The Icelandic connection - 01.06.2010, Side 29

Vol. 63 # 1
ICELANDIC CONNECTION
27
such a huge diverse country, being
Canadian has many different meanings to
everyone. Canada is your favourite place,
your memories and your friends and fam-
ily. Canada is the places your heart
remains and everyone has a different
Canada within them. And the more you
see, the wider perspective you have, but
still it is too vast and too diverse to sum it
up within one person. MacGregor com-
ments, “I am grateful to journalism’s
entree for getting me around so much of
this enormous bumblebee of a country.
And yet I suspect I’ve seen but a fraction
of the fraction David Thompson saw in a
lifetime of exploring. It’s probably easier
to cup the morning mist that rolls along
the gunwales of a canoe than it is to fully
grasp the width and breadth and astonish-
ing variety of this land and its people.”
I have always been proud to be
Canadian in a quiet, subconscious sort of
way, but didn’t realize that I was more
patriotic than many people until recently
in my multiculturalism class. It took me
by surprise that many of my fellow teach-
ers did not share the same pride and love
for Canada that I did. This was the jump-
ing off point for my interest in Canadian
identity. I wondered what it was that
made me love and take pride in my
nationality more so than others my age.
MacGregor made me think a little
when I read the following passage, “No
wonder nine out of ten of us told the
Globe and Mail survey that the thing that
spoke to them most about this thing called
Canada was the vastness of the landscape.
This, even with the growing fact of urban
life suggesting otherwise.” This passage
made me think that maybe I am more
“connected” with being Canadian
because I grew up with the vast land-
scape. I am from rural Canada and very
proud of that fact. I love the openness out-
side of cities and I love the emptiness of
it. This has always been my Canada, in
the same way MacGregor thinks of Lake
of Two Rivers of his Canada. Perhaps this
is some sort of source for why I see being
Canadian as such an integral part of my
identity. MacGregor talks about Pierre
Trudeau’s love for being outdoors and his
love for the canoe. Trudeau wrote in an
essay once, “I know a man whose school
could never teach him patriotism, but
who acquired that virtue when he felt in
his bones the vastness of this land, and
the greatness of those who founded it.”
MacGregor is of the opinion that this
unnamed man was in fact Trudeau him-
self. But the opinion that you have to be
connected to that vastness and beauty of
the landscape to become patriotic is an
interesting one to ponder.
Another subject that really hit home
with me was the chapters on Agriculture
and rural Manitoba; as I’ve already men-
Ejodraeknisfelag Islendinga \ Vesturheimi
PRESIDENT: Gerri McDonald
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