With glowing hearts, we see thee rise

My favorite version of our national anthem. Even without words, it expresses so much about what it is to be Canadian - with breathtaking glimpses, lightning edits, a glorious chorus - and even a puck drop at the end! I can't get through this without tears.

On Canada Day: we see thee rise

It's not that I have nothing to say. Quite the opposite. I have too much to say, and have learned to censor myself. It's a sad thing, but that's how it is. This blog has devolved into something less meaningful for me, though I still keep it going for my own amusement. Whatever desperately serious thoughts I have, I keep to myself.

There is a reason for this. I remember a wholesale bailing of followers after I posted something that went straight to the core of my fears. It did not go well, and I took it down soon, because I realized I can't do that sort of thing here. I also don't address my mental health issues - much - except peripherally, since, as the old song says, "oops, there goes another rubber tree plant."

Not that I am making fun. Far from it. I know people garner huge followings by revealing their most raw, innermost selves, their secrets. But there is schadenfreude involved, as there is with me, the sense of "well, that's too bad for her, but I'm glad it's not me". Do I insult my potential readers when I say that?

I wept when I played this video, which I found last year and forgot to save. So I had to hunt for it again. The national anthem has never made me weep before. I see desperate daily news items of escalating violence, and wonder how "strong and free" we really are. But I have to say, at one and the same time, I am proud, fiercely proud of this self-deprecating, well-intentioned, blundering, dignified, crazy, brilliant country. We're like the little brother who gets sand kicked in his face. Do we complain? Yes, we do, daily. But ask an immigrant. On every Canada Day, people who have just become Canadian citizens comment to media on what this means to them. And it is everything. It is freedom, freedom to "be". I hate to say "but it's worse everywhere else", but - guess what - it's worse everywhere else.

You're not going to believe this, and I jinx it as I say it, but I have found a kind of happiness, an intense joy and pleasure in the simplest of things: walking around Como Lake with Bill, finding a rare troll doll and having it come in the mail like it's Christmas Day, having a magnificent red-winged blackbird eat out of my hand. And even capturing and posting the wonder of it on YouTube, where I never realized until recently that I have some followers. My enthusiasms have not died, but neither have my fears, and my haunted past has never haunted me more. Everyone keeps telling me it wasn't my fault. I want to speak of these things, in fact I ache for it, but I know it isn't wise.

I also know you can hold two opposing emotions at the same time. Two opposing personalities, more like. I have learned the reality of malignant narcissism in my family of origin, and PTSD in my own core, but for the most part I keep these things to myself. At least there's a name for these things now. In the past, it was just called "life". 

And since some my my small band of readers are from other places, here are the words to Canada's national anthem. MY Canada.

O Canada!

Our home and native land

True patriot love

In all of us command

With glowing hearts

We see thee rise

The True North, strong and free

From far and wide

O Canada

We stand on guard for thee

God keep our land

Glorious and free

O Canada we stand on guard for thee! 

O Canada we stand on guard for thee!

Francaise

O Canada!

Terre de nos aïeux

Ton front est ceint

De fleurons glorieux

Car ton bras

Sait porter l'épée

Il sait porter la croix

Ton histoire

Est une épopée

Des plus brillants exploits

Et ta valeur

De foi trempée

Protégera nos foyers et nos droits

Protégera nos foyers et nos droits

I love my country: Canada turns 150!

Today Canada turns 150, and though I couldn't get into it at all for the longest time, today I suddenly feel myself almost overcome with emotion. I trawled YouTube to find a decent version of O Canada, and unexpectedly (though why was it so unexpected, at this time in our history?) found ZILLIONS of versions, most of them not very good. A very well-known animated one that used to be shown when TV stations signed off for the night seemed like the obvious choice, but it just didn't work for me. There were some very abstract ones that misfired, very sentimental ones, and many that just weren't sentimental enough. When I began to watch this one, I realized I was crying. I wasn't expecting this at all. Something to do with the images that are so bang-on, and the choir that does not sing in words, but only sings "Ahhhhhhhhhh. . ."

Some say the Canadian identity formed as a sort of allergic reaction to the U. S., and there may be some truth in that. It's hard to love our neighbor right now, and I have to say I hate the things that they're doing, which cannot help but affect us. We feel crushed by that great elephant the first Trudeau talked about. But the fact that we're on our second Trudeau seems strange and miraculous to me. I remember when Justin Trudeau was born on Christmas day (which seemed significant for some reason), and everyone in my family went around snidely singing, "For unto us a child is born. . . " from Handel's Messiah. The next line of it, which no one sang, is, "And the government shall be upon his shoulders." It did cross my mind, back then, that some day it might be true.

More weird things are happening now. I compared notes with my husband the other day: "Are you having flashbacks from Expo '67?" To my surprise, he said yes. All sorts of stuff from the Centennial year is coming back to me now, most of it pretty cheesy, even hideous, but we thought it was wonderful then. Man and His World. The Geodesic Dome. The Monorail. The Canadian Pavilion. The Musical Ride.

And La Ronde, with rides that would probably seem pretty tame today. Going down the Flume ride and getting soaked, and going down the Flume ride again and getting more soaked. And again, until the sky opened up in a huge thunderstorm and made "soaked" seem redundant. I remember I was wearing a white cowboy hat that literally melted under the rain.

But it was all so exhilarating. Hell! A world's fair, for US! Canada was an incredible 100 years old, and for once we were going to fling down our usual reserve and CELEBRATE! I cannot post the Bobby Gimby song "Ca-na-da" (one little, two little, three Canadians) because when I listened to it again I felt nauseated, but back then we couldn't get enough of it. It quickly became the theme song of the Centennial.

Then there were all the patriotic songs we sang in school, pulled out of somewhere, then put away and never sung again. (I could not find good versions of Land of the Silver Birch or Something to Sing About, or I would have posted them.) 

It's a junk drawer, like most events you haven't even looked at in, oh, 50 years or so. My brother Arthur is all caught up in it. We were close then, he was 18 and I was 13, and I had no way of knowing he wouldn't live a normal life, or a normal span. He was funny and weird and he didn't last long, sort of like Expo.

There was a song called A Place to Stand which could get to me, all about "Ontari-ari-ario" where I grew up. Mostly it was sung in the usual cheesy way, but sometimes it was used on CBC as a sort of animated filler, and it had no singing, just a couple of violins. It used to knock me right over.

I want to make something, to DO something about the 150th, not just sit here posting videos and rambling. I want to make something move, but not in the ridiculous way that I make a goose or a moose or a ham loaf move. It's really too bad I have no artistic ability, can't draw or paint to save my life, for it might be a comfort to me now that I seem to have reached the end of my creativity.

I was trying to figure out what that horrific Habitat structure reminded me of (and unless I am mistaken, it's still standing and people still live in it in Montreal). It's that godawful UFO pod village in Taiwain:

I had one more thought in this ramble. This isn't done much any more - it's an old-school Canadian kind of thing, to wonder who the "greatest Canadian" is - I mean of all time, and invariably it's some stodgy old white guy with lots of money. Perhaps a Prime Minister from the early 1900s.

I have a candidate, for the simple reason that his influence echoes on in the most potent, living-and-breathing way, and will go on that way for untold generations.

Northern Dancer wins the Queen's Plate by 7 1/2 lengths, 1964.