We Show Up, We Don’t Give Up
~ whether we just arrived or we were 'built here'- we’ve all got skin in this game
We celebrate a lot of things on Canada Day. With flags, fireworks, feel-good stories and citizenship courts swearing in our newest Canadians at the same time as materity departments in hospitals are springing babies …. instant Canadians.
But behind our bluster, bravado and barbecues is something far deeper; it’s a quiet truth not found in headlines or described by hashtags.
It’s in the calloused hands, the unspoken resilience, and the everyday sacrifices made by people who never asked for attention but kept this country standing anyway.
Birth and birthright, the earned rights of immigrants who qualified for citizenship, and the hopes of refugees seeking safety, we’ve all been welcomed here. Our successes are proudly championed. Our failings, acknowledged. Because we all have failings, feelings, and frailty.
When we get sick, we get help, not a bill.
When we fly our flag, we’re met with smiles, appreciation, and respect.
Everywhere Canadians have fought to defend freedom or worn blue helmets to work for peace, we’ve shown the world who we are. We’re a nation of massive complexity and startling simplicity, and we manage both at once. We battle and scrap and cheer on election nights and at every rink.
We figure skate, speed skate, and never skate away from a scrap. We skate hard, check hard, go into the corners with our heads up, and keep our stick on the ice. That’s how we come up with the puck.
We don’t claim greatness. We don’t expect special treatment. But we’re always up for a good debate, a fair deal, and respect, not because we deserve it by someone’s puffed-up power of privilege in a three-ring circus, but because our citizens, businesses, farmers, fishers, factory workers and lawmakers have earned it.
And we’ll take a break today, and some will take the whole day, and we’re back to work, earning our right to work, our right to survive, our right to be here. And to be heard.
There’s something about Canada that doesn’t show up in brochures. It’s not the scenery, though we’ve got enough of that to stun the senses. It’s the spirit. The unfussy, roll-up-your-sleeves kind of pride that doesn’t chase applause.
We don’t win wars with numbers or bombast. We win with grit. With medics and peacekeepers. With Indigenous storytellers, talkers, artists, and dancers. With nurses who worked triple shifts through three waves of COVID. With neighbours who shovel driveways for strangers.
With citizens who stand up, speak up, or simply stand steady all of us immigrants or descendants of people who came from somewhere else to build a country out of mud and rock and loons and beaver pelts, out of community halls and study halls, out of weddings and funerals and births and deaths - we’ve done it, we do it all, and we would all do it again … because when the call goes out for help, Canadians show up. We pay up. We help out. We don’t quit.
We’ve invented things the world uses every day: insulin, the pacemaker, the snow blower, and the zipper. How would we get dressed without Canadian know-how?
But what defines us isn’t our inventions. It’s how we apply what we’ve learned, wherever we are. From farms, forests, classrooms, rinks, and refugee camps, we show up and we make everyone’s contribution count for something. On a team. In a lab. At a protest. Or in silence, holding someone’s hand through the worst day of their life.
What makes us Canadian isn’t that we’re better than anyone else.
It’s that we know we’re not, and we still try harder.
We stand with each other, not for show, but because we know what it took to build this place and how much it still demands.
We’ve seen the best of ourselves show up during the worst of times.
So, on this Canada Day, forget the slogans.
Just remember the people.
The ones who lead without titles.
The ones who care without condition.
The ones who remind us why we keep going.
This isn’t just a day off.
It’s a reminder:
Of who we are.
Of what we do.
And why we matter.
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Happy Canada Mark, and everyone! I loved my time in Canada when I lived in Toronto, and you are spot on - always willing to help, getting the job done without fanfare or a need for attention, and making me feel welcome as the Odd American.... Enjoy the day and all it represents - and know that most Americans are appalled at Trump's attitudes towards our great neighbor.
I have visited Canada a number of times and each visit made me want to live there: The beauty of the land, the charm of the citizens. Now, particularly, I think about moving to your country, though the logistics would be so difficult. An important piece to write, Mark, as Trump's stance on Canada and freedom here in the U.S. takes our country in a direction that creates despair for me and many others.