Oh, Canada

Acknowledgement and reconciliation in the country of my birth.

July 1 is Canada Day!

As a kid, we proudly celebrated our Norwegian heritage at the annual Canada Day Folkfest. We ate Mom’s “krumkake”, someone else’s mom’s “rømmegrøt”, and, if we were lucky, someone’s grandma, decked out in their “Hardanger bunad” would have a deep pot of “får-i-kål” we could sample. If we didn’t like the offerings at the “Sons of Norway” booth on the arena floor, the Polish booth had perogies, the German booth had bratwurst, and the Italian booth had bruschetta.

(I don’t recall a French booth, but if there was, we would have boycotted it. It was the ‘70s. We disliked everything French, probably because the Montreal Canadiens won too many Stanley Cups. When I lived in Europe I changed my mind about the French, but not about the Canadiens hockey team.)

We were proud to celebrate the independence of our country. We were proud when the Queen visited our city in May 1971. My older brother and I were decked out in our Boy Scout uniforms and joined the honour guard.

My younger brother plucked some tulips from Mom’s garden.

“Who are those for?”, my Mom asked.

“The QUEEN!”

When the entourage greeted crowds in City Park, the mayor committed a serious breach of Royal protocol by taking the Queen’s arm to try to keep her on the red carpet. She was unstoppable and made a beeline across the grass to the little boy with the tulips.

“Are those for me?”

“Yes, ma’am!”

Growing up in Canada in the ‘60s and ‘70s was a carefree existence for a white, middle-class kid who was too young to understand politics and too engrossed in ice hockey to care.

Our education system helped us out by limiting our history lessons. History began when Europeans colonized the country. Our competent history teachers reminded us that in contrast to our Southern neighbours, there had never been any “Indian wars” in Canada. (That’s not true, there were plenty of “Indian wars” fought out in backyards and playgrounds daily during my childhood.)

Our education system also told us that authorities who created Canada did so by signing agreements and treaties with people already living in the territories they were busy “discovering” and “bringing civilization to”.

By the way, I’m writing this from an “unceded” territory. If you don’t know what unceded means, look it up and you’ll find our history teachers were being less than truthful.

In 1977, Alex Haley’s novel “Roots” glued us to our television screens. I was in my penultimate year of high school with no idea of what to pursue when the party life was over and the responsibilities of adulthood could no longer be ignored. The TV show got people talking about taking a gap year and discovering their roots…

For most, it was probably a pipe dream but even though I’d never given it much interest, I knew it could be my reality. Since we were little kids my Dad had promised us a ticket to Norway when we graduated high school because he’d turned down an offer from his parents in 1949. You can read about that here:

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For those who didn’t pause to read the above, I surprised my parents by telling them I would avail myself of the ticket to Norway when I graduated.

I surprised myself, too.

I think I was just trying to postpone the transition to a life where I would need to be responsible for my actions and somehow I thought travelling halfway around the world to a country where I knew no one and didn’t speak the language was akin to continuing the luxurious, carefree life of a high school student. I actually thought it would be better than high school because the school I would attend during my gap year had no exams and no grades…. Long story short, I ended up in a sink-or-swim situation, dog-paddled my way through, and ended up stretching my gap year into precisely four decades and one week.

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This link will take you to my sink-or-swim tips:

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On July 5, 2018, my wife and I moved to the city I had grown up in.

I never say that I moved “back” to Kelowna. To do that, the time machine have to have been invented and affordable. You can never move back to anywhere because the places you move from change while you’re away. You change too.

Canada and Kelowna changed while I was gone.

I changed too. To those who see the picture above and think they can see that, I don’t mean I changed in that I stopped shaving. I never started that time-wasting activity. I changed in other ways. But this isn’t about me, it’s about Canada.

One of the first things we noticed when we returned was that whenever we attended an event, it started with a land acknowledgement.

Three years after we moved here, news broke of the discovery of up to 215 unmarked graves on the site of the Kamloops Indian Residential School. The school is located less than 200 km from where I grew up. I’d never heard of residential schools.

While I was a young, proud Canadian living at home, it had never crossed my mind that we were living on other people’s lands.

I was always aware of that when I lived in Norway. I was always aware of that when I lived in Denmark. I was always aware of that when I lived in Belgium.

When you know you’re living on someone else’s land, you acknowledge it and, as a guest, you respect it and are grateful that you have been permitted to live there.

I’ll never forget the day when Norway changed the stamp in my passport to read that I was granted full permission to live and work there AND that I was protected against deportation. It was given to me after 15 years in the country and ended the requirement for me to make an annual trek to the local police station to have my residency permit extended.

I’ll never forget that my ID card in Belgium pronounced me a legal alien on the grounds I was married to an EU citizen who lived with me in Brussels. (I had met and married the EU person in Copenhagen. When work transferred me to the EU capital, technically it was Kirsten who moved. I was just there as her spouse.)

But in Canada, no one ever told me nor had I ever considered myself a guest on someone else’s land.

Hearing the land acknowledgements taught me to know better. Seeing the news of the residential school abuses and learning that the systemic racism that occurs against Indigenous inhabitants in every colony taught me that is also the case in Canada.

I, a light-haired, blue-eyed, Canadian of Norwegian descent, acknowledge that I live on land that has been home to and stewarded by the Syilx Okanagan people since time immemorial. I.e. long before European settlers came to the continent.

When we arrived here, land acknowledgements were new to me. As a kid who grew up playing Cowboys and Indians, I learned to respect that times had changed and I was genuinely grateful that they had.

More recently, I sometimes feel as if land acknowledgements have taken on a role similar to those of the disclaimers in American TV ads for medicine. They’re simply a statement one blurts out before the national anthem is played and the game begins.

When I’m honoured to give a land acknowledgement at an event, I remind people that it was my life abroad, not my childhood here, that taught me to truly acknowledge and show genuine gratitude toward the people whose land I’m permitted to live on. I also remind them that we all need to support the efforts to find our country’s historical truth.

It took me four decades and a week to begin my journey of understanding.

On Canada Day, let’s all take a moment to reflect and honour this when the land acknowledgement is given at the events we attend.

Kirsten is a proud citizen of her native Denmark. Additionally, she became a Canadian citizen in January 2023. Like me, on Canada Day and every day, we acknowledge our gratitude toward the people who have welcomed us to live on the land they have taken care of since time began.

Stay safe,
Always Care

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All of my stories are personal, authentic, and unashamedly enhanced by imperfect memory and literary creativity.

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