July 1

Today is an important day. It celebrates 150 years of Canada being a country and 101 years since the Battle of Beaumont Hamel.

Canada Day has always been a weird dichotomy for me. It highlights an internal struggle that I’ve had since I was a teenager. I am a Canadian and a Newfoundlander and Labradorian. How do I live both? Does one come first? Does one have to come first?

Like many Newfies, my Grandparents were born into the Dominion of Newfoundland and in 1949 became Canadian citizens. There are many who still remember a time that the province governed itself.

My teenage years saw me run away from my roots. My family moved to Nova Scotia. I let peer pressure erode my accent and started to tell people that I was a Canadian from Nova Scotia. My Newfoundlandness made me an other and while I was a teenager that was the last thing in the world I wanted.

I returned to my home province when I was 17 to attend Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. Five years at the province’s only university and becoming more involved with cultural pillars like Shallaway, helped me to find my roots again. I learned about tragedies like Beaumont Hamel and I immersed myself in the history and music of my province. I met people who embodied our culture and was inspired to make this a part of me too. This led to a period of time in my mid-twenties that I was firmly a Newfoundlander first and I even wondered if we were better for having joined Canada all those years ago.

When I was 27 I decided to move to Calgary, Alberta. Moving to Alberta in itself has become a strange part of my province’s culture and history. There’s a long history of people like me leaving the rocky east coast for the wide prairie skies and the promise of prosperity they offer. Sometimes I’ve felt guilty for this move. I have felt like I abandoned a province and people who have given me so much. That by blending Calgarian, Albertan and Canadian into my identity, I’m betraying my heritage and my family.

As I’ve found more security in my own identity, I’ve started to figure out that I can be many things without minimizing any part of myself. My feet will always be planted firmly in the rocks of my childhood. The seeds that were planted by family and then fertilized in my late teenage years and early twenties are far too deep to be uprooted by anything. I’ve figured out that my heart can be big enough to hold all of these parts of myself and that each time I let another one in the whole gets stronger. 

Happy Canada Day. A great day to remember that our celebration was given to us by the sacrifice of others and to be so grateful for those that came before us.