Conrad Boyce is the editor and publisher of the Cosmos. He has a BA in English from the University of Alberta and a diploma in journalism from Grant Macewan Community College in Edmonton. He lived and worked in the Yukon and Vancouver Island before arriving in Ontario in 1995. Beyond these pages, he is the Artistic Director of OnStage Uxbridge, and the technical manager of the Uxbridge Music Hall.
Canada in my pocket
Although there wasn’t room for me in the special section starting on page 7, I, like my Cosmos colleagues, will attempt to pin down the definition of Canada this week. Unlike most of them, however, I’m not going to look into my heart to do it, or scan the pages of history books, or wander the multicultural city streets, or take a train across the Canadian Shield, the prairies, over the majestic Rockies down to the shores of Pacific Rim. Or take a slug of maple syrup or Molson Canadian, or take in a game of lacrosse, or a concert of Gordon Lightfoot or Great Big Sea. Or even slip in my CD of last year’s production of Anne of Green Gables.
No, sir, all I’m going to do in my attempt to capture Canada is empty my left pocket. That’s where I keep my coins, you see; the bills are in my right. Now quickly, without looking in your own pocket, can you say what’s on the “tails” side of each Canadian coin? Good Queen Lizzie’s on the “heads” side, a fairly mature Lizzie, although not as mature as the real one. But what’s on the “obverse” side, as the coin people say?
How many did you get? Without looking, I got four - not real sure about the dime and the toonie. But let’s take a quick gander (no, the Canada goose isn’t there) at them, cheapest to most valuable, and see if we can find the definition of Canada on our money, what we carry with us every day.
Okay, right away on the penny we have an excellent candidate - the maple leaf, two of them actually (symbolizing our two founding nations, perhaps?). The maple leaf’s on our flag, after all, so isn’t it what Canada is all about? Well, no, actually - you’d be hard pressed to find a maple tree in large sections of Canada, and the leaf itself doesn’t even hang around for winter (unless you want to count the Toronto Maple Leaves, but let’s not talk about them).
Moving on to the nickel, we find the beaver, an industrious fellow long established as a Canadian symbol. But is a rather intellectually challeged giant rodent, who we like best naked, really the quintessence of Canada? I think not. On the dime is a boat, for Pete’s sake, not a good Canadian canoe (which used to be on the silver dollar) or a warship, but a yacht. Too elitist to represent most Canadians.
Now the beast on the quarter, the barren ground caribou, is a cool animal to be sure, and his perseverance against all manner of adverse conditions is much to be admired. But he is most definitely a herd animal, travels with not just thousands but hundreds of thousands, and that flies in the face of the rugged individualism which most of us like to think of as archetypically Canadian. So not the caribou, and not the polar bear, either (who appears on the toonie). He’s a bit fat, he’s exclusively a carnivore, and like the maple, restricted to too few parts of our country. And he likes to kill baby seals, not politically correct.
There’s one coin left, and there, I contend, you will find the very key to Canadianitis, or ism. The coin is even named after her! For I’m pretty sure it’s the female loon shown there on the obverse of the one-dollar coin, floating on a northern lake with nine conifers on the far shore (pines, I think, or maybe firs).
Now the more fiscally-obsessed among you might even contend that the coin itself is what’s at the heart of Canada these days, rising above the recession, the rock of our universally admired banking system (even the Boston Bruins’ home rink is named for a Canuck bank!), and soaring ever higher against its American cousin (which, of course, is adorned with that well-known garbage bird, the bald eagle). It’s the loonie, our only gold coin, which truly inspires us.
Perhaps, but for me, it’s not the dollar, it’s the bird behind it. There are lots of admirable Canadian birds, each of which displays a piece of the Canadian persona: the aforementioned goose, the heron, the raven, the blue jay, the osprey, the great horned owl. But the not-so-common loon not only has a quiet beauty, it has a surprising sense of humour, remarkable strength for its size, all of them valued parts of the Canadian character. And all of this is quite beside the point.
For no matter what part of Canada you live in, as you lie awake reflecting on how marvellous it is to live in the best country on earth, you may suddenly hear (if the Gods bless you) the call that takes your breath away. I’ve even heard it on Elgin Pond. It is far stronger than the call from such a small bird deserves to be, and it echoes forever, on the night air and in your soul.
And that, dear readers, that one glorious glimpse of wildness, is what makes Canada Canada.
