By Colin Robertson

June 30, 2025

For more than a century, the question of who we are and what defines our identity has been debated by Canadians. It has created a cottage industry among scholars, politicians, the media, and Canadian book publishers. It has been an academic exercise, a parlor game and a cultural project fed by Gordon Lightfoot songs, by Group of Seven paintings and by the countless jokes of the countless comedians we grow here like canola before shipping south, un-tariffed.

Now, the question of who we are, what defines a Canadian and what being Canadian means has taken on a level of seriousness unprecedented in peacetime. With an American president suddenly treating Canada as a future appendage of the United States, we need to remind ourselves – as well as Donald Trump – of what it means to be Canadian.

People, places, and events shape us and our history. Whatever post-modernists may think, we need our professional and popular historians to explore the question of our identity.

Canada exists because the resolutely Canadian Sir John A. Macdonald was determined to avoid the American embrace. So convincingly argued the late journalist and historian Richard Gwyn one afternoon in my backyard.

In his splendid biography of the “man who made us”, Gwyn says Macdonald was determined that Canada would remain the “un-America”. The confederation of British North America was partly a reaction to the recognition that annexation into the Great Republic was a clear and present danger. Macdonald’s conviction drove the construction of the coast-to-coast railway and the formulation of the National Policy.

Gwyn’s thesis jibed with what another historian W.L. ‘Bill’ Morton, taught me at university. In a series of lectures published as The Canadian Identity, Morton argues that we have constructed “the greatest of civilizations in the grimmest of environments and elaborated in one of the largest, harshest and most intimidating countries on Earth.”

If the American experience relies on shared history and belief in the melting pot of being American, the Canadian experience is less straightforward. There has always been more division and ambiguity about our shared history and less exuberance to our nationalism. It was not as if our “founding nations” set out to create a Canada in opposition to a colonial status quo.

We are in many ways, according to historian Desmond Morton, founding director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada, peopled by those on the losing side. Our Indigenous people were not consulted on the adverse consequences of the ‘Old World’ settling into the ‘New’. For the French, most of their first 150 years were spent fighting to keep the British at bay and then having to reconcile to the conquest. So, too, with the Loyalist ‘liberty’s exiles’ who found sanctuary in Canada. Then came successive waves of those fleeing famine, conflict and oppression. all seeking a better tomorrow

Like many others, this is what motivated my own family. My paternal grandmother’s father left Scotland, a ‘remittance man’ fleeing some scandal and having to change his name. He bunked off shortly after arriving in Winnipeg, leaving his wife and six children to fend for themselves. They did. When war came in 1914, his four sons joined the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, nicknamed the ‘Little Black Devils’ and sailed to France. Only two returned. I remember their story whenever I hear a call to keep out “undesirables” and their families.

Our embrace of diversity flows from the requirement to work together although the recent focus on race, gender or creed exacerbates divisions when we should be emphasizing that which unites us keeping in mind, we all possess multiple identities. We have eschewed the American melting pot for a mosaic of identities, like a kilt of many threads.

As Charlotte Gray writes in The Promise of Canada, “Our country owes its success not to some imagined tribal singularity but to the fact that, although its … citizens do not look, speak or pray alike, we have learned to share this land and for the most part live in neighbourly sympathy.”

The irony of our identity obsession is that the rest of the world knows who we are and what we stand for. The problem is not with the brand abroad but the brand at home.

The role of Quebec in Confederation is a constant and consistent theme in our unique history, often forgetting that our francophone heritage is pan-Canadian and not the exclusive preserve of Quebec nationalists.

We are justly proud of our Charter of Rights but as the Canadian pavilion as Expo ’67 reminded us ‘rights are the reward of responsibilities’.

I recently revisited Pier 21 in Halifax — our country’s Ellis Island — a place every Canadian should visit. It reminds us, observed Peter Newman, who landed at Pier 21 after fleeing Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia in 1940, that “this country was put together not only by bloodlines, kin and tradition, but by tides of newcomers of every stock, creed and persuasion.” For former Supreme Court Justice Rosie Abella, who landed at Pier 21 as a four-year old, displaced person, “I will never forget how lucky we were to be able to come to Canada, but I will also never forget why we came.”

While it would be uncharacteristic for Canadians to admit it, we are proud of our once quietly creative internationalism. Pragmatic Pearsonism is ready for a return engagement as we renew multilateral institutions to meet 21st century challenges.

Successive waves of newcomers seeking a ‘second chance’, continue our nation-building process. The result of our open-door, jobs-oriented approach is that one in five Canadians was born outside of Canada, reinforcing Canadian pluralism.

Our sense of our North and closeness to nature also defines our Canadian-ness. The North is our equivalent of the American frontier. It continues to hold our imagination. Popular historian Pierre Berton set the bar when he once described a Canadian as “someone who could make love in a canoe”.

Confronted by the challenges of diversity, climate and geography, with our population mostly huddled within a few hundred miles of the American border, we both accept and expect government to play a lead role in creating national institutions like Medicare and backing national projects from the ‘last spike’ in our trans-continental rai link to the Canadarm.

Thinking small limits our options. We do best when we think and go ‘big’ to achieve the national dream. This has renewed resonance as we once more harness our resources while dealing with global warming and geopolitical threats in our Arctic.

A dry and subtle humour is another Canadian constant, one famous example being the winner of the late Peter Gzowksi’s CBC Radio competition to complete the phrase “As Canadian as….” being “As Canadian as possible under the circumstances”.

While it would be uncharacteristic for Canadians to admit it, we are proud of our once quietly creative internationalism. Pragmatic Pearsonism is ready for a return engagement as we renew multilateral institutions to meet 21^st century challenges. We were not just present, but active participants in the creation of the United Nations, NATO, and other multilateral organizations such as the Commonwealth and Francophonie.

Public opinion surveys consistently tell us that whatever our differences at home, what we do as a useful nation beyond our borders gives us pride, a common cause and a greater sense of being Canadian.

We may not be war-like and we are justly proud of our reputation as peacekeepers, although as Jack Granatstein pointed out, it is  steeped in mythology.

In truth, we are we are adept as able warriors. We earned a reputation as the Allies ‘shock troops’ at the Somme and Lloyd George wrote that “for the remainder of the war they were brought along to head the assault in one great battle after another.” The battle of Vimy Ridge in April 1917 marked Canada’s coming of age as a nation. Every Canadian should make a pilgrimage to our starkly beautiful national memorial in Givenchy-en-Gohelle.

As Canadians we need to look through the right end of the telescope when we worry about our identity.

By any measure, Canada is a net producer and exporter of a unique culture that draws from our history and diversity. When we are on our game, we bring a quiet lightness of touch to problem-solving that is much more effective than the recent penchant for virtue-signalling.

Having spent a large part of my working career living beyond our borders, the idea or brand that Canada represents within North America and out in the world is much envied. Every day, I met people who wanted to come to Canada because of what that brand represents:  freedom, cultural diversity and opportunity.

This sensibility and sensitivity are means to an end. The end they serve is to give Canadians the confidence and the knowledge to play an increasingly constructive role — first in Canada, and then in the world we share.

Canada remains a nation under construction. National unity requires daily attention. But whatever our challenges, I believe that to have been born in Canada or to have migrated to Canada is to have won the global lottery.

Contributing Writer Colin Robertson, a former career diplomat, is a fellow and host of the Global Exchange podcast with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute in Ottawa.