Canada Day

 

There are reluctant celebrants this day marking

the anniversary-emergence of a great country vast 

in its land mass reflecting the northern hemisphere 

of natural resources abundant in mountains and 

prairies, forests and lakes once the sole habitat 

of Indigenous Indian and Inuit nations and now

a nation priding itself on a different heritage

that of multiculturalism where emigrants from all 

corners of the world converge to make the second 

greatest national territory on the globe their home.

A land of liberal mindset from the Pacific to the 

Atlantic stretching to the Arctic whose ambitions 

outstrip its command on the world stage while 

in domestic pride in equality and liberty opens wide

its arms absorbing multitudes escaping the torments 

of poverty and conflict, oppression and rampant crime 

to join within a lean population proudly peopling cities

farmland, towns and villages. Yet pride and shame 

mingle in a confused rally recognizing past inequities

in assuming ownership of land tracts once the possession 

of original inhabitants now mired in an ever-renewable 

pantomime of oppressor-settlers vs vibrant victimhood.