Canada: "When I get older, I will be stronger"

I felt so thrillingly fortunate on Canada Day. I finally felt so proud of my country. On Wednesday, for the first time I felt like I really began to get a taste of the current that flows through the bones of people here.

First of all, I cannot believe that it took 6 years for me to finally experience celebrating Canada Day in Ottawa. It is quite the spectacle. After spending 5 years in Montreal, where Canada Day is hardly perceptible (Quebec schedules July 1 as "moving day" so all the leases expire and Montreal is bogged down by traffic and stressed citizens), it was so refreshing to be a part of a celebration in Ottawa, where being proud of your country is widely accepted.

Everything about the evening made me so utterly proud of my country. I felt for the first time, that I really had a perceptible idea of what Canada is, in its ever evolving form, colour, tone and shape. It told me what Canada is striving so hard to be.

I've said this before to many of my close friends. I believe that Canada is uniquely placed. As the collision and blending of cultures and races becomes inevitable in modern life, Canada, a bilingual nation-state, founded not as a state for a particular distinct ethnic group but on the basis of particular social ideas (namely tolerance, equality, and individual freedoms), one in which everyone can come from anywhere to participate in, is ideally constructed for the modern world.

And Canadians try soo soo hard to be the ideals that it preaches. That striving for the ideal, to be the ideal, is what makes me so utterly proud of this country.

The lineup of performing artists reflected the distinctly diverse and equally valued and important elements in this country. First up was K'naan, a Somali-Canadian rapper who spoke glowingly about how July 1st was the independence day in Somalia as well, and how he was so lucky because he got to celebrate the birthdays of "both of his homes" on the same day.

That is the epitome of the Canadian immigrant experience that we are striving to create. That everyone can come here, and retain their cultural heritage and identity but also be Canadian and a part of this society. This is the mosaic.

The rest of the lineup included, a Quebec pop star, a first nations dancer from BC, a country rock star from Alberta, a female acapello group that sang in Spanish, English and French, and finally, Sarah McLachlan perhaps one of our most famous artists.

Whenever a little kid or an ethnic "minority" was shown on the jumbotron with maple leafs on their cheeks waving the flag, the crowd broke out into cheers and momentous uproar, we have so much pride in our diversity.

Sarah McLachlan told the audience just before beginning her first song "We are all so fortunate to be here, lets just think about that for a moment".

The lyrics of K'Naan's last song, "When I get older, I will be stronger, they'll call me freedom..." to me, exemplifies what it means to be Canadian for so many people in this country right now and in the audience that day. So full of hope and optimism about the future.

But it also could be the theme song for this country. Canada is young, only 143 years old. And it will only continue to get stronger. Its people all came here from somewhere else, striving for something better, a place where they can be safe, free to keep their culture, and be just as good and as accepted as everyone else.

It's not perfect, but we are working on it. It is slowly improving, and that is what is so cool.