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What we've lost (6): Nationalism

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The last 10 or 15 years have not been kind to Canada. Along with a decline in prosperity has come an erosion of the things that made our society great, a decline of what held us together and made us the envy of the world: things like resilience, friendship and service. In this series, National Post writers consider What We’ve Lost.

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Growing up in suburban Toronto, I occasionally had classmates who, being the children of immigrants, like myself, seemed spiritually homeless. They spent their summers in their parents’ countries, which were like gauzy pocket universes, while Canada remained a land of mud and chores, tolerated but not loved, pallid against the glow of a romanticized elsewhere.  

What we've lost (6): Nationalism Back to video

As a teenager, I did not want to be like these people. My Serbian parents taught me to be Canadian first, and, though this identity seemed nebulous (peacekeeping and hockey?), I assumed, perhaps naively, that it would later solidify and provide an enveloping sense of belonging. Against this promise, maintaining ties to the home country seemed parochial and claustrophobic.  

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As I got older, though, Canadian nationalism was not reinforced, but demolished under the auspices of “inclusivity.” The architects of this transformation were, broadly speaking, cultural and economic elites for whom nationalism was superfluous, because they already belonged to a global community defined by class — an urban world of minimalist AirBnbs and fusion tapas that looked identical whether in Toronto, Paris, Tokyo or Mumbai.  

These cosmopolitans saw nationalism as destructive and unforgivably plebeian. It represented the primitive masses lurking at the fringes of their lives (e.g. tradesmen, farmers), who could become “civilized” if only they exchanged their Maple Leaf flags for cortados and bahn mi bowls.  

READ THE ENTIRE WHAT WE’VE LOST SERIES

What we've lost (5): Service

What we've lost (4): Resilience

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In contrast, the post-nationalists venerated minority cultures, mostly because they experienced “diversity” through the lens of bourgeois consumption and status jockeying. For them, multiculturalism was a game of food trucks and street festivals, or recitable trivia that exuded a worldly aura. The profound tensions inherent to Canada’s “multicultural tapestry” remained invisible to these elites, because they rarely ventured into the poorer, less trendy — and often suburban — neighbourhoods where many minority communities reside. 

The net effect was that, by the late 2010s, Canadian nationalism, starved of institutional and cultural support, withered in many parts of the country. “Canada” was reduced to an economic zone, bound together primarily by a membrane of government administration and taxes, beyond which exist few universal ties or reciprocal responsibilities. Such a place could not — and still cannot — provide a deeper and enduring sense of attachment. 

Worse yet, Canadians were taught to feel ashamed of their country, which was framed as illegitimate and “colonial,” and to denigrate themselves as intruding “settlers” who would be resented in perpetuity.  

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So citizens, at least the ones more sensitive to these issues, had a choice to make: embrace atomization and transience and shame, or find shelter within one of the subnational (usually ethnic) communities that constitute our Balkanized post-national state. 

I opted for the latter. This initially meant submerging myself in gay culture and the LGBT community, but, as that solution proved unsatisfactory, I eventually gravitated to my Serbian heritage. It was delightful to realize that, although being “Canadian” had come to mean so little, I still had something else to attach myself to. 

Anecdotally-speaking, it seems that some of my second-generation immigrant friends are undertaking similar journeys, to varying degrees. Oftentimes, they are from post-communist countries — Poland, Bulgaria, Romania and so on — where rapidly improving living standards have prompted a rethink of what it means to be diasporic. In our conversations, a common theme recurs: “Canada stopped feeling like home, so I found home elsewhere.”  

In a way, we are vaguely similar to new immigrants who, having found nothing strongly “Canadian” to assimilate to, retain the culture of their home country —  but we differ in that our foreign ties are stale and in need of reconstruction, not just maintenance. 

My resentment of post-nationalism goes deeper after visiting countries where nationalism is still vigorous.  

In Ukraine and Israel, I was struck by the stability, strength and great-heartedness that is possible when citizens are united by an ardent belief in shared history and common destiny. In Serbia, where nationalism has often been a toxic force, I witnessed it buttress anti-authoritarian protests last year — fraternity deepened the country’s hunger for justice.  

I confess to feeling envious. It simply feels good to exist within a society whose constituents are meaningfully tied to one another, and who share a fierce pride in their heritage. When I am in Toronto, the cultural listlessness seems more conspicuous now, sickly even. “Who are these people? What brings us together? What do we have in common” I wonder, struggling with a gnawing sense of arbitrariness.  

Last summer, I visited a Polish-Canadian friend in Warsaw; he had moved there recently, despite having been born in Canada, and was enamoured with the city. He seemed at home. Our sentiments were the same: we wanted to be Canadian, and had once carried so many expectations, but then the country told us this didn’t matter, so we sought belonging elsewhere.  

I miss what was lost, and what could have been. 

Next up in What we’ve lost: Manners

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