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Raymond J. de Souza: Where was America 250's celebratory spectacle?

As American anniversary events and the World Cup have demonstrated, bigger, louder and longer does not mean more uplifting

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Canadians could well have told our American friends that their semiquincentennial would be underwhelming, if not a flop.

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At our sesquicentennial back in 2017, we discovered our lost sense of celebratory spectacle. With the political left trumpeting the entire Canadian project to be a criminal enterprise, if not genocidal, and the political right promoting the idea that the left had irreparably broken the country, the fonts of patriotic fervour were running dry. Canada 150 came and went with rather less than the occasion deserved, especially compared to the centennial in 1967, when Expo ’67 in Montreal marked a months-long festival of Canadian achievement and confidence in the future. It was a long way down over 50 years.

Raymond J. de Souza: Where was America 250's celebratory spectacle? Back to video

The Americans did something similar at their Centennial Exposition, a world’s fair in Philadelphia in 1876. It showcased American technological progress, including the typewriter, sewing machine, a 1,400-horsepower steam engine and the telephone of Scots-Canadian-American........

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