Take off the rose-tinted glasses

Take off the rose-tinted glasses, Canada

Words by Abi Akinlade Illustration by Helen Yu

The Bible’s Book of Exodus refers to “a land flowing with milk and honey”; it alludes to an idyllic utopia in which its inhabitants never suffer from grief or hunger. According to the likes of Doug Ford and Don Cherry, Canada—the country that has yet to secure clean drinking water for First Nations peoples living on reserves, that heavily discriminates against Black people in one of its most diverse cities, and was recently terrorized by hordes of antiCOVID vaccine mandate truckers and protestors—is one such utopia.

Don Cherry is a famed hockey commentator who was fired from Sportsnet in 2019 after berating new immigrants for supposedly not buying poppies to commemorate Remembrance Day. In his “Coach's Corner” segment, he stated, “You people … love our way of life, love our milk and honey. At least you could pay a couple bucks for poppies or something like that. These guys paid for your way of life that you enjoy in Canada.” On social media, and even here at UofT, there were plenty of people who argued that Cherry’s comments were either true, taken out of context, or did not warrant the reaction that he received.

Similarly, Ontario Premier Doug Ford commented in October 2021 that new immigrants should shoulder the burden of remedying Ontario’s labour gap, stating, “You come here like every other new Canadian, you work your tail off. If you think you’re going to collect the dole [unemployment benefits] and sit around, it’s not going to happen. Go somewhere else.”

It’s common knowledge that many immigrants migrate to the Western world to seek refuge and better opportunities, but for Canadian “icons” like Don Cherry and Doug Ford to use this rhetoric against them, and to further imply that they come here to capitalize on the “Canadian way of life” is egregiously xenophobic. Aside from the fact that many people argue there is no established “Canadian way of life,” neither Cherry nor Ford’s comments had any basis in fact. There were thousands of immigrant soldiers who sacrificed their lives for very little recognition in Canada’s war effort. Stevan Purewal, a World War I historian, went so far as to say, “If we associate the poppy with Flanders Fields, then the Sikhs and the Punjabis in particular have a stronger association with the poppy than the Canadian Expeditionary Forces by virtue of being in Flanders Fields five months before the Canadians even got there.” To Doug Ford’s point, Immigration Minister Sean Fraser stated, “It’s not just that one in three Canadian businesses are owned by an immigrant, but also that newcomers are helping to tackle labour shortages.”

The question we must consider is why so many citizens born in Canada have the mindset that immigrants must contribute something tangible to the country they’re migrating to, that they must do something to earn the title of “Canadian citizen.” If we live in an egalitarian nation, why do

immigrants, including myself, feel the need to provide the pacifying disclaimer that we’re “grateful to live here” before we can even begin to criticize the country that raised us?

The answer is actually fairly simple: the Canadian myth.

As a nation, Canada prides itself on being nothing like our neighbours to the south. Our frantic yet paperthin attempts to romanticise our history only serve to make it all the more obvious that we are chronically unable to own up to our failings. I hate to break it to Trudeau, but you can’t call the residential school system “a dark chapter in Canada’s history” when unmarked graves were still being discovered in 2021. We are often taught in Canadian history that slavery in Canada “wasn’t as bad as the American slave trade,” and that cities in Nova Scotia were stops on the Underground Railway that led slaves to freedom. Why did no one stop to consider that slavery that “isn’t as bad” is still slavery? Why were we never taught about what happened to the former slaves once they fled to Nova Scotia, and how they were treated by their white neighbours?

We’re able to find amusement in the stereotype that we apologize too much, and drag out the “o’s” in our profuse “sorry’s,” but when the time actually comes to apologize—as in meet the bare minimum requirement for the abuse of residential school victims and Indigenous genocide—it takes decades.

We have built our legacy and tenuous sense of identity on being one of the most multicultural countries in the world, yet polls show that the majority of Canadians support curbing immigration (despite their clear desire for capitalistic gain).

To acknowledge that Canada has played and continues to play a primary role in the oppression of BIPOC people would be to shatter the facade of the “true North.” It would, effectively, uncover all that our government has worked so fervently to sweep under the rug. As people of colour, as immigrants, we know where the bodies are buried. Focusing on the fact that the United States is plagued by school shootings and police brutality is a figurative way of shifting the blame—Canadians need a scapegoat so that they can say, "Hey, look over there! I’m so glad that’s not us."

Except… It is us. White supremacy doesn’t observe arbitrary and invisible borders. Racism and xenophobia didn't just magically disappear when Pierre Trudeau introduced the Multiculturalism Act in 1971. If anything, the obstinate refusal of Canadians to recognize our own complicity in upholding racist systems is even more insidious. The United States is the devil we can see, but it will always prove impossible to fight oppression unless we begin to vociferously acknowledge its existence in our country—to break the mirage, to pierce the veil, to choose to take our rose-tinted glasses off and finally see ourselves for who we truly are.