The Icelandic connection - 01.06.2010, Side 31

Vol. 63 #1
ICELANDIC CONNECTION
29
with those city lights, you can’t see the
stars at night.
The book talks a lot about the opposi-
tional nature of Canada. We are full of
opposites everywhere you look. Different
parts of Canada just do not understand
each other because they are often at oppo-
sites ends of opinions, beliefs, issues, and
ideas. This is why we seem to have trou-
ble finding a unifying, common identity.
One of my favourite passages that illus-
trated this emotionally was in the chapter
on Canadian sovereignty in the north. The
story was of Adrianne Clarkson building
a cairn at the most northern point on
Ellsemere Island, which is the most
northern point of Canada. All the people
involved placed something inside the pile
of rocks before it was sealed and the last
contribution was from a Canadian soldier
in attendance by the name of Julie Verner.
She was described as a “fair-haired,
bespectacled soldier.” MacGregor saw
her standing for something, he writes,
“she was born in Sault Ste. Marie, pretty
much the mid-point of the Trans-Canada
highway that runs from one side of the
country to the other. She was the child of
a francophone father and an anglophone
mother and had married a man whose her-
itage was neither. She was also the moth-
er of four young children, the elder two
now able to talk freely to their Poirier
grandmother in Rouyn-Noranda who
spoke no English at all.” It was pointless
to place a flag as it would not last very
long, but Julie wanted to make sure any-
one who opened this, in any number of
years later, would know that this was our
land, our place - Canada. “And so, very
carefully, with eyes beginning to sting,
Julie Verner reached up and tore the small
Canadian shoulder patch flag off her uni-
form. She rolled it over once in her hand
and then dropped the tiny flag in and
turned away, tears now freely flowing.
Taken one way, it looked like disrespect
to the uniform. Taken the right way, it was
merely a soldier serving her country.
Canada, a country that so often makes no
sense at all. Canada, a country that, every
so often, makes total sense.”
We are a country and we are people
of many different backgrounds, beliefs,
lifestyles, appearance, and we have trou-
ble finding common ground to support
each other and understand one another,
and maybe there is never anything that
completely unites every one of us, but
finding those things that make us feel
Canadian come about every now and then
and we are all proud to be Canadian at
some point. Something as simple as a
whole town going out and cheering on the
local hockey team, or as big as wearing a
uniform with the maple leaf fighting for
peace, unites some of us at certain times.
We all have our things that make us
Canadian. Maybe it’s a group of teachers
in Thailand sitting around talking about
what we like to do during the winter
months back at home and something will
unite us. What else besides something as
simple as our passports? We don’t need
anything else to unite us, we are all citi-
zens of a country that doesn’t require us
to look the same, believe the same things,
eat the same things, and so on. We live in
a country where we don’t even have to be
simply Canadian, we are French-
Canadians, African-Canadians,
Philippino-Canadians, German-
Canadians, Chinese-Canadians—
Icelandic-Canadians—and so on. We live
in a country where we get summer and
winter and everything in between. We
have mountains, deserts, prairies, oceans,
lakes, forests and tundra. We have cities
and we have vast amounts of land where
we can be anything or anybody we want