What Is a Canadian?
By FARHA GUERRERO
Writers may be rightly called thieves.
There is something, at least in my mind, called spoken word theft. Some of us writers—and I am certainly guilty of this—steal words that we hear, often in conversations with others.
Yesterday evening, as the world was watching another World Cup game, I found myself at a dark crag, nestled in the forest, with the right temperature on a hot evening for challenging climbs.
I had gone to the crag with a couple, who I may even call lovebirds, climbing partners who climb quite difficult grades, much higher than what I have attempted as an outdoor sport climber. One of them I had taken a private lesson with.
But it was her partner who prompted me to think about what a Canadian is, not as something patriotic that we may have seen on Canada Day last week, but something a little deeper, something about honesty, integrity.
These are the values that I am often attracted to philosophically. In a blog post that I wrote several months ago titled On Being Virtuous, I explore this further.
So here is a man who tells me, in our conversations in between climbs, that he is happy to pay taxes in this country. There was something principled in the simplicity with which he said it.
“We get back every cent,” he more or less said.
Even his partner mentioned that, when given the opportunity to take advantage of a pro deal—a discount on climbing equipment or outdoor clothing, for example—he refuses.
“I’m not going to go to a store and try something on, only then to leave it there and buy it somewhere else at a better price.”
It is this type of honesty that I have encountered a lot in this country, and that I think is also inside me.
In a conversation with a fellow writer last week, we both talked about honesty, even the brute kind. It is a characteristic, she said, that she feels is embedded in her.
I said I feel the same.
It is this sort of honesty that once revealed itself to a police officer when I was pulled over last year for speeding twenty kilometres over the allowed limit.
Let me first paint the picture.
There is a stretch of the Sea to Sky Highway just beyond the small town of Britannia Beach where the road suddenly veers up a very, very sharp hill, with tight corners.
For someone who loves to drive mountain highways, and now feels quite skilled at handling a car through a very tight curve, I was ready to gas and rev it up and feel the horsepower that I know my car is capable of.
But just at that moment, I was confronted with a RCMP officer waiting strategically at the first third of the hill.
There was no hesitation to pull over and let her know that I was absolutely guilty.
She came back after spending some moments producing the speeding ticket and said, “I’m giving you a lesser fine because you acknowledged that you were speeding.”
That too felt very Canadian.
In fact, honesty made me pay less that afternoon.
There is something else I have noticed about Canadians.
They love their land.
Even now, my grown-up sons often prefer to stay home during their vacation instead of travelling abroad.
It is their connection to the land that keeps them here.
I once met a young man in a sauna at our local pool who confessed that he had never travelled outside of the Sea to Sky region.
He said there was no need to.
“Why travel,” he said, “when you live in one of the most beautiful places in the world?”
I have encountered many like him where I live.
After all, the word Mecca is often associated here with activities like mountain biking, climbing, and skiing.
And so why leave Mecca?
Philosophically, that makes sense.
As time passes, I find myself thinking less about belonging to a nation and more about belonging to a landscape.
Perhaps that is why, even as we hold Canadian coins in our hands, we find beavers, caribou, polar bears and loons—the animals that were here before us—looking back at us.
Maybe he was right: we do get back every cent.