There are three great defining features of the history of Canada: booze, hockey and rebellion. Most of our great historic events have revolved around at least one of these. Several have involved two, and the occasional one involves all three.
Booze
Canada was founded on land that the European settlers stole from the native population. How did we accomplish this? Our ancestors got the natives addicted to a substance they had not encountered before: whisky. While the native chiefs were inebriated, my ancestors took advantage and signed the native people up for some seriously bad deals, known today as treaties. So the foundation of Canada rests on liquor, and the abusive use thereof!
The first Prime Minister of Canada, Sir John A. MacDonald, was a notorious drunk. He became Prime Minister after the Confederation of the colonies into Canada in 1867. Sir John was such a drunk that he was four months late for the conference in London that finalized the details for the union of the colonies. He was also such a drunk that political cartoons from the 1870s routinely depict him smashed out of his mind.
In the 1930s, Canada happily and profitably took advantage of the inexplicable decision by the United States to ban fun, and smuggled vast quantities of booze across Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, as well as across the St. Lawrence River. This made certain people an immense amount of money. The favour would later be returned when, in the 1990s, American cigarette companies smuggled enormous numbers of cigarettes across the border to avoid high taxes in Canada.
Hockey
Let’s be honest: Canada would not be Canada without the hockey. Love it or hate it, and how could you hate this?
(o hai, Ryan Kesler!)
Hockey is the defining national activity of Canada. And guess what goes with watching hockey? Drinking lots of beer!
Many of the great cultural touchstones shared by Canadians revolve around hockey moments. The 1972 Summit Series when we beat the dirty Reds. The 2002 Olympics when we beat the dirty Americans for the gold medal.
Canadians get very excited about our hockey, and have a history of rioting over the game. This has happened eight times since 1955, five of those times being in Montreal. Win or lose, it’s a riot in Montreal. Most, if not all, of these circumstances have been fueled by excessive consumption of terrible beer.
Canada is the historical home of hockey, and is the home to the two teams that have won the Stanley Cup more times than any other: the Montreal Canadiens and the Toronto Maple Leafs. That’s right, one is French and one is ungrammatical, and that’s the way we likes it.
Rebellion
Before there was even a Canada to rebel against, rebellions occurred in both Upper and Lower Canada (what would become Ontario and Quebec) against the repression by the British. Both failed miserably. Starting a grand Canadian tradition, the one and only battle of the Upper Canada Rebellion was fought at a tavern. Seriously.
In the 1860s, a group of native people in that misbegotten area that was to become Manitoba decided that they had had quite enough of being treated like shit by white interlopers, and launched the Red River Rebellion, led by Louis Riel. They didn’t bargain with the fact that Sir John was drunk and ready for a fight, and had them brutally crushed by the Northwest Mounted Police, ancestors of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
In 1919 there was a general strike in Winnipeg (in that same misbegotten Manitoba), which was brutally crushed by that same RCMP. You may be noticing a trend.
In the 1960s and into 1970, the Front de Liberation du Quebec fought a terrorist campaign for the independence of Quebec, blowing up more than 60 mailboxes, kidnapping the British trade commissioner in Quebec and kidnapping and murdering Pierre Laporte, the Quebec Minister of Labour. The Quebec government asked for the assistance of the federal government to protect the “civil authority,” and the feds responded by invoking the War Measures Act and suspending civil rights. When asked by a reporter how far he would go to restore order, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau spoke one of the epic lines of bad-assitude in Canadian history: “Just watch me.”
Our last real rebellion (unless you count the impotent posturing of the Alberta separatists) was the Oka Crisis of 1990, when armed Mohawk warriors decided that they were still sick of being mistreated by white interlopers and occupied land that the mayor of Oka proposed to deforest and turn into a golf course. What followed was a three month standoff with the Canadian army and the death of a police corporal involved in the initial assault on the native occupiers.
Some people might complain that this nutshell history of Canada has ignored the important things, like wars, social movements and Prime Ministers who won Nobel Peace Prizes, but my way is more fun and, honestly, more true to the spirit of Canada.
Canadian flag image via Whizzer’s Place
Photo of Ryan Kessler via the Vancouver Sun
Photo of Pierre Trudeau via the CBC
