I know that we are coming up to Christmas, not Thanksgiving, but with Christmas coming nearer to the end of the year than Thanksgiving (this is the third last paper of the year!), it’s a natural time to look back and try to figure out how the year went.
To start off with, we’re still here.
We still have a forest industry.
We still have a railway industry.
We still have a ski industry.
And, of course, many other things as well, but those basic industries are pretty important. Really important. And we still have them, and will likely continue to have them, thankfully.
Those all, however, might be the ‘bricks and mortar’ of our community. The rest are the people.
What has happened to us in this year of ’25?
Certainly, we all see different things in ourselves.
And what part of us is important? Is it the Columbia Valley part of us that has progressed? Is it the British Columbia part of us? Or is it the Canadian part of us that might have grown somewhat this year?
I’m not sure that we are any more valley or provincial people than we used to be, but I think we may be more Canadian than we ever have been before, and it’s likely because of the rhetoric that we have picked up from south of the border that has created most of it.
As Canadians, we are certainly more united than we have ever been before. Right-wing Canadians, left-wing Canadians, no-wing Canadians, in ’25, we have learned that we are all Canadians first and foremost. That noise from the south was a gift that we should be thankful for. It didn’t come gift-wrapped, but it was a gift, no mistake.
And we are more patriotic than we have ever been before. For a somewhat shy and reserved people who don’t wear their country on their sleeves, we did this year. Booing at sports events didn’t seem to ever be in the Canadian lexicon before, but it was this year. Not necessarily the booing, but the rise in patriotism was another gift from the folks in the house painted white.
There were many more things that we could perhaps add to this list, but one I would like to add is what I might refer to as a greater maturity in ourselves as a people. Again, a gift with a southern accent to it.
I think it is fair to say that during this year, perhaps because we were sort of inoculated with a vaccine of southern bombast, that we have become more resistant to the southern noise, more adept at separating fact from fiction, and then here is the important part, more willing to chart a different path in the world rather than just being tied to a business and cultural world that is conveniently close.
It has been easy to choose the path of least resistance, and we should not lose our appreciation of our southern friends and neighbours, since there are some, perhaps many, where we and they must be shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. But we have learned that there must be boundaries even to that relationship. We have learned that if we value our independence, our appreciation for being Canadian, we must realize and construct our country so it can stand on Canadian pillars.
We haven’t done that in the past.
We need to do it now, and I think we have taken some beginning steps in doing so this year.
Prime Minister Mark Carney has said, on more than one occasion, that the relationship that we have had with the United States in the past is over. And if that could have been said ten years ago, forty or eighty years ago, it would have been even better. Not because the Americans are not the nicest people we could have to be neighbours with, because they are, but because Canada should not be dependent on any other country for anything. Not trade relationships, not food necessities, not basic military preparedness, not anything. We need to make and grow more of our own products and buy more of the things that we cannot provide for ourselves from more than one country. And we have started.
I’ve been writing these columns for most of the last forty years, and haven’t written many complimenting our federal government. But recognizing our situation, which Carney has done; starting to plan the infrastructure that we need, which his government has also done; and preparing us as a people to expect change and challenging growth, which his government has also done, is a good start. I believe we are learning how to put the political noise aside and deal with reality at all levels, federal, provincial, locally and even individually, to a point where we will be truly as independent as one country can be. We have the resources. We have the people.
These are big things. Probably bigger than we have taken on in the past.
But we can do it.
We should do it.
We must do it.
And in ’25, we started.
