Today marks the 60th anniversary of our adoption, back in 1965 under Lester B. Pearson, of a the ‘maple leaf’ as our national flag, replacing the richer symbolism of the Canadian Red Ensign. Whatever one’s aesthetic tastes, symbols mean something. The union jack, with Saint Andrew’s and Saint George’s Crosses, along with the lion rampant and the Celtic harp, signified a rich culture of robustness and strength, now diminished in the image of a leaf, a paper-thin entity blown hither and yon by capricious breezes, like the phantasmagoric lost souls described by Saint Jude: waterless clouds, carried along by winds; fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead.
Perhaps that’s too harsh. After all, maple also evokes the syrup, and even the noble strength of the tree from which it derives. And, the maple leaf is now ‘our’ symbol, recognized around the world. That used to be a good thing, but now, well, our reputation has suffered, not least in the last decade.
For all that, I do miss the ensign, even if I wasn’t alive when the change was made to the ‘maple leaf’…forever?
I need not elaborate that Canada is now going through an existential crisis. The whole ‘colonialism’ thing – part of the reason for rejecting a flag seen as too ‘British’, even ‘Christian’ – is now being drowned out in what Trump hath wrought. As I wrote recently on the potential disaster of a globalist, socialist Carney Prime Ministership, what holds it, and us, all together is fragile and fraught, like, say, a leaf. No amount of Timmy’s, hockey nights and syrup can sugarcoat that.
Perhaps there is still a strength there, deep down, of the older Canada, which was true, north, strong and free, the nation built by the habitants, pioneers and martyrs, carved by blood, sweat and tears out of a raw wilderness.
We are in a new kind of wilderness now, a spiritual and moral one, out of which we must rebuild a Christian civilization, or perhaps rediscover the one that was, before the Trudeaus and their ilk got to work dismantling this once-great nation.
There are many saints interceding for us, so let us rely upon them, and the God they served so well.
May that same God truly keep our country, in His dominion, which is the only path to prosperity.