Friday July 1, 2022
Today marks the 40th anniversary of the last “Dominion Day.” On July 9, 1982, a private member bill was passed in the House of Commons that officially made it “Canada Day.” In contrast to the great flag debate of the 1960s, the change came surreptitiously, and sparked minimal controversy.
As the story goes, the new nation that combined three of the remaining colonies in British North America in 1867 was intended to be a “Kingdom of Canada”, but the British government wanted to avoid antagonizing our republican cousins to the South, so they opted for the nebulous term “Dominion” instead.
There’s another story about how one of the architects of Confederation was inspired by the biblical text that also shaped the national motto: "He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth" (Psalm 72:8).
The term had been applied to British settlements on this side of the Atlantic before: There was, for a brief time, an administrative union of eight northern seaboard colonies known as the Dominion of New England in America. To this day, Virginia is affectionately known as the “Old Dominion.”
Most of England’s settler colonies became dominions when, following precedents set in Canada, they began assuming a measure of home rule. Over the course of the last century, they all moved away from the term: It’s the Commonwealth of Australia, and the Republic of South Africa. There is, as far as I know, not a single dominion left anywhere.
“Commonwealth” is an intriguing alternative. The term is rarely used in relation to nation states nowadays. Besides Australia, the only other instances I could find on the Wikipedia list of sovereign states are the Commonwealth of The Bahamas and the Commonwealth of Dominica.
Applying the word “commonwealth” to an association of nations that were once part of the British Empire has confused its meaning. (It is interesting to see it adopted for a parallel association of independent states that were once part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics).
Here in Canada, we once had the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, a precursor to the New Democratic Party. In this case, I don’t think the reference had anything to do with British ties. It was to “weal” as in general well being, and “common” meaning both in common, and the public at large, as represented in the House of Commons.
We tend to forget that four of the United States of America are Commonwealths: Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and the “Old Dominion”, Virginia, as are the territories of Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands.
The term is also associated with the British Isles at the time when England succumbed to republicanism under Oliver Cromwell, a forerunner of all modern presidents and military dictators.
The English example serves as a reminder that, at root, “commonwealth” and “republic” are synonymous. The “re-” simply means in reference to; “public” is from the Latin publicus — “of the people” … also “common, general, of or belonging to the people at large; ordinary, vulgar.”
A better word for republicanism in the modern sense, meaning states that have dispensed with monarchy in any form, would be “presidentialism.” In the root sense, Canada is as much as a republic as we are a commonwealth or a dominion.
Monday July 5, 2022
The “Canada Day” name change has left things hanging: If we’re no longer a dominion, and have never dared to overtly come out as a kingdom, then what are we, among other modern nation states?
We share the North American mainland with two federated presidential republics. London, anglophone Canada’s metropole (i.e. “mother city”), is the capital of a united but not unified kingdom; Paris, the francophone equivalent, was once the seat of an absolute monarchy, and later the centre of a unified, near-absolute republic.
Canada is a federation or union; a parliamentary democracy, and a constitutional monarchy -- an unusual combination for which there is no shorthand term. If we add a multitude of tongues, a diversity of faiths, a range of ethnicities, cultures, nationalities, and a vast territory to the description, the unusual becomes unique, unparalleled. So perhaps “Canada” actually is the best way to put it: not a Canada, but the Canada, the one and only.
We’re not the only nation state with a stand-alone name: New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, Belize, Malaysia and Japan are also on the list of sovereign states without a qualifying adjective. But this is relatively rare. It is clear that presidential republics are, at present, the global standard, although the form coexists with a significant minority of generally peaceable and prosperous kingdoms.
There is a case to be made for Canadian exceptionalism. Progress is discovering, as time passes, how different we actually are, in our origins, in the various factors that have shaped us, and in the choices we have before us. It wouldn’t diminish our exceptionalism to apply both of these abandoned or forgotten terms -- Dominion and Commonwealth -- should a situation arise in which they might be useful.
For instance, we could use them to distinguish the two fundamental aspects of this and any other sovereign state:
1. Canada is a land, or a country, with precisely defined boundaries, within which we have internationally recognized jurisdiction: It is a realm, a domain: the Dominion of Canadians.
2. We are a people, a public, a commons. What we do all together as a people or a public constitutes the commonweal -- Canada as Commonwealth.
“Commonwealth” can be just another way of saying that we are a democracy, and that is something that can never be emphasized enough. The government, the state, every city, every town, every province, even the power invested in the throne, are all us.
Many nation states, especially in northern climes, have the word “land” in their nomenclature: Holland, Zealand, Netherlands, England, Ireland, Scotland, Iceland, Greenland, Finland, Poland, Deutschland. We don’t. “Dominion” can serve as a reminder that this is a land -- an extraordinarily extensive land.
Tuesday July 5, 2022
The biblical text about man being granted dominion from sea to sea is, of course, problematic. This wasn’t so obvious in 1967, when we could blithely celebrate Canada with a “Man and His World” exhibition.
The god-like powers that humans liked to assume in the high modern era, and had in fact developed through science, technology and engineering, now seem arrogant, as well as somewhat naive. In the light of most faiths, such an attitude is also blasphemous.
In the Quran, the text says “To Allah belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth and whatever is within them. And He is over all things competent.” The doxology in Matthew’s version of The Lord’s Prayer says much the same thing: “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.”
It is worth noting that Indigenous spirituality honours and reveres both the Creator and Creation in ways that transcend the anthropomorphic, patriarchal conceptions of divine power and majesty that characterize most monotheisms. The differences are not irreconcilable. But when patriarchal monotheism is combined with blasphemous nationalism and high modern “Man and His World” arrogance, the results can be lethal.
I’m saying this, not to disparage an accomplishment like Expo ‘67, or the kind of nationalism that gave us our own flag, our own constitution and a First of July Canada Day that mirrors the Glorious Fourth in the U.S.. They are all part of the story. As a progressive in the root sense of the word, I’m not lamenting any lost causes or advocating the restoration of any past glory. There is no golden age to return to. Canada has never been greater than it is now.
Part of what distinguishes Canadians who are currently alive from those who came before is that we are beginning, but only just beginning, to comprehend the enormity of the great historical wrongs that are part of the very fabric of mainstream culture and society in Canada, the United States. These are not mere blemishes on an otherwise glorious historical record.
And then there’s our home and native planet to consider, and the large proportion of earth’s lands, waters and creatures that destiny has placed under our dominion. Our record of dealing with the land itself, as well as the people of the land, is dismal. But the bitter truth need not and should not be utterly discouraging. On the contrary, it can provide purpose for the nation and any of our constituent elements, including you, me and any other individual citizen -- a purpose that is comparable, in terms of intensity and gravity, to what motivated Canadians to stand up for their country in 1914 and 1939.
Canada Day is a day for rejoicing in what we can be, far more than for celebrating anything that has been accomplished so far. Our origins go back much farther, deeper and wider than the makeshift political arrangements that were put into place on July 1st, 1867. We are talking about a span of more than half a millennium since those fateful trans-Atlantic encounters began, and thousands more years leading up to that watershed moment. But the future has no set limit. In many respects, the story has only just begun. We are still in the process of becoming.