Geoff Russ: Stumbling on the Remains of a Great Nation
Updated: 6 days ago
Last March, my wife and I spent a week in Mexico City.
The massive metropolis used to be the site of Tenochtitlan, the old Aztec capital that the Spaniards found in 1519 before promptly destroying it two years later.
Luckily, thanks to the efforts of dedicated archaeologists and historians, a few remnants of Tenochtitlan remain.
Countless artefacts from the Aztecs and other pre-Columbian cultures are also housed at the National Museum of Anthropology in leafy Chapultepec Park. Across the city, numerous statues of figures from Aztec history like Cuauhtémoc, their final emperor, decorate the sidewalks and car-choked boulevards.
One thing that is very admirable about the Mexicans is how they possess a strong national identity; one that encompasses the country's entire history, from the Aztecs to the memory of the war of independence fought against Spain, to later efforts to defend the country against American and French invasions.
The Aztecs were vanquished more than 500 years ago, but modern Mexican culture has consciously incorporated them as both a point of pride and an integral part of their history. Although the origins of Mexico are not much older than Canada’s, walking the capital felt like being in an old country, far more akin to Athens than Toronto or New York.
A few weeks later, I was in Ottawa during a particularly grey, torrential downpour.
As with Mexico City, Ottawa is covered in reminders of Canada's past, but it feels more like a dutiful gesture rather than an expression of a confident people.
On Parliament Hill, there is a large statue dedicated to the defenders of the colonies during the War of 1812, while carvings of the prime ministers line the perimeter of Centre Block. Across from that is the Valiants Memorial, commemorating British, Indigenous, and French military leaders from the time of 17th century New France to the Second World War.
There are many more such monuments across Canada, from the one dedicated to the United Empire Loyalists in Hamilton, to another in Toronto honouring the service of the Canadians volunteers in the Boer War, fought from 1899 to 1902.
It is a reflection of an older, more rooted vision of the Canada that lies dormant in the modern multicultural state that has no use for such national visions anymore.
Distinctly Anglo-French in its culture, Victorian in outlook, and confidently ambitious, Canada at Confederation in 1867 set out to craft a great nation, rather than manage a mediocre shell of a state. The former is what elevates a people to pride and glory, while the latter relegates them to worldly purgatory.
The ugliness of our era of globalization is evident in how it dilutes the aesthetic qualities of culture. It flattens architecture into glass and steel blocks, imports and exports foreign conflicts, and reduces countries into something hollow. Ancestors, heroes, and local histories have no place in the end goal of commercial and human homogeneity.
For all the controversy over what men like Sir John A. Macdonald or adventurers like Lord Strathcona's cavalrymen represent as actors in an imperial past, their statues outclass the shapeless blobs that pass for modern public art.
The former are striking and elegant, yet have been rendered irrelevant to the ethos of modern, multicultural Canada. Rather than standing out amidst the landscape, these reminders feel hidden in plain sight.
One of the great ironies of the post-war idea of Canada as an experiment in universalism is that it only made the country more and more indistinguishable from the United States. There are few differences between the attitudes and goals of the progressives in either country, and even among many of the conservatives.
The founding ideal of Canada as an Anglo-French union that would consciously resist assimilation into the expansionist US is one that cannot be found anywhere else. To abandon it is a crime against the Canadians who spent their lives trying to build up the country, or who gave their lives for it.
Strolling around Ottawa was almost like walking through our very own Tenochtitlan. This country has been redesigned in the modern era to resemble the rest of the world, rather than anything unique.
In the modern ethos, what is particular is poison, and what flattens is fashionable. The memorials in Ottawa to the Boer War or 1812 mourn and celebrate causes that are of no use to 21st century managerialism.
Canada was born to be an imperial Dominion in a British Empire which no longer exists and is routinely upbraided for its misdeeds rather than celebrated for its advancements, while much of the nation-building efforts that went into Canada’s first century of existence have been treated as redundant or useless by Canada's 'natural governing party'.
If Canada never underwent an armed revolution that overthrew the old regime, it experienced a cultural one after the Second World War.
Ottawa, the capital, still has the architecture, decorations, and languages of a distinct nation. However, it is mere scenery to a governing class that would prefer Canada to be a multicultural reflection of the world, rather than a distinct civilisation in it.
It is Tenochtitlan; the physical remains of a lost people who once had a sense of national self and purpose. However, the comparison ends there.
The Mexicans have embraced their Aztec heritage to the fullest extent possible, inspiring national art and celebrations to this day.
Why should Canada not embrace its Anglo-French heritage explicitly as a source of pride of both past and present? It is remarkable that this often uneasy union of two founding peoples has survived with its moral and territorial integrity intact, despite sharing a continent with the world’s pre-eminent power.
Today, unhyphenated Canadians are a reflection of that, reflecting a shared culture and way of life.
All around us remain the symbols of a Canadian civilization that is treated as lost, foreign, or even unwanted. So long as they stand, may they be beacons for those of us who will not let the country that better men and women died for fade away.
They should challenge future generations to reclaim and revive the Canada that once had purpose, ambition, and knew who it was.
Geoff Russ is Editor-at-Large of Without Diminishment and a contributor to a number of publications, including: National Post, Modern Age, and The Australian Financial Review.
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