daphne bramham: why april 17 should mean something to canadians
opinion: do anything special on monday? me neither, and nor did most canadians, even though april 17 is canada's independence day.
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the province front page from april 18, 1982. canada became a modern, liberal democracy on april 17, 1982 at 8:35 a.m. queen elizabeth ii signed a document that prime minister pierre trudeau kept a hand on so that it wouldn't blow away.
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do anything special on monday? me neither. monday came and went with the usual sighs about another long week yawning ahead, and a bit of whining about weather that was less than spring-like.
april 17 slipped past most of us with a whimper. yet, it should mean something to canadians.
it did in 1982, when on a blustery, cold saturday morning, close to 40,000 people gathered on parliament hill in ottawa.
two thrones from the senate chamber had been dragged out onto the steps. alongside was a table and a smaller chair where queen elizabeth ii slipped off one of her black gloves. at 8:35 a.m., while most of the country west of ontario slept, she signed a document that then-prime minister pierre trudeau kept a hand on so that it wouldn’t blow away. then he signed it, followed by justice minister jean chretien and registrar general andre ouellet.
after 118 years, canada ceased being a colony. it became a fully independent country, a constitutional democracy that retains the british monarch as its titular head.
with a stroke of the pen, canada became a modern, liberal democracy with equality enshrined as a foundational principle and enacted in law. our constitution included a ground-breaking — and, for some, still-controversial — charter of rights and freedoms that cleared the way for women’s rights, abortion, same-sex marriage and medically assisted dying.
the vancouver sun front page from april 17, 1982.
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yet for 41 years, and in sharp contrast to other countries’ independence days, ours passes virtually unnoticed, let alone celebrated with fireworks, flag waving and patriotic bliss.
sure, we’ve got canada day for that. but that is recycled from dominion day, which marked the anniversary of confederation when a few colonies south of the great lakes spread thinly along the 49th parallel decided to band together.
it took two years before politicians decided that confederation was worthy of a public holiday. by 1871, canada stretched from sea to sea with the inclusion of british columbia. and, in 1880, britain ceded the islands of the arctic archipelago extending canada’s boundaries from sea to sea to sea.
with all that incrementalism and no grand founding, april 17 should be worth remembering, if not celebrating.
oddly though, i have no memory of that day. i don’t recall watching it on television. among more than seven decades of papers that my mother saved, there were no newspaper clippings from that saturday or the monday paper that would have had the photos of the queen.
the vancouver sun’s saturday edition had a canadian press story. it reported no stirring speeches from canadians that day. the most optimistic remarks were the queen’s. she expressed her “unbounded confidence in the future of this wonderful country.”
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perhaps it is because canada’s independence didn’t result from battles or war. there was no heroic throwing off an autocratic ruler.
canadians talked. they talked earnestly about every little detail.
prior to april 17, pedantic academics and editorialists argued over whether it was patriation or repatriation, citing both latin and logic. how could it be repatriated if it had never been here? ask the patriates, they won that argument.
our constitution came home because a bunch of men squabbling like horse traders finally got a deal that they figured was good enough. (and, yes, the premiers and federal ministers at the negotiations were all men.)
the deal was brokered late at night — prosaically, in a kitchen. what resulted was the same as what committees do when they are asked to draw a horse: they come back with a camel.
no one was entirely happy with the deal. quebec was enraged.
constitutional amendments can only be made with the consent of parliament and the approval of seven provinces representing half of the population. it has rendered the constitution almost unalterable.
canada’s fathers of independence did leave a loophole — the so-called “notwithstanding clause” — that allows governments to opt out of sections of the charter. but even that has proven difficult in the few cases when it’s been tried.
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quebec’s native sons, trudeau and chretien, also agreed that french-language minority rights are only guaranteed “where numbers warrant.”
on april 17, 1982, quebec premier rené lévesque led the first of many marches through montreal on signing day, launching four decades of smouldering separatism.
the vancouver sun page a12 from april 17, 1982.
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prominent indigenous leaders called it a day of mourning. while the constitution “recognized and affirmed” the “existing aboriginal and treaty rights of the aboriginal peoples of canada,” nobody knew what it meant. all this time later, that is still being hammered out in the courts, legislatures and parliament.
canada is not the same country that it was in 1867, or 1923 when it excluded chinese people from immigration, or 1942 when people of japanese ancestry were forced into internment camps, or even 1982.
canada remains a work in progress. that may be its greatest strength because no one is quicker than canadians themselves to point out its imperfections. but there is a danger in not celebrating milestones such as april 17.
if we forget how far we’ve come and lose sight of our ability to evolve, we leave the door open to propagandists to define us by what we did and not who we are.
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