What is a Canadian? What makes us who we are? For my entire academic life I've had to come up with answers to that question. In the eleventh grade, feeling spectacularly lazy and not caring, I answered, "A Canadian is a person who chooses to be a citizen of Canada and follow its constitution.", and then handed it in. I got a full mark! The teacher was probably sick of reading the answers of vapid teens for so long. It's quite an inadequate answer, failing to address ideals, needs, responsibilities and so on...everything that year after year our provincial and federal government forces students (and their unfortunate teachers) to spend hours thinking and writing about. So ingrained in us is that question, "What is a Canadian?" The siblings being, "What does it mean to be a Canadian?" and 'What are the rights and responsibilities of being a Canadian citizen?", and all the variations of those burning questions. So ingrained indeed, that I'm sitting here rambling about it when I could be doing something like eating or my homework. (It's related to Canadian nationalism.)
One year I had a huge textbook called something along the lines of "Canadian Identity and Other Related Issues." This search for answers doesn't stop at the post-secondary level, nearly everything I'm doing for my bachelors degree goes back to "what it means for us as Canadian citizens today" and "how does this relate the search for Canadian identity?" I am so sick of writing that noun now, I'll shut up after quoting Irving Layton.
"A Canadian is someone who keeps asking the question, What is a Canadian?"
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