Thoughts on Canadian Identity

So there’s a big hockey game tonight. Canada and the USA! The first time in 10 years, we’ll get to know which country has supremacy when it comes to hockey.

With everything going on in the news and with this tournament concluding, people are talking about what it even means to be Canadian anymore.

Always having been extremely proud to represent the Maple Leaf, I have been spending a lot of time recently thinking about the question of “What does it mean to be Canadian?” in other words “Do we even have/what actually is the Canadian identity?”

It may not be obvious to many of us. When travelling abroad, we’re often mistaken for being American. That culture bleeds so heavily into ours. There is tremendous political turmoil in Canada at the moment and our average citizen still probably knows more about American politics than anything local. I polled my network last year and found that most young people don’t subscribe to any news organizations. If they do however, they will subscribe to the New York Times or Washington post.

As this is a moment where Canadian pride is coming into focus, the question of our identity is seeping back into the collective consciousness. So allow me to offer a couple thoughts on what it means to be Canadian in 2025. It is by no means an exhaustive list, but enough to get the conversation going, I hope:

There is a distinct notion that we are not American, and quite frankly, we think we’re better than them. Whether or not it’s true, a large element of Canadian pride is the notion that we have it better than they do down in the States. We watch with mouths agape as all sorts of crazy things happen south of the border. We think to ourselves “wow, that would never happen here!”. Perhaps that’s why this hockey game is so impactful. The fact that it’s the Americans, and not the Swedes or the Russians really matters to people. We believe in a moral and ethical superiority that seems absurd until we go onto point number two.

Healthcare. It’s certainly not free, “but it’s included” as one of my hockey buddies likes to say. Having a public healthcare system, where everybody is accounted for is likely the single most unifying opinion amongst Canadians. We all complain about it; the wait times, the doctor shortages, etc. But we would never ever give up our public healthcare. Pointedly, for wealthier Canadians, the public system is worse than the care a private system might provide. Even our “elites” however, would never trade (although they might have some private insurance abroad).

We like to stay in our lane. I believe this is inherited from our British ancestry, but it’s not cool to be too loud or passionate in Canada. Our average sports fan, politico, or artist has thoughts and opinions, but we keep them to ourselves most of the time, especially publicly. We don’t like to impose on others. It’s a “don’t do to others” instead of a “do unto others” society (if you can grasp the nuance). In other words, it’s not “cool” to like stuff in Canada. Outward passion is a rare quality. We teach ourselves to be humble. Not outwardly expressing our personal identity is a simulacrum of how we feel about our Canadian identity.

We believe in (and kind of like) toughing it out and enduring. When your country is forged in winter and there’s no escaping the cold, your society learns the lessons of endurance. Canadians are typically patient (perhaps to a fault). We are ok waiting. Importantly, we do this together. I believe this is because we’ve been trained by snowy months and days.

We’ll clear a path on the sidewalk. Speaking of snowy days, Toronto got hit by some pretty significant snow storms these last couple weeks. A bit of a rarity for this era. It afforded us the opportunity to practice my favourite Canadian custom: Shovelling snow. When you wake up the day after the storm and it’s powder everywhere, people are frozen into place. As the morning goes on, it’s the everyday citizens who step up and start clearing a path. Everyone does their part. The road may be too big a project to tackle. But there is an understanding that the sidewalk is our responsibility. Every single person should shovel that sidewalk in front of their home and clear a path for others. Like it or not, we depend on each other. I, like countless others in my neighbourhood, spent three hours on Thursday morning cleaning up after mother nature. I did it in part to get my car out…. Mainly though, I did it so that hundreds of strangers - people I will never know or meet, could pass safely and without trouble as they went about their lives. This, to me, is the essence of being Canadian. We care about each other, even though we might not agree about all that much. We have very little in common with folks in other parts of this great land, but we will make the sacrifice for the greater good. Even if that hard work never comes full circle.

Oh, and we’re really the best at hockey ;)

I hope these troubling times allow us to refocus and point the way for the 40 million people in this country to prosper together.

What are your thoughts on the Canadian identity? Something gaping I missed on my list?