Juno News - Remember who you are Canada

00:00:00.040 Happy Dominion Day. When people say Happy Canada Day to you, what exactly are we

00:00:06.480 celebrating? It sounds like a simple question. Canada Day comes every year, we

00:00:11.240 put on red and white, we wave the maple leaf, we watch fireworks over lakes and

00:00:15.720 cities. But if you ask the average Canadian what it means to be a Canadian

00:00:20.040 and what we are celebrating on Canada Day, you would struggle to find a concise

00:00:26.040 and coherent answer. We're told Canada is about diversity. We're told it's about multiculturalism,

00:00:32.360 the mosaic. We're told that Canada is a new type of country, a post-national state. We're told that

00:00:37.580 our history is something to be forgotten and reinterpreted rather than honored. But none of

00:00:43.300 that explains why a nation deserves to exist and what it actually is. A country is more than just

00:00:50.460 an economic zone or a health care policy and its geography. A country is a people, a civilization,

00:00:59.020 a shared inheritance stretching across generations. That is what Dominion Day is supposed to be all

00:01:06.540 about. The name itself tells us something. Not Canada Day, Dominion Day. Sir John A. Macdonald

00:01:12.980 and the Fathers of Confederation deliberately chose that word to describe our country. It comes

00:01:19.560 from scripture he shall have dominion also from sea to sea it is that idea that passage from

00:01:27.880 scripture that would become our founding national motto amari usque admari from sea to sea it's in

00:01:35.740 our coat of arms a vision of a country not defined by its size or its bureaucracy but by continuity

00:01:42.940 a nation stretching from the atlantic to the pacific and before the maple leaf there was

00:01:48.120 the red ensign it flew over parliament over government buildings it flew on ships crossing

00:01:53.720 the atlantic it flew at vimy and normandy it flew wherever canadians were called to defend

00:02:00.200 something larger than themselves and look at the shield that carried england scotland ireland

00:02:08.440 france the civilizational foundations that shaped canada's institutions parliamentary democracy

00:02:15.960 common law civil law traditions ordered liberty the idea that freedom is preserved not by accidents

00:02:23.160 but by careful and intentional stewardship those symbols defined our inheritance as canadians

00:02:29.480 as well as our founding christian moral values for more than a century this country had a

00:02:35.160 collective understanding of who we were and what we are people came from many countries they brought

00:02:43.560 languages and customs and traditions but the expectation was clear they were choosing

00:02:49.960 to become part of a common national identity under one flag under one political system

00:02:57.400 all in one country and before canada became a country there were the explorers who crossed

00:03:03.320 into an unknown continent champlain mackenzie david thompson simon fraser the voyageurs and

00:03:11.560 trappers who followed rivers no map had drawn. Men who endured harsh winters and extreme conditions

00:03:17.640 that most of the world could not survive. Canada was built by those people from nothing. It was

00:03:24.880 built with axes and rail lines, through farms carved out of dense forest and prairie, by miners

00:03:31.600 working deep underground, built by early settler communities surviving isolation, distance, and

00:03:38.900 cold that defined our land. It was built by people who accepted that hardship because they believed

00:03:46.260 they were building something that would last. And when our country was threatened, Canadians

00:03:50.960 defended it. In 1812, British regulars, Canadian militia, French Canadians, and Indigenous warriors

00:03:57.880 resisted invasion at Queenston Heights, Chrysler's Farm, and Chateau Guy. Moments that ensured Canada

00:04:05.380 would not be absorbed by the Revolutionary Republic, unrooted by the historical traditions

00:04:11.240 that Canadians loyally devoted themselves to defending. Those battles shaped our borders

00:04:16.380 today and defined Canada's place in the world. And of course, that pattern continued at Vimy Ridge

00:04:22.680 and Passchendaele and Juneau Beach, the skies over Europe, Capyong, and Afghanistan. A country that

00:04:30.540 would again and again step far beyond its size in the world stage and yet

00:04:34.980 somewhere along the way we began to struggle to define this inheritance to

00:04:39.240 ourselves we moved away from the single unifying Canadian story into this

00:04:44.880 pluralistic mindset Canada would officially embrace state multiculturalism

00:04:49.560 as official state policy in the early 1970s under Pierre Trudeau building on

00:04:55.500 previous work from the Pearson era this included the adoption of the

00:05:00.060 maple leaf and the elimination of the red ensign the changes were designed to reflect a changing

00:05:07.020 country a new canada and it did but that new canada identity came at the expense of canada's

00:05:14.780 true identity increasingly canada would come to recognize itself not as having one identity

00:05:20.780 but adopting the cultural mosaic as its defining symbol diversity would become the defining

00:05:27.980 principle of Canadian identity. Now, the man responsible for Canada, Sir John A. Macdonald,

00:05:33.420 who had the willpower and the sheer ambition to build one of the greatest countries in the world,

00:05:39.240 is today seen as the chief villain of Canadian history by our institutions. His name is being

00:05:46.540 erased. His statues have been toppled. He is no longer, in the eyes of Canada's most powerful

00:05:53.680 individuals seen as worthy of any genuine praise. But you simply cannot celebrate Dominion Day

00:06:00.460 without honoring and celebrating the achievements and tireless work of McDonald. Without McDonald,

00:06:06.700 you don't have Canada. The question we should be asking ourselves is what actually holds a

00:06:11.760 country like Canada together? Our nation cannot just be sustained on geography alone and increasingly

00:06:17.800 out-of-touch institutions. It requires us to embrace something we all share. Our shared national

00:06:24.260 story, our shared symbols, and the heroes of Canadian history. A vision of Canada and who we

00:06:30.960 are that we can actually understand and define. Because without that, there is no nation to

00:06:37.300 preserve. Dominion Day once reminded Canadians of what we actually are and who we are. It was

00:06:43.860 renamed to Canada Day in 1982, and over time, the older meaning had faded. We slowly stopped

00:06:51.060 remembering what we were celebrating, and instead focused on the trivial aspects of Canada Day.

00:06:57.140 Now, Canada has made mistakes. No serious country is without them. But if all we are being taught

00:07:03.400 and told about is what we have done wrong in the past, many people will continue to conclude that

00:07:08.640 there is nothing worth defending anyway. And it must be known that a nation that will not defend

00:07:13.720 itself in memory will not defend itself in reality. So what should we do with this inheritance? We

00:07:19.420 should strive to become once again a people who understand what they are part of and who we are.

00:07:27.340 That is what Dominion Day was. That is what Canada is and that is what must remain. Happy Dominion Day.

Juno News - July 01, 2026

Remember who you are Canada

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