Canada, how do I love thee? Asking the questions

I love my car. I love our cat. I love my country.

I love my partner. I love my parents. I love my country.

I love your garden. I love their goldfish. I love my country.

I love his hair. I love your house. I love my country.

Is all this love — this loving things — the same? Equal? Worthy of the word?

Throwing “love” around is easy when it’s just a word, but put it into action and what does it actually mean? We hear “I love my country” a lot from politicians these days with politics far and near being what they are — fractious, divisive, often snappy, sometimes scary.

What do the politicians mean? That they love the people and the animals and the nature within the man-drawn boundaries of the geography they call country? That they will protect them with their heart, their head and their work?

That they love the opportunities a particular geographic place has given them? That they would march to the border and protect everything — and everyone — within the country’s boundaries at all costs, even die for it, in service to it? I wonder…

Loving something comes with obligations, with responsibilities, yes, even, with duty.

In the case of a country, that surely includes voting, completing the census, paying our fair share of taxes, engaging with each other on topics that inform policy and practices in a civil society, and helping build — not tear asunder — the country that is home for us.

A home that is physical and tangible — solid ground beneath our feet, trees that shade us, landscapes that shape us.

A country is also a feeling: the spirit of patriotism (Canada is not for sale!), the support of community (You belong!), the culture of family (You’re one of us!).

The challenge in all the loving of this country we call Canada is that, even though you and I might live within the same geographic boundaries, “my country” is for me not necessarily what “my country” is for you.

As a white woman, I enjoy a life of privilege, security and meaning. As a citizen, the Canada I experience every day is different from the Canada that, say, a refugee woman of colour experiences as she navigates the ins and outs of her new life here.

Can we both love this country called Canada in the same way when our experiences are so different? Does any difference in our love matter? Can she love this new country and love her old country also, and always? Do we allow her to? Do we give her the room and support to do the loving of Canada that she may want to do? How many flags can we gather over our lifetime to claim as “ours,” to claim for “loving”?

I don’t know the answer to these questions, but I do know one thing: The phrase “I love this country” coming out of the mouth of a politician looking to put the question of “her” province separating from Canada to a referendum this fall is playing with fire both existential and economic.

So, of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, I ask: are we not bound, one to the other, in this country carved into 10 provinces and three territories — bound by geography, history, experience, values, appreciation for, and, yes, even love for, the vast physical beauty and human potential of Canada?

To her I say, with all our differences, I want to live in this complicated relationship, all together — for the long haul, for better or worse, in times of prosperity and in times of paucity. We are, I believe, stronger together.

Standing alone is exhilarating in the moment, but once that feeling dissipates, where will you land? Who will be with you? How will you live together, alone, apart from what once was all our home?

Maybe it is my life over more than six decades in this country that helps inform my passion for Canada: I was born in Ontario and have lived in that province, and also in Quebec, Alberta, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and since 1989 I have lived in Manitoba.

I studied in British Columbia and travelled to Prince Edward Island on holiday; I have driven across Canada from Alberta to Nova Scotia and from Manitoba to British Columbia. I am sorry never to have travelled to any of the territories or to Newfoundland and Labrador. I speak English as my first language, French as my second; German is somewhere in the back of my brain.

My experience of living in different provinces in this huge country embodies the understanding that its potential exists in the very differences that define the regions and the peoples that make up this land — from First Nations to the newest of newcomers.

I cannot understand how anyone can believe that separating from the whole would make their individual lone part stronger.

I love this country.

Amanda Le Rougetel writes from Winnipeg.