Pickering College - Voyageur Yearbook (Newmarket, Ontario Canada)

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the Toronto Argonauts? Now what are some of the things that make being a Canadian so particularly attractive in this seventh decade of the twentieth century - in addition to all that splendid history? First of all is the exaltation in the physical splendour and enormity of our land which most of us feel though we wouldn't be caught dead saying so. fCall the ambulance, as I am about to be caught dead.J There are, of course, some unhappy creatures who will trade our acres, rich with the excitement of the chang- ing seasons, for permanent sunburn and premature old age on a stretch of Florida sand. We can do very well without them. It is the very northernness of our country which gives it its strong quality-like the squeak of the snow. Our poets and our painters have been obsessed from earliest times with this rugged grandeur - the painters at least until they started painting old hamburgers. I know that the phrase the true North strong and free is a bit corny, but it does catch the essence of what it is that keeps this country full of Canadians and fills the Canadian abroad with permanent homesickness. CWhen I was in the Canadian Embassy in Moscow in the chill days of Stalin, the Embassy staff used to huddle together evenings watching a coloured film of the changing seasons in the Gatineau Valley. We all used to have a lovely cry in the dark. Sometimes we showed it to the Russian servants andI am happy to say that they used to cry too. You know, the closest thing to this Canadian passion for a melancholy landscape is the feeling the Russians have for theirs, a feeling that is very strong in their literature and music - even when they haven't got Julie Christie along with the snow. One of the things you young people can do is to stop your parents from moaning about our climate. The best way is to pack them all off abroad to all those places that look golden in the travel posters and turn out to be grisly in fact. I was caught in a snowstorm on November 3rd last year - not in Moosonee but in Gay Paree. It was filthy, but there is nothing quite so splendid as a Canadian winter, if you just get off Bloor Street, and I am tired of Canadians who talk as if it were fit only for Nancy Greene and Alfie Philips. Patriotism and nationalism are out of fashion. Some people say they are the sole cause of war. That is nonsense. When I was a diplomat I used to hear people saying it was diplomats who caused war, but I reject that simple theory as well. It is unhealthy and frustrated nationalism that causes wars, and we are more likely to cause a war if we don't get rid of those Canadians who deplore everything about the place. No healthy state can function well without the kind of national feeling which persuades its citizens to be good citizens and to love and respect and responsibly criticize their country. And one of the purest elements in nationalism is the simple love of one's soil - and we have more of it per square head of population than anybody else. This love of the soil for us has rarely been better expressed than by a Canadian, Bruce Hutchison, who wrote during the last War of this The Unknown Country . This may sound corny, but that is no reason for my not quoting a bit of it: fAnyone who wants to cry can use the paper table napkins.J Fifteen

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realize that we would have to link up of shut up. We have been lucky, of course, that although they talked pretty aggressive and were awfully noisy, they never had their hearts in being real nasty. This isn't going to be a history lesson, not in front of Professor Purdy - if he's still here. My message is simple and obvious, it is just to say to you as convincingly as I can asasurvivor ofsome of the most exciting years of Canada's history, that there is really nothing square in this hip age tif I've got my adjec- tives rightl with feeling romantic about it. There are times when the very thought of Laura Secord or Madeleine de Vercheres sends me or switches me on. That doughty Laura with the hard centre! I have a friend in Ottawa who is a direct descendant of Madeleine de Vercheres and he says that, according to all records, she was a really untamed shrew. Idon't think he would be very gentle-natured if he had been up shooting Indians all night. But our past is exciting, at least in retrospect in a well-heated hall. To be forward and with it, we don't really need, like the girl from the West, to fight our history. We might indeed make as our Centennial motto, Who's afraid of Wolfe and Montcalm? . Because, in spite of the gloom and despondency being spread by elderly Canadians we have been an undoubted success. Many of our elders must have been terribly disconcerted by the news in this morning's paper that our trade balance had improved again and that Expo was a great success with the Europeans. We are not a great power but we are a well-respected medium- sized one and that's a comfortable thing to be. We can thank our lucky stars that a lot of rock and frost have kept us from being a great power, because it is a terrible burden to be a great power in this nuclear age. You will notice that far too many of your elders are agonizing about the nature of the Canadian identity when what they ought to be doing is relaxing and enjoying what we are. Have we a soul now that we have a flag? they ask, and their sour looks suggest they don't think so. To which I would reply, if I weren't an ex-English master, Oh nuts! The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, of all people, set out several years ago to answer this 567.00 question, What is a Canadian? in a pamphlet for their own members. It began: It has been said that Canadians arejust like people, which seems a reason- able assumption. There are those also who say that Canadians are just Englishmen who don't care how cold it gets, and others who say Canadians really are just Frenchmen who know what side of the Atlantic their bread is buttered on. It goes on, Canadians are also Americans, but Canadians are not prone to over- stress that technicality . I recall also an English book explaining the world to the natives of that island which said of us. It is important to realize that Canadians do not talk like Americans, although you can't tell this from listening to them. So there we are, mysterious, undefinable, exotic, like one of those new men's toilet lotions - and just about as expensive now that the old age pension has gone up. But surely that is better than being the guy that everyone recognizes in the cartoons. With all that latent power is it any wonder that great Canadian teams like the Chicago Black Hawks do so much better than American teams like Fourteen

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Wondrous and sweet is our name. Canada! The very word is like a boy's shout in the springtime, is like the clamour of geese going north and the roar of melting rivers and the murmur of early winds. Can we not hear the sound of Canada? Can we not hear it in the rustle of yellow poplar leaves in October, and in the sudden trout- splash of a silent lake, the whisper of saws in the deep woods, the church bells along the river, the whistle of trains in the narrow passes of the mountains, the gurgle of irrigation ditches in the hot nights, the rustle of ripe grain under the wind, and the bite of steel runners in the snow? Have we not felt the texture of Canada? Have we not felt it in the damp, spring forest floor, in the caress of the new grass upon our face, in the salt spray off Fundy or Juan de Fuca, in the hot sun of the prairie, in the beat of blizzards and fierce surge of summer growth? And the colours of Canada... We have seen them in the harsh sweep of prairie snow, in sunlight and shadow vibrant across the heavy-headed wheat, in foaming apple orchards and in maple woods, crimson as blood, and in bleeding sumac by the roadside, and in white sails out of Lunenburg and in the wrinkled face of mountains. I would be inclined in 1967 to throw in the perpetual whine of the riveters in our great cities and the sun on the wings of a jetliner at forty below. We are no longer mainly country folk, though we may all be at heart. Whenl was looking up noble old poets of a hundred years ago I found some that had more enthusiasm than art. There wasa bard from Cape Breton who was so overcome with Queen Victoria's Jubilee that he addressed her thus in verse: Hail our great Queen in full regalia, One foot in Canada, the other in Australia. There was another who celebrated the entry of all those rough Fort Garry settlers into Confederation in 1870 with a poem that began: Now everybody drunk or sober, Sing loud the praise of Manitoba. My favourite poet of a hundred years ago was a Scotch-Canadian called Alex Glendinning who wrote inspirational things like those called Dam Yankees, 1830 and The Battle of Yonge Street, l837 . As survivors of Yonge Street traffic I am sure you would enjoy the references to loyal Scarborough's men of fight and the last two lines: And mothers mourn and widows weep Theflower of Markham's chivalry. He also tried to scare off the Fenians with a poem that wound up: Down with the ruffians and pound them like snakes: What business have they on this side of the Lakes? Please don't repeat that last line in the year of Expo. Their hearts were in the right place even if they didn't scan very well. But if there was good reason to shake a fist at the Yankees in those days there is less now. We like to take pride jointly for our unfortified frontier and the 150 years Sixteen