What Canadians Need to Know About Canada
Canada is a country the world can be proud of. This is despite our numerous shortcomings and mistakes over our 144 years of history as a nation of many co-operative nations. Not everyone in the world is impressed with Canada, some because they don’t know the first thing about us or our impressive geography, history, people, and wildlife. Some people may only know of our massive tailing ponds and tar sand mining in Alberta, or recent obstructive behaviour on a variety of fronts internationally from climate change to asbestos issues. Canada is still a positive place, however, and we have much more to offer than just our raw resources. We have unbounded opportunity to break out of our timid and follow-the-leader modern mindset and be the trailblazers that earned us generations of respect from Holland to sub-Saharan Africa on the other sides of the world.
Canadians are innovators. When settling the West with European immigrants, Canada signed treaties with the First Nations, and avoided most of the heavy bloodshed seen in the western States prior to the turn of the 20th century. When World War One gripped Europe, our men and women went to the defense of Britain, and provided innovative pilots like Billy Bishop, and invented storm troopers to capture Vimy Ridge. Our navy and soldiers and pilots during the Second World War were also instrumental in freeing Europe from the threat of fascism at that time. We’ve provided the world with the paint roller, and insulin injections, and a swath of essential daily tools and medicines and vehicles. Perhaps most importantly, we provided the idea of peace keeping: using military forces to prevent brutality against defenseless civilians caught in a conflict they have no control over.
In the early 1980s, my grandparents traveled to Africa to teach modern farming techniques directly to farmers in an assortment of countries, thanks to a Canadian government outreach program. Canadians are generous with their time and knowledge. My brother and sister-in-law more recently have also shared their time and expertise in countries less fortunate and wealthy than ours.
There are so many things I’d like to change and improve in Canada. I’m not a fan of our current government, or how we’ve collectively been facing global problems like climate change, or the failing health of our oceans, and extinctions of so many animals. So I’m trying to focus on what’s still great about our country, and that’s the collective will we have to help others, and our shared history with undeniable moments of greatness in human achievement. If I work hard, and you work hard, and enough others do too, there’s still a chance we can make this world what we want it to be for ourselves and our next seven generations. We’ve done it before in Canada, and we can do it again, better than ever.
Saskboy's Abandoned Stuff 
“Some people may only know of our massive tailing ponds and tar sand mining in Alberta, or recent obstructive behaviour on a variety of fronts internationally from climate change to asbestos issues.”
That’s true, but for many people that’s all they want to hear. They want to hear that Canada is occupied by greedy multinational corporations destroying the environment and helping to kill thousands of helpless people all over the world. They want to hear it so the media tell it, and they make money telling it. Can’t blame them for that, media types gotta eat too. It reminds me of people from the southern hemisphere who have been told that our arctic is melting at an alarming rate (how often have you told that one?), so they book a trip to the Canadian arctic so they can walk to the north pole (in high heels sometimes). And of course they are airlifted out just before they die. The public wants to hear this kind of exaggerated crap about Canada.
“A country the world can be proud of”? Ya think?
I am proud of what Canada was, the Canada that unknown generations of my family built and fought for and, sometimes, died for. But that’s not today’s Canada, klem’s Canada, Harper’s Canada.
“But that’s not today’s Canada, klem’s Canada, Harper’s Canada.”
Um so what kind of Canada were you so proud of? You know before Klem’s Canada, Harper’s Canada. Surely you’re not suggesting that Canadian governments in the past didn’t hide things from the public, or they didn’t commit injustices in the past, or that they lived in a cleaner more unpolluted Canada, or that we were more innovative in the past than today, what? Our governments have always hidden things from the public, they have always committed injustices. Our country was far more polluted in the past than today, I know because I fought during my youth to clean it up, you should have seen the sewer we used to call Canada. I think in reality you just believe the hype, you just want to believe the worst and ignore the great things. I’ve seen you before, I used to be you.
Cheers