Canada Day 2025: From collective colonial shame to 'elbows up' in four short years

Collective shame in 2021 over nation's genocidal residential school history gives way to 2025's rabid nationalism in defiance of Trump

Canadians have gone from prostrating themselves with a historically self-reflective chagrin in 2021 to a jingoistic display of ebullient defiance shouting a metaphor for poor sportsmanship in hockey.

The sentiment approaching Canada Day in 2021 was a near cliché Canadian-esque “sorry, sorry, sorry.” In 2025 it’s “elbows up.”

How about some middle ground? 

Leading up to Canada Day 2021, there were the usual festivities prepared in cities across B.C. At the newspaper, we had the annual plan for a flag wrap in print. Sales reps sold ads to businesses to wish the community a happy Canada Day.

One year into the pandemic, big gatherings weren’t a good idea so there were plans to create a video Canada Day celebration with the help of ChillTV.

A little over a month before, however, the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation announced preliminary findings that ground-penetrating radar had located 215 potential burial sites of deceased children on the former residential school grounds.

Suddenly celebrating a nation built in part of the genocidal actions of our European colonial ancestors seemed crass, to say the least.

Elbows up

With usual short memories and distracted by a belligerent U.S. president spewing nonsense about dissolving our dominion to become a state, the cultural sensitivity of 2021 has been replaced with a boisterous nationalism.

In fairness to the truth, one thing has nothing much to do with the other. The collective shame and humility of 2021 came from Canadians forced to recognize a truth hidden in the closet and barely spoken about. 

The rah-rah nationalism of today is a direct response to Donald Trump’s 51st state garbage.

Still, it’s hard to reconcile the two. 

As part of the city's Canada Day online event held July 1, 2021, in partnership with local Rotary clubs, I participated in three short vignettes based on my cursory research in extensive online archives of The Chilliwack Progress going back to 1891.

The top story on the May 2, 1894 newspaper was about the formal opening of the “Industrial Institute for the training of Indian Children” at the Coqualeetza site. That was also the year that an amendment to the Indian Act made attendance at residential schools mandatory for children between seven and 16.

Half of those who attended were from north of Haida Gwaii. Children were sent far away from their communities to schools to discourage contact, something that might counteract the eflorts to destroy the Indian in the child, the stated goal of the residential schools.

A compelling part in the 131-year-old news story was a quoted address read “on behalf of the Indians” in response to the Indian Superintendent in town that day: 

“The white people were not here first," read the words transcribed and attributed to Captain John, Dick, Billy, Jed, Ned  and Joe. "By tradition we can trace our ancestry back for many generations and it has been handed down to us that this land always belonged to the Indians." 

And: "We are troubled when we are told that we must no longer catch our fish in the way we have always caught them."

First Nations to this day are being told by Fisheries and Oceans Canada how and when and where they are allowed to catch fish. 

The top story in the Oct. 22, 1924 newspaper had the headline: "Big residential school opened," with a photo of the $200,000 Coqualeetza Residential school.

This was big news, deemed "an epoch in the development of the educational life of the native people of this province.”

The Methodist church ran Coqualeetza, one of many churches that ran the schools across Canada under the rule of law from Ottawa. The story gave a history up to the date of how Indian children were dealt with by the government and the churches, including that the first day school was started at Squiala in 1880 up to the Coqualeetza in 1924.

Fourteen years later, just before the Second World War begun, in the Dec. 14, 1938 Progress, an article with the headline: "A World Within a World. Best Describes Coqualeetza Indian Residential School."

A reporter or the editor was given a tour of the big brick building said to remain "much of a mystery to the average resident of Chilliwack and district."

In none of these stories, unsurprisingly, were Indigenous leaders, parents of the children, let alone the children themselves, asked opinions on the policy and the nationwide disgrace that was cultural genocide as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission called it in 2015.

Today there are glimmers of reconciliation as Indigenous people take control over at least some portions of the land, their land. 

There are many different Sto:lo bands within the area that we call Chilliwack, many with overlapping interests. There are treaty negotiations, land claims, clashes with all levels of government still, but often glimmers of reconciliation as Indigenous people take control over land, sovereignty, and we see industrial and commercial development on reserve lands. 

Consultation happens, treaties are negotiated, non-Indigenous politicians at least feign a sense of humility, but there is much more to do.

As descendants of settlers I’ve always said we need to learn much about the cultures that the Canada we are celebrating sought to destroy. 

We need to at least try to be allies. To do that, all we can do is open our minds to the stories and leave a space for them to be told. 

If we are to get anywhere with truth, let alone reconciliation in Canada, I think it's clear we need in do less talking and more listening.

There was widespread cognitive dissonance on Canada Day in 2021 as we celebrated our nations successes but were reminded of our colonial past, and the fact that we cannot pretend the legacy of cultural genocide didn't happen with residential schools.

Some have pointed to a sort of international relativism. Many other countries have even worse histories of abuse to their Indigenous peoples. Many other the nations have been slower than Canada to redress past harms, to move towards reconciliation. 

And while this may be true, the best of a bad bunch is still bad.

This Canada Day as flag sales go through the roof, businesses cash in on spreading jingoism, and Canadians storm around with elbows up to the American president, we would be wise to put those elbows down with less arrogance as we look within and reflect on the bones this country is built on.

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Paul J. Henderson
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