Reflecting on My Dominion Day

There are days when a place becomes more than coordinates on a map or a matter of convenience. On July 1st, Spruce Meadows became such a place. In a semi-rural ceremonial landscape, horses, flags, and people gathered to mark something familiar but subtly altered—an event repeated, rehearsed, yet somehow unsettled.

This was not merely Canada Day. It was Dominion Day by instinct, clothed in red but burdened with ambiguity. No land acknowledgements, no oversized politicians preaching inclusion while excluding, no rainbow sidewalks, no trans shows, no queer dancers.

Spruce Meadows, for the unfamiliar, is no ordinary facility. South of Calgary, nestled in the foothills, it’s Canada’s premier show-jumping venue. It’s not a civic square or state-run plaza. It’s private. Disciplined. A place where flags are flown without apology or moral explanation, and where horses still earn applause.

But even there—where informal ceremony holds its form—the draft of uncertainty slipped in. We celebrate Canada Day, but do we know what Canada has become?

The answer, or the lack of one, was visible. People wandered in loosely choreographed confusion, programme brochures in hand, drifting across a vast property scattered with activities. Were they looking to participate—or to be seen doing so? It was a celebration, yes. But of what?

At the gate, they handed out small Alberta flags. I took one. It wasn’t until later I remembered: I’ve attended Canada Day events in five provinces. Only in Quebec had I ever been handed a provincial flag on Canada’s birthday. Alberta joined that tradition this year. Or perhaps it had before, and I hadn't noticed. Either way, the gesture lingered.

It raises the question: What is Canada? Because how we celebrate it—what we sing, wear, wave, and eat—is not just decoration. It is declaration.

The mood this year was not theatrical, but something closer to quietly devout. This wasn’t elbow-up nationalism. It was sterner. More upright. Shoulder-driven, not chest-beating. A different posture.

Striking, too, was the about-face. The same cultural and political forces that tried to cancel Canada Day—decrying colonial legacy and national identity—now wrap themselves in the red-and-white Pearson flag. Statues toppled yesterday. Face paint and fireworks today. Somewhere between the guilt and the grin, the country forgot to ask whether it still works as conceived, or whether it has a future.

The patriotic performance has climbed from elbows to shoulders, but there’s no evidence it’s reached the head. Next year might be the time to start asking how Canada works, and how it doesn’t. And why.

The current federal ethos now enforces whimsical dictates—ones that abandon coherence, character, and even reality. Patriotism that ignores a country’s internal fractures isn’t patriotism. It’s theatre with a flag.

Terry Glavin recently wrote about this year's supposedly unusual surge of patriotic self-congratulation. He dissected a poll that claimed Canadians were more enthusiastic than ever. However, as he demonstrated, the poll itself was more stagecraft than science —a manufactured patriotic consensus. As Orwell observed, the most effective propaganda doesn’t lie; it omits. It hides what power finds inconvenient. This year’s cheer felt less like conviction and more like a smothering red-and-white duvet, pulled tight over widening cracks.

Then came a woman on an electric scooter—a Hispanic competitor in the derby—trying to push through a clot of red-shirted spectators. “What is this?” she asked aloud, frustrated.

Her tone wasn’t hostile—just confused. She didn’t seem to know what day it was or what it meant. Or perhaps she did know, but not why people were standing around like polite obstacles. Someone told her it was like the Fourth of July.

Her reaction was bemused. Slightly amused. Dismissive.

I surprised myself by snapping back in Spanish: “Don’t they celebrate in your country?”

She shrugged. “Not this much,” she said, and motored through the crowd. Her departure was sudden and uncluttered. For a moment, I wondered if it was a metaphor. It took a foreigner to point out what I’d been circling: the clogging stupor we’ve mistaken for patriotism.

I’ve spent years trying to diagnose the Canadian condition. I’ve written that our country’s obsession with boundless inclusion is unravelling character, law, and shared meaning. That identity politics, dressed up as compassion, is a poor substitute for civic purpose. And yet, in that brief exchange, I spoke like someone defending kin. Reflexive. Irrational. Human.

Perhaps that’s how loyalty works. Not in principle. In reflex. Perhaps, for all my disaffection, I’m still bound to something I no longer admire.

At the derby arena, the announcer asked the crowd to “pull your shoulders back” and be proud. It struck me. No more elbows. We have graduated to shoulders. The geography of performance had shifted.

Still, this wasn’t the cynical nationalism of slogans or the cultural cringe of hockey pageantry. It was ceremonial. Staged, yes—but not mocking. Behind his words, a question hung: Can Canadians still take pride in their country without apology?

Most didn’t ask. They just cheered.

Perhaps next year the posture will move further north, to the head. Maybe people will finally ask how things work, or why they don’t. Maybe they’ll remember that pride without understanding is no better than guilt without memory.

Later that morning, the Lord Strathcona’s Horse Musical Ride offered a rare thing: dignity without self-importance. Horses and riders moved as one. Uniform. Precise. Not for ideology. Not for moral high ground. Simply because it was worth doing something well. That, too, is patriotism. Quiet. Competent.

The anthems were played in the correct order: O Canada at the beginning. God Save the King at the end. Bookends of a ceremony that felt legitimate. The music between? Forgettable. But the form was intact. Somehow, colonial history was briefly acceptable again. Human memory is short. Affection, fickle.

In the afternoon, a Ukrainian-Albertan banjo player from St. Paul took the stage. My kids knew him. I didn’t. Half the crowd had seen him before. He declared plainly, “Not getting political and shit.” Just loved Alberta. Loved Canada. Then played O Canada with a prairie twang that landed somewhere between earnest and Branson, Missouri.

I don’t care for concert renditions of national songs, but the man seemed genuine. He probably pays his bills. He bought the family farm from his grandparents instead of blowing an inheritance. Probably raises his kids without subsidies. That’s more than can be said of most federal departments—or another banjo-playing Ukrainian-Albertan I know of.

And yet, the question lingered. Is all this flag-waving real? Or is it cover?

We don’t build cathedrals anymore. We burn them. We rename airports and rewrite plaques. We talk about inclusion but practice exclusion. Our democratic institutions jail protestors and freeze accounts. The national broadcaster says “love is love,” while warning that parental rights are extremist. Pride flags fly abroad while trust, capital, and cohesion bleed out at home.

Canada no longer behaves like a country built on institutions. It drifts toward a regime shaped by feelings, slogans, and the policing of speech. Inclusion doesn’t stabilize—it fragments.

As I’ve argued elsewhere, this gospel of radical inclusion now excludes those tethered to reason, reality, and law. It demands affirmation without question, identity without definition, and obedience without dialogue. What remains is politics without ground. A country without a name. A hollowed federation.

Pride without memory is shallow. Pride without responsibility is dangerous. Pride without lucidity is noise.

Spruce Meadows didn’t fix any of this. Nothing does. But one moment of it reminded me what dignity looks like when it doesn’t seek to moralize. The musical ride didn’t ask for applause. It earned it. It had no ulterior agenda. That’s what made it honest.

Canada Day once held promise—not perfection, not utopia—but a sense of purpose. That Canadians belonged to something ordered. That we could build without apologizing first for existing.

And yet here we are.

Can Canada return to that? Hard to say. We often claim we want a better country. But we disagree on what that means. We don’t even agree on what Canada is. People say they feel it, but feelings are chaotic, private, and often irrational. They resist translation. They do not build structures.

Perhaps next year the theme will be: Heads up. Perhaps the foreigner on the scooter will pass through unnoticed. Unimpeded by a deambulating mob searching for direction. And by then, maybe we’ll have decided what Canada means.

Maybe.