Let's be the Canada we think we are

Thoughts on a Canada Day like no other.

In a strange way, it’s fortuitous that Canada Day 2021 was already going to be a somewhat muted celebration, thanks to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The big public events that usually happen here in Halifax every July 1 were already cancelled.

And, coming from Newfoundland - where July 1 is not just my country’s National Day, but also the anniversary of the decimation of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment at Beaumont Hamel - my feelings about the holiday have always been a little bit tempered, anyway.

But the ongoing revelations about unmarked graves at the sites of former residential schools for First Nations children, including the discovery of one such gravesite in British Columbia yesterday, haven’t really put Canadians in a celebratory mood, anyway:

There has been another discovery of human remains in unmarked graves at the site of a former residential school in B.C.

The Lower Kootenay Band confirmed Wednesday that ground-penetrating radar revealed 182 human remains in unmarked graves…