The Written Word
for December 9, 2001

The terrible death of yachtsman Sir Peter Blake has put the world wide yachting fraternity into mourning. What it has also done is plunge the entire nation of New Zealand into deep grief. My best friends in Auckland tell me that the entire country is stricken. As you will know, Sir Peter is the man who took the Americas Cup from San Diego to Auckland and kept it there.

New Zealand, a country you could put many times inside British Columbia and which has the same population has had many national heroes. Peter Snell, the great runner, Sir Richard Hadlee the world class cricketer, Sir Edmund Hillary the conqueror of Mount Everest to name three of the modern era. The tragic death of any of them in their prime would have brought, I daresay, the same sort of national grief as caused by the death of Sir Peter Blake.

You sense the question, don’t you. Name a Canadian alive today who would bring this reaction from Canadians. One.

Wayne Gretzky in his prime? Maybe, though I doubt it. Oh, there would have been sorrow, deep sorrow and hockey rinks would have been deep in black crepe and CBC would have done his funeral. But not even Wayne Gretzky could have united the country coast to coast. Whatever his enormous talents and whatever his contribution to Canada’s pathetic standing on the world stage of sport, even in his prime he fell far short of the stature to his country of Sir Peter Blake.

Terry Fox? Perhaps the closest we ever got but while his death did bring great grief, I think it fell short of uniting the nation.

Pierre Trudeau? Not a chance. His death, while it created a great spectacle was just that, a spectacle that reflected Canadians ongoing curiosity about a man half the nation detested, The death provided the CBC with a great opportunity to trot out all their old tape and do specials but were there huge outbursts of public mourning across the country? Memorial services in every hamlet? Scarcely, and though it’s hard to spit out it must be said that had be died in office the Province of Alberta at least – perhaps British Columbia should be included – would have celebrated. Brian Mulroney? I only put his name in to give you a good belly laugh. Any of the present lot? Ha! There’s more feeling in the country for the so-called artist who obtains public funds for jacking off into vials and displaying them, in seriousness – a seriousness shared by the government – as art that there is for the likes of Jean Chretien or Stockwell Day. No, I challenge you all – name one Canadian whose untimely death would send this nation into national grief.

There isn’t one.

What does this tell us?

I think it tells us that we are a country whose only glue is that we’re not a country. What keeps us together is a fear of absorption by the United States (a diminishing fear I might add), a hatred of national institutions like, in its time, the CPR, and always the CBC and Air Canada; a detestation of what Toronto stands for; a general pissed-offness with Quebec and an utter refusal to accept heroes.

I don’t think there’s anything we can do about it nor anything we should. Most Canadians, as it is, cringe at the breast beating ads the Canadian government flogs or the $25 million given to Sheila Copps to pass out flags. We are what we are.

Let me put to you the final test. If a foreign country were to invade the outermost rock of Great Britain, if the Russians sent so much as a squad of soldiers to some hitherto unknown piece of desolate granite in the Aleutians there would be all Hell to pay. What if the Americans were to invade Newfoundland? Would you send your sons and daughters to war? What if it were Toronto (no fair cheering here!)? Or even Vancouver?

After losing such a war, would British Columbians take to the hills in guerilla warfare as have the Chechnyans?

An honest answer would be that life would go on.

This country, emotionally, is dead from the ass up and that’s the truth of the matter.

Period.