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Evan Solomon: Our music is Canada Day: kd lang, Gordon Lightfoot, Stan Rogers, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and Ian Tyson's Four Strong Winds. The teary old ballad, Un Canadien Errant, written after the Lower Canada Rebellion of 1837, could be the national anthem.
But let's not let nostalgia swamp us. Listen to new bands like Wintersleep, singers like Jeremy Fisher and Ron Sexsmith, The Apostles of Hustle and Sloans latest record and you realize that new treasures like Feist are just part of a fast bubbling pool of talent redfining us. Is MuchMusic as important to us as the CBC? Almost.
Our writers keep defining us out of the two solitudes and into multiples that mix into one thing called Canada. Hell, we forgot about beer. Our other holiday, May 24, resonates because it is also easy code for what to bring to the party — a two-four. The land: I spent two weeks walking the Arctic on King William Island last summer, in search of relics from the lost Franklin voyage. This is a land that turns us into adventurers.
John Allemang: Evan and Michael, it's not for me to say — what a Canadian way to begin — but I can't get over how sentimental and nostalgic you guys sound when you reach for your Canadian pleasures. Hockey, beer and bittersweet music, the great empty solitudes of the North, teariness and survival. Stan Rogers still gets to me, 25 years after his death, but if I'm going to be honest, he was a throwback even then. Escapism at its best is a highly underrated pleasure, but I'm deeply bothered by the fact that when we try to grasp our essential Canadianness, we shut out our more troubling day-to-day realities.
Omar Khadr, a Canadian kid who probably never played hockey, danced to Sloan or knocked back the better part of a two-four, is locked up in Guantanamo on pretty dubious charges after being shot and tortured. He's rotting in prison, wasting his life, with the consent of our government, which means us. And if it weren't for his born-again U.S. military lawyer making waves, we'd probably have forgotten about him. Why do we retreat into our comfortable Canadianness so readily? I think it's the flip side of our vaunted national inferiority complex, a search for contentment and self-affirmation. But when will we learn how to make noise, to shout out, to be dissatisfied with who we are.
Jennifer Welsh: The music I listen to is full of Canadian women: Sarah McLauchlan, kd lang, Jann Arden, Sarah Craig, Holly Cole. So we've moved beyond the great male folksingers, wonderful as they are.
A random tribute to our egalitarianism: At the Cape Dorset airport in Nunavut, and a little girl from the community sees a picture of Michaelle Jean in my colleague's magazine. "Hey," she said, "I know her! And she is really cool."
I don't mind the focus on hockey and beer, but we need to realize that both soccer and cricket have become popular Canadian sports, so there's a sense of retreating into the familiar and comfortable when we talk about Hockey Night in Canada along with Gordon Lightfoot. Sorry to say it, but this doesn't feel like the dynamic Canada I sense in our urban centres. I agree with John: I think we need to be making a bit more noise, taking a few more chances, not accepting the status quo in all cases. But would this be un-Canadian?
Evan Solomon: When will we learn to make noise, you ask? I think the anti-globalization protests in Quebec City were pretty loud. I think the referendum in Quebec where we darn near split as a country were pretty noisy. I think the debate about the war in Iraq was noisy. I think the protests outside the closing of the GM plants were noisy. I think the voters letting the leaders know that no party is worthy of a majority government is noisy. I think First Nations road blockades are noisy. What kind of noise do you want?
We have lively debate without bloodshed. That is worth celebrating.
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