alaska’s glacier-fed waters and rugged mountains to Canada’s own north and west.  And, yes, I have “touristed” in the Yukon territory before.  Alberta’s mountains take the cake!  

 

Now I can say that Canada’s First Nation peoples have agency far beyond anything I’ve witnessed among our own Indian nations here in the USA.  The shame of our own indigenous people being stationed in lands no one else cares to own has been reinforced dramatically.  That an efficiently portable culture would be forced into stationary inefficiency is awfully lamentable.

 

Now I can say that Canadian poverty is less evident in towns and cities and farmlands at least wherever we have driven.   Of course, there are homeless people everywhere in the world.   But we saw no one living in shacks and run down shantees. No urban blight or rural squalor as in too many places here in the US and to our Mexican south.   No medical bankruptcies.  And, with less extremes in both wealth and poverty comes less crime.  The ultimate no-brainer. 

 

Now I can say that Canadian suburbs do not feature the grand palaces seen in ours to the south.   Yes, there are wealthy residents here and there, but nothing jumps out in terms of lavish Canadian lifestyles.   Just a dominance of middle-class housing surrounding the towns and cities.  

 

Now I can say that Canadian streets and highways are better maintained and have fewer pot-holes that ours to the south.   By far!!   In our 2K plus drive across country, I rarely found a patch-worked stretch of road, whether wide or narrow, that should’ve been rebuilt years ago.   Can’t say that about ours in my homeland.  

 

Now I can say that Canadians actually drive the speed limit, for the most part, even though their mostly 100km an hour feels slower than slow sometimes.   Granted, there are fewer people and drivers at least where we were traveling, but rude drivers were so rarely encountered there that I started to think maybe I should just stay around and not come home.

 

Now I can say that Canadians actually have plenty of fire-arms available.   For hunting game or predator animals and protection of personal property.   Not for hunting and killing groups of people, like here in the USA.   No military-grade weapons for their average or even impaired residents like here in the States.        

 

Now I can say that the transCanadian Highway 17 across southern Ontario is as beautiful as any drive I’ve ever undertaken anywhere in the world.   Especially in early October when the red maple leaves really are ablaze in the forests above their glimmering clean lakes.  Every State in the US has its best kept secret drives for scenic beauty, but why I waited til age 78 to find out about Canadian Hwy 17 across Ontario is in question.  No one ever told me.  Nothing we’ve seen in British Columbia or Nova Scotia can top it.  Not even the sea-to-sky highway north of Vancouver.  Well, maybe the icefields parkway of Alberta between Jasper and Banff can, but Ontario highway 17 in early October should be on every bucket list for North American travelers if you ask me.

 

Now I can say that when the locals complain about their government in Ottawa, it sounds like they actually don’t hate it all that bad after all.   Not like the hatred so many Americans feel for ours in D.C.  Truth be told, I’d probably fit in just fine as a progressive there north of our border.    I might actually prefer Ottawa to D.C. here myself.  Ask me for sure on 11/6/24. 

 

Now I can say that I’d be a good Canadian. 

 

But.

 

I still love my USA.   I love returning here whenever I leave.  I love this land, warts and all.  Don’t always like it, but then I’d not always like Canada either……starting with the weather.  And the cost of living on Vancouver Island where I could probably like the weather well enough.  

 

You see, love still wins out over like where my own values and choices in life are concerned.   I want what I like. But I need what I love.  There’s plenty to like about Canada, and I could easily want to live there for said reasons.

 

But I won’t because here in my good old USA, there’s still so much to love.  Our sights here are still so diverse and beautiful that I can’t begin to imagine a better nation in which to travel.   Our ocean and mountain drives are absolutely spectacular; our national parks so often majestic.   And I truly love the way we have shifted from the smoggy conditions of my first 20+ years of life through the 60’s and into the much cleaner air and water starting with Nixon’s EPA in the 70’s.   I love our Yankee ingenuity and the clean energy resources being developed even as we speak. 

 

There’s plenty here to not like.  Our wealthiest special interest lobbyists and political action committees have quite thoroughly corrupted out governments, alongside the Citizens United and District Gerrymandering laws upheld by our highest court.   Passenger trains will never make it for reasons of politics as driven by private economics.  And land here will always come before people, material possession before social progression.  

 

I’ll stay here for the “love” that I need.   I won’t leave for the “like” that I want.   Love is of eternal value.  Like is always of a temporary nature, varies from place to place and person to person; even time to time.  Love is what we, in the social ethics discipline, call a “categorical imperative.”  It’s a non-negotiable.  And, yes, sometimes that which we love and like are the same.   Or what we need and want are the same; our demands and desires then alike.  

 

But often the demands for what we love and the desires for what we like are as different as, well, the United States and Canada.   That is the “but” that will keep me from ever being a good Canadian.

        

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