It’s worth noting that, by any set of metrics, we live in one of the greatest countries in the world. Not a perfect one, by any stretch. The list of things we need to improve is dauntingly long. But I dare say, if you look at a list of the world’s more than 200 countries, there can’t be many others where one would prefer to live.
So, it is with some considerable surprise that I’ve watched convocation season in Ontario — when the province’s 23 universities and 24 colleges hold ceremonies to award degrees, diplomas, and certificates to graduating students. I attended one at Toronto Metropolitan University nearly two weeks ago (they invited me to be a guest speaker), and another one at Queen’s University in Kingston last week (my daughter was graduating).
They were a stunning contrast in student behaviour, and prompted some uncomfortable but important questions.
Toronto Metropolitan University held an energetic and boisterous ceremony in the former Maple Leaf Gardens (now Mattamy Athletic Centre), as about 650 students graduated. The students were from creative arts programs including journalism, graphic design, and communications. While no students arrived on stage shouting slogans or carrying placards, a great number did wear the keffiyeh. That seemed an appropriate way to indicate solidarity with the plight of the Palestinian people.
Convocation ceremony at TMU. (Steve Paikin)
But at the end of the convocation, when Charles Falzon, on his final day as dean of TMU’s Creative School, asked students to stand and sing the national anthem, many refused. They remained seated. Then, when the singing began, it was abundantly noticeable that almost none of the students sang along. And it wasn’t because they didn’t know the words, which were projected on a big screen. The unhappy looks on their faces clearly indicated a different, more political, explanation.
I asked some of the TMU staff about it after the ceremony was over, and they confirmed what I saw happens all the time at convocations. Then I texted the president of another Ontario university who agreed: this is a common phenomenon among this generation at post-secondary institutions.
Wanting to better understand what was happening, I called a leftist political organizer in France that I’ve known for more than a quarter of a century named Theodore Deutscher. He’s written a lot about this.
“Canada’s youth are simply not very nationalistic,” Deutscher told me. “They increasingly identify the Canadian nation-building project as something built not for, but against them, especially in marginalized communities.”
I mentioned that I found this development perplexing, given that on so many other occasions, Canadians have embraced the singing of their national anthem in ways we haven’t seen in decades. If you’ve gone to a Blue Jays, Maple Leafs, or Senators game in recent months, you’ll have heard O Canada sung with great gusto and pride. This is true even in places where the anthem traditionally hasn’t been played, such as before concerts of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, or before theatrical productions of the Shaw or Stratford Festivals. People sing and then cheer wildly, no doubt partly out of love of country, and partly in reaction to the U.S. president’s disgraceful musings about Canada becoming his 51st state.
But Deutscher says much of this younger generation doesn’t see it that way.
“They think the Canadian flag and anthem represent an attempt to extinguish Indigenous people,” he says. “Those are symbols used by rich people to get poor people to fight and die for their countries. They’re symbols of colonial oppression.”
Before my daughter’s convocation, I had seen warnings that ceremonies were overrun by pro-Hamas protesters, and that Canadiana would be nowhere in sight. That was not my experience as I watched 650 Queen’s students cross the stage, and chancellor Shelagh Rogers impressed the gathering by delivering part of her address in an Indigenous language.
There were no protesters, and while there was no Canadian flag at the service, it did conclude with the singing of the national anthem — and all the students sang the anthem loud and proud.
I confess, I was expecting something different, especially since Queen’s principal Patrick Deane almost invited the students to be intellectually disruptive. “Convocation sends a message of social stability,” he began in his opening speech. “It is a ceremony shaped in history. You should value your connection to the past, but question that inheritance. Focus on the kind of society you’d like to inhabit.”
Convocation ceremony at Queen's University. (Steve Paikin)
When I mentioned to Deutscher that, by any standard, Canada is one of the world’s most successful countries, he was unmoved.
“Just because some other place is worse doesn’t mean you shouldn’t improve where you are,” he said. “You do have the right to oppose things in your own country. It’s a positive thing to protest.”
So, on this Canada Day, I’m going to allow myself the luxury of having two competing thoughts in my head. I’m grateful for what we have, and look south with horror at the increasing authoritarian impulses I see from a president who fundamentally doesn’t seem to believe in democracy.
But at the same time, I acknowledge what principal Deane pointed out at the Queen’s convocation: that COVID has been responsible for “a challenge to the predictability of life and the expectation that one generation will succeed another with inexorable improvement.”
That clearly is not happening in Canada. It needs to. And, at the risk of using an American expression, if we fail to create a more perfect union, we shouldn’t be surprised when a vast swath of young people don’t sing our anthem the way so many of the rest of us do.
As Jean Chrétien always said: Vive le Canada. Now let’s keep working on making it better.
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