O Canada

Editorial -

When kings and peasants walked into cathedrals during the middle ages, coloured light poured through towering stained glass windows to warm the floor before their penitent feet.

Vaulted ceilings, the highest ever built at the time, balanced heavy stone above their heads and in second story alcoves choirs sang. Many small choirs that shared rhythm and key, but were all at different points in a piece. The result was that instead of listening to one voice, you had to open your mind to the whole - as in a forest when you hear the rustling of countless branches, water trickling and the odd twig snapping all at once.

The music was a metaphor - to understand God's purpose you had to listen to the whole, not concentrate on one particular voice. Seeing an injustice in the world, we are naturally inclined to say 'Why would a just God allow that' without noticing that rivers still flow, birds still sing and children still play.

A nation is much like a cathedral - our institutions of journalists and judges, politicians and police, public opinion and constitution balance the forces of the state above our heads. When they are in balance, we are free to wander and wonder at life's mysteries below, get and spend, laugh and cry. When they aren't, the state comes crashing down in civil war and depression until we reorganize and raise those walls again. History is littered with fallen cathedrals of stone and man.

Canada's just a baby as cathedrals go - last Thursday we celebrated its 143rd birthday. But it's old enough that neither us nor our children have known the pain of civil war. We haven't seen hate obscure our own humanity or that of our neighbours. Blood hasn't flown down our streets.

This is a blessing.

For while Canada is created and maintained by us, we're also a product of it.

If we lived in an insecure, crime riddled country, we would have a different character as a people. Out of self preservation we would be more suspicious, our doors would be locked and our greetings less warm.

Like life's great blessings, when assumed it can easily go unappreciated.

Our cathedral has strong walls.

Our democracy survived humanity's two largest wars and in an unprecedented act - after liberating Europe, instead of keeping it for ourselves (which is what was done in the past) we returned it to self governance. We didn't allow Cold War suspicion to impede upon our civil liberties. We knew that if we allowed the state too much power over the individual, we'd be no better than the dictatorships we opposed.

Not bad.

Injustice makes for great paper sales - so the nightly news is usually filled with tales of outrage. Holes in the public safety net, holes in the pavement, holes in our health care provision all cause suffering and we all lament what's wrong with our society. Other times we rant over historical misgivings - the mismanagement which led to the cod moratorium, the terrors imposed upon our aboriginal peoples, not being allowed to jig a fish for supper.

All these lessons form the foundation of our cathedral - remembering them keeps our walls strong by keeping us aware that if we're not doing maintenance then we're letting it crumble. Still, now and then we should look at the whole. It's pretty impressive.

The ancient Greek founders of democracy only wanted it for land owning men. In Canada, we all get to vote.

We have a professional military that defends us instead of running us. When we send them to war they don't burn cities and loot gold - they do us honour by valuing the lives of Afghans and Bosnians and Africans. There are instances of abuse, but they are rare.

We can walk into a hospital and be treated by professionals who have received years of training, which itself evolved from centuries of learning how the mind and body work.

If we violate or are accused of violating the laws, created by our own elected officials, then we are entitled to defend ourselves before either a selection of our peers or a judge with decades of experience and the wisdom of a system of jurisprudence that began nearly 3,000 years ago in ancient Babylon.

We don't let each other starve.

Halleluiah, hear those choirs sing.