What does it mean to be Canadian

I talked about Canadian identity a while back and I said that I would come back to it and I've decided that today was the day.

Over the weekend, I was watching this program on CBC Newsworld. It was about who is the Greatest Canadian ever. Now they had an online poll and they're doing profiles of the top 10 people and I watched a couple of them on Saturday (and for the record, only 2 of them are hockey related, Wayne Gretzky and Don Cherry) .

There were 2 profiles on that night, the first was of Dr. Frederick Banting, the inventor of Insulin, and was hosted by Mary Walsh, a famous Canadian in her own right (Hearing her talking about stuffing bread up a turkey arse was priceless). Well the show about Dr. Banting was interesting and made an impression. Millions of lives have been saved by this country doctor from Canada.

Now what really caught my interest was the second profile of Lester Pearson, a former Prime Minister (Leader of the Liberals back in the day when Liberal wasn't a dirty word, I still hope Paul Martin, the current P.M. can change that). This profile was hosted by Paul Gross (the Mountie in Due South, a Canadian program that was seen all over the world). He talked about how he defined what Canada is today. From the creation of the U.N. peace keeper (his idea from when he was the Canadian representative to the U.N.) to the Canada Heath Act, old age pensions, official bilingualism and even our flag. (Before he changed our flag, we had something that looked like it belong on a British merchant ship.(it had the Union Jack on it).

I think of what being Canadian means to me and I realized that he made it all possible. He was the Prime Minister back in 60's and he had a minority government (Just like the current P.M. Paul Martin but if anyone thinks that I'm going to compare the two, then forget it. Paul Martin doesn't stand anywhere near the calibre of Pearson). Despite the constant danger that his government could fall, he managed to accomplish so much, including our flag.

Someone once wrote to me and said that they found it difficult to define their national identity while I could talk about what it meant to be Canadian. Now I realize that this was all because of the effort of one person, Lester Pearson. So now I have someone to thank; because of him I know how I should behave as a Canadian. It's because of his efforts that I have this identity as a Canadian that I can point to with pride. I can say "Being Canadian means this" or" that" (Though the top of my head doesn't come off like in South Park).

My 2 bytes