Great Canadian Question: Heroes and Symbols

By: Andrea Klassen
Medicine Hat High School
Medicine Hat, Alberta

When the web address for The Great Canadian Question first landed in my hand a few months ago, I approached my Social Studies teacher in hopes of cornering him with a question he couldn't answer: find me a Canadian hero. I was sure that, after a few moments or hemming and hawing he would look away, embarrassed, unable to think of anyone who measured up to the glory and reverence of American heroes, and that such a response would give me a perfect opening for an essay on Canada's wonderfully weird hero culture. Instead, the man smiled and began to rattle off more names than I could keep track of, running the gamut from Prime Ministers (John A., Lester Pearson) to popular music groups (the Who, the Barenaked Ladies). When he finished, my perfect essay about the apathy of Canadians and our general disinterest in our own culture was lying in ruins, but my journey to come to terms with the strange world of Canadian heroism was about to begin.

It is true that Canada lacks universally accepted heroes. As Ms. Grey points out, most Canadians who have made some lasting contribution to the country have also possessed some flaw which has kept them from being embraced by one group or another. Even Mackenzie King, our former leader, recognized in a Maclean's poll as the Greatest Prime Minister Ever, comes under fire for his racist immigration policies and his internment of Japanese Canadians during World War II. We have no Washington, no Jesse James. Our founding father is largely remembered for his drinking problems, rather than Confederation, and our wild west was settled by mounted police. None of our heroes blaze with the same sparkle as those of our American neighbors-each bears some mark of scandal, some insufficiency. Both Ms. Grey and Mr. Newman see this as a failing of the Canadian personality, but is it?

After the disastrous conversation with my Social Studies teacher, I began polling friends, family and acquaintances, looking for Great Canadians. My father brought up Louis Riel, while my mother championed writer Carol Shields. A family of ex-maritimers all referenced Pierre Trudeau, and my maternal grandmother cited an old premier of Manitoba as her personal hero. Every person I talked to was able to come up with a name but, oddly enough, none of the names matched. Even within my own family, what mattered to one person was often at complete odds with the values of another. On a grander scale, the CBC is currently working on a special called Great Canadians, slated for release in the fall of 2004, that will pit Canadian hero against Canadian hero. Its nominations, taken from the viewing public, are as varied as those of my own poll, with William Lyon Mackenzie (leader of the 1837 rebellion in Upper Canada) on the same list as Pierre Trudeau (famous for invoking the War Measures act to put down an separatist uprising).

It is in these results that I believe we begin to see a true reason for the 'ambivalence' of Canadians. Ms. Grey's article mentions the wide regional gap in opinion that has kept some heroes from achieving star status in either the east or west, but perhaps the gap is more than just regional. Curriculum in Canada today serves largely as a basis for free thought. In Alberta, students in Social Studies are told that knowing the dates of the Russian revolutions is less important than knowing why they took place. Teenagers today are taught facts so they may draw conclusions from them, not so they can rattle them off at dinner parties. And by doing this, we have made Canada into a society that has difficulty sustaining a perfect hero culture. If we are taught to examine both the pros and cons of a situation before reaching a conclusion, then how can we universally accept one hero? This is where the difficulty in finding that perfect Canadian hero lies. When we admit that our heroes have flaws, they cease to be heroes and become people. And it is much more difficult for an entire country to rally around one person.

Having a hero in Canada is a little like supporting a political party. You can admit that your party has flaws (a sponsorship scandal, dissension in the caucus, etcetera), but you vote for them because they overcome their flaws and the benefits outweigh the liabilities. Take the Famous Five-my personal heroines-a group of women famous for their fight for women's rights. To some they might not measure up, as they largely supported traditional families and prohibition. Indeed, many suffragettes even supported eugenics, a popular school of thought at the time, and only wanted the vote for white, Christian women. Many of these women were every bit as racist and Mackenzie King (first on my list of Most Reviled Canadians), and yet I admire them for having the strength to stand up to popular anti-feminist opinions even as they went along with others. Equality matters to me, and these brave women helped Canada move closer to it. I can overlook some of their problems in favour of their overreaching accomplishments. Other Canadians cannot do this, but might be able to ignore King's internment policies in favour of his handling of World War II's conscription crisis. In a country like Canada, with its incredibly divergent opinions, it is understandable that no one hero has been found that appeals to everyone. We always like to think of our country as a mosaic, and this presents us with an example that extends past culture. We are an ideological mosaic, with thousands of different values and, as such, thousands of different, personal heroes that are so easy to overlook when searching for the bigger picture, but just as important.

It is not uncommon to hear an essayist or media spokesperson decrying Canada and predicting the decline of the state because of 'lack of identity'. Separatist Lucien Bouchard probably summed this line of thinking up best with his infamous statement, "Canada is not a real country." Many of these naysayers point to that lack of a distinct hero as proof of our doom. Surely a country without even one hero with which everyone can identify is a failure. But all those who worry about our lack of identity are worrying about the wrong things entirely. We worry about apathy when we should be glowing with pride at our collective ability to think. Asking if our lack of heroes has hurt Canada is like asking if thought has sent the country into a downward spiral. As a democratic country, we pride ourselves on allowing people the freedom to think, encourage it, even. This is simply the result of that freedom and encouragement.

We may never find that perfect Canadian hero, that mythical figure to grace our dollar bills, inspire biographers by the hundreds, and make television movies about. But while those who worry at our ambivalence wring their hands and wail, the rest of us can take pride in our own uniqueness. Canada has refused to fall in line behind one simple ideal. Here, as everywhere else, we remain unique and diverse. Even in the world of heroes, the mosaic stands.