Beyond “Canadian” vs. “colonial” – How Canada’s past became a battleground in the culture wars: Geoff Russ for Inside Policy – MLI
December 9, 2025
Canada’s history, culture, and political traditions belong to all Canadians – to treat them as foreign shirks our responsibility to that inheritance.
A strange partition runs through Canada’s past.
One side contains all that we are encouraged to treat as innocently and unambiguously “Canadian.” This includes the “pony-tailed orphan with the spunky spirit” of Anne of Green Gables, in the words of the CBC. Alongside her are the romance of ice hockey and the vague ethic of polite kindness.
Across the divide are the things fenced off as “colonial,” such as the monarchy and the Anglo-Victorian world from which our institutions, traditions, and habits sprang. The first half of our inheritance is warmly embraced as our own by the official custodians and narrators of our past. The other is portrayed as something akin to a foreign occupation.
