Our nation’s values are shaped by constantly evolving conversations between all of us
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/12/2016 (2673 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
In the music room of a cosy North End school, a little girl from Syria is singing with the group. She wears a pretty hijab in bright royal blue, and boots suited to muck through the slushy snows of a comparatively warm November.
Her family came to Canada earlier this year, and she is still learning English. But she is confident when she sings it, belting out the lyrics eagerly and clear. When the song is finished, she turns to two little girls beside her, who appear to be indigenous.
They giggle and play a game that involves wiggling their fingers. The rules are not immediately evident to an observer, but the language is unmistakable; play is the universal mother tongue of children, and all kids everywhere can speak it.
In this moment, they are joyful and perfect and young. From this point, their futures stretch out long. They have time to play, and time to become, and as long as there is time, there is potential. For now, it is enough to simply sing and laugh together.
This is Canada. This tiny moment in a small corner of a mid-sized Prairie city, it is part of the fabric of my Canada. Late at night, when all I have is the glow of my computer, I think that scenes such as that are why I write: to reach toward the future.
Right now, that little girl likely doesn’t know her presence here is political. In the future I hope for, she will never have to.
In an email to supporters this week, Conservative leadership candidate Kellie Leitch stated that “the media” and “the elite” don’t care about “Canadian values,” partly a reference to her proposal to add a values test to immigration screening.
As a longtime member of the media, I would like to say this is not true.
Most of us who work in media are Canadian, too. Like all Canadians, we may not always agree with each other, with politicians, or with all of our readers. We may have differing convictions and conflicting opinions about the path ahead.
To say that we “don’t care” about “Canadian values,” though, is categorically untrue. They are our values, too, ones we have an equal part in creating and guiding, and if we did not care about Canada then we would not care to tell its stories.
My values are of this country. They were born on the Prairies, and came of age on Greyhounds between the coasts. They were shaped by history books, and graduation powwows, and by watching the grateful tears of refugees allowed to stay.
When my family immigrated to Canada in the late 1960s, a dozen years before I was born, nobody asked them to prove their values. They came for a sense of peace, for a place to raise their kids and breathe, and they passed those values onto me.
I was six years old. We pitched a tent somewhere in the Whiteshell, and skinned sticks to roast marshmallows over the fire. Stars spilled across the sky, and the shallow river babbled. From this, I learned the value of respecting the glory of nature.
Thirteen years old. My friend, who lived next door, was moving. Her father was out of work and couldn’t afford their rent anymore. She sat on the porch, kicking rocks and sighing. Her mom wasn’t around, she said; in trouble for drinking.
From this, I learned the value of understanding that anyone can need help, sometimes. I learned there is pain in families that isn’t always evident from the outside, and wanting to find ways to heal these hurting places is my Canadian value, too.
The years marched on, and I did too, and each of my 35 years as a Canadian has taught me something new. I have been humbled by mountains, by canola fields that link horizons, by the strength of farmers battling to save their land from floods.
I have been humbled by the parents of Christine Wood, searching for their missing daughter on too many long nights.
Inspired, yes, I have been inspired too: by all the folks in Steinbach, quietly working to grow the conversation around LGBTTQ* folks’ safety and inclusion. By Michael Champagne, and his tireless work to raise up a new North End vision.
All of these things are Canada, and yet Canada is so much bigger, but to describe the entire picture would keep us here forever. If anyone wants to know where this media member’s values originate, well, those are just a handful of the places.
They are many things, and have shaped many of my opinions. And they are all fully and authentically Canadian.
Leitch’s rhetoric isn’t particularly subtle. The point of inspiration may be regarding her proposed immigration values test — on which many of us may disagree — but the choice of words used in the campaign is far broader and more divisive.
The implication is that there exist monoliths that are hostile to “Canadian values,” and only a smaller group (Leitch’s supporters, presumably) who can define and defend what being Canadian is. Setting up a classic “us vs. them.”
This strategy is much more advanced in the United States, where history and political propaganda have thrown up a fortress around who and what can be considered “real Americans.” It can be a winning strategy, when sufficient anger propels it.
A potential to win doesn’t make it any more just, or true. It is not yet that far gone here, I think. It will take vigilance to ensure it does not go further. So for the record, let me assert that none of us can claim to be the sole owner of Canadian values.
Those values are, like everything else in this nation, a constant conversation between 36 million different people. They are shaped by our vantage point on society, by our personal and community histories and by our dreams for the future.
For me, I found my values again in an elementary school in the North End, watching three little girls sing and laugh and play games with their hands. And I care about them, so much: the girls, my values, and the Canada in which they all will grow.
melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca
Melissa Martin
Reporter-at-large (currently on leave)
Melissa Martin reports and opines for the Winnipeg Free Press.