The Stories between Us

Dear Kate,

Let's imagine together, on Canada Day, being a Canadian.

Imagine being a Canadian in the 1880s, when the residential school system operation first started, and throughout the century after that, being our parents and grandparents and great grandparents, scattering our imagination generously over the sea of one hundred years; imagine for them, for Canada, for a day.

If all Canadians from the period were implicated, then in what ways did they implicate themselves on this matter?  What was life like, back then, that they were so preoccupied with other more important matters, moral imperatives, that they would let such atrocity start and go on, for a full century?  How did they get their information, where did they get their "news," ideas about people and things they have only begun to know, what was at stake, as they felt it, when their government was to make a decision, the residential school decision?  How did they, in short, make sense of what went on beyond the narrow space between their ears?

Pop quiz: name five major events, as perceivable by human beings and rendered by a specialized group of them called the historians, during this one hundred years where our imagination shall wander; Canadian events, international events that implicated Canadians, doesn't matter, a full century for your choosing, only five of them I'm asking.  Now, place yourself in one of those events and imagine from there.

I have a feeling you are now finding yourself in turmoil, maybe a war, a Great one (more than one of those to choose from, sadly), in the long years of anxiety or other heightened emotions leading up to the event, in despairing confusion crawling out of it for many longer years after... What's there to do with a son minus an arm, or a husband with his heart bled dry?  Does he still eat peanut butter and jam in the morning?  If he does, would I pretend to see him normal and feed him the same he once expected from me?  If I am to serve him different, what difference and how different can I serve him without being pretentious?  If there ever was a vision of togetherness as a family, a nation, a world, a narrative of ceaseless progress and ever-rising prospect, they've been not only found wanting, but resoundingly proven untrue, false promises.

Or maybe you find yourself in a more joyful event.  It is possible, even in a hell of a century.  It is always possible to find yourself in joy; there is always grace.

We have ideas about our ancestors, every single Canadian before we became one ourselves.  I hope we have similar ideas about ourselves.  We certainly hope one day our kids won't look back in anger with their textbook ideas about us and deny us of our storied presence in the years we occupied and in the events we found ourselves preoccupied with.  We wish their imagining of how our time has been will be generous, honest but forgiving, discerning but not merely denouncing, compassionate and dignifying, as we now claim such are the fundamental positions towards humanity from which we redress our past and keep striving for our togetherness.

Happy Canada Day.  We should be as happy as we are generous, as dignified as we are compassionate.  May God keep our land, glorious and free.

Yours, Alex