How was your Canada Day, Sunshine Coast?
I was in Saskatoon visiting family, but I was checking my social media feeds and it looked like everyone was having a good time despite the lack of fireworks.
There were fireworks in Saskatoon – there always are – along with entertainment that featured the key elements of a Canadian summer celebration: a group that was big in the ’80s (Platinum Blonde) and a Tragically Hip cover band.
I didn’t go. Frankly, I’ve been pretty ‘meh’ about the whole Canada 150 thing.
Part of it is the feeling, expressed by others a lot better than I can, that we’ve missed another opportunity to pay down the debt long owed to indigenous peoples by the political entity created July 1, 1867.
There’s also the feeling that the sesquicentennial isn’t the big national project that the 1967 centennial was.
The Roberts Creek Library is in a building constructed as a centennial project. It’s a modest little building that, before its facelift, had the stark, functional look only cinder blocks can create. But it was, and still is, a vital community hub.
There used to be a plaque on the big granite stone outside proclaiming it as a centennial project, and as a young boy I assumed there were similar stones with similar plaques in every other town in Canada.
I wasn’t alone. A 2012 report on preparations for Canada 150 from parliament’s Committee on Canadian Heritage quotes then heritage minister James Moore. “I think if you ask most people for a quick response about the legacy of 1967, they’ll point to the physical infrastructure,” Moore told that committee. “You can’t go very far in this country without finding a centennial arena, a centennial park, a centennial bridge, a centennial waterfront, etc.”
That’s probably not the response you’ll get when you ask people about the legacy of 2017 in 50 years, although a few folks may remember the federal government helped rent a giant rubber ducky for Toronto.
The budget for centennial projects in 1967 was $100 million (around $750 million in current dollars), and a quarter of that was set aside for infrastructure projects with the usual expectation that provinces and municipalities would kick in as well.
The Canada 150 budget is $500 million, with $300 million for infrastructure.
Seventy per cent of the respondents to an Ipsos Public Affairs poll conducted in May said that’s too much money, while 29 per cent thought it was about right and one per cent felt it wasn’t enough.
The money will do good, and some of it will be well used locally, but it feels like just another grant opportunity among the dozens modern governments offer. Welcome to be sure, but a bit ‘meh.’
I found a copy of a 1967 pamphlet highlighting centennial projects. A cultural centre in Winnipeg. A regional library in Hay River, NWT. A museum and archives in Edmonton. A centre for the performing arts in Saskatoon. You get the idea.
The pamphlet, with all its cheesy patriotism wrapped in classic 1960s graphic design, was a call for Canadians to take pride not just in their centennial projects, but the projects in Hay River, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, etc.
I don’t see that happening in 2017. Maybe it’s because we recognize that the country created as a trade deal in 1867 has a lot of flaws, some of them very serious, and we’re uncomfortable papering them over with a Canada 150 logo. Maybe it’s because we needed something more than another grant opportunity.
