Essays in Idleness

It is our national day once again, up here in the Great White North, unless it has been rebranded. In the past I might have added, “it cannot be avoided,” but this year there is something new. We may start by thanking the Red Chinese Xi Jinpeng CCP Batflu (also known as the Wuhan Kung Flu). But then we must nod to the Americans, whose lockdowns and riots we mindlessly copied. This includes the current trend to national self-abasement. We are told to express our shame for every misdeed of a Canadian in the past; especially those of which we were naturally proud. And we are shown examples of how to piss on our flag. The media have all joined in, or rather they lead the infernal, racialist din. We’re damned if we’ll let the Yankees out white-guilt us, and had we more energy we’d pull all our statues down.

For fifty-something years I have declared that the new Canadian flag is not the embarrassment so many took it for, but a superior example of Liberal Party ad-agency graphics from the ‘sixties. Dated it may be, but perhaps this will be the first year I wave it around. On second thought, stick to the Red Ensign.

As I have also long observed, Canadians as a class are very, very stupid, and while those who vote Liberal may be beyond hope, the retardation isn’t limited to them. The same could be said for all the other Western democracies, though I take no satisfaction from it, because I am not a relativist. By now, there is little left to celebrate (which does not stop the punks with fireworks), and what there is happened only in the past.

It isn’t even called Dominion Day, any more, except, I do things voluntarily. I propose that others act voluntarily, too, to commemorate that Canada which used to be strong and free. Let us revive the term. And let it stand, once more, for what it once did:

Et dominatibur a mari usque ad mare, et a flumine usque ad terminos terrae.

Canada was incidentally a Christian country — unashamedly — whose loyalty extended beyond our earthly monarch to God most high. Those who are Christian, along with those at peace with them, are in their dignity entitled to retain this heritage. Those who aren’t, can only covet it. The country seems to be populated by pagan savages today, but the land remains in the warmth of hindsight.

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APPENDED, from Edward William Thomson (Old Man Savarin Stories, 1917):

When the croon of a rapid is heard on the breeze
With the scent of a pine-forest gloom,
Or the edge of the sky is of steeple-top trees,
Set in hazes of blueberry bloom,
Or a song-sparrow sudden from quietness trills
His delicate anthem to me,
Then my heart hurries home to the Ottawa hills,
Wherever I happen to be.

When the veils of a shining lake vista unfold,
Or the mist towers dim from a fall,
Or a woodland is blazing in crimson and gold,
Or a snow-shroud is covering all,
Or there’s honking of geese in the darkening sky
When the spring sets hepatica free,
Then my heart’s winging north as they never can fly,
Wherever I happen to be.

When the swallows slant curves of bewildering joy
As the cool of the twilight descends,
And rosy-cheek maiden and hazel-hue boy
Listen grave while the Angelus ends
In a tremulous flow from the bell of a shrine,
Then a faraway mountain I see,
And my soul is in Canada’s evening shine,
Wherever my body may be.