Happy birthday, Canada.

Today my country celebrates its sesquicentennial. Canada has been a nation for 150 years. It’s grown and changed since Confederation, to include the Territories in the North as well as Newfoundland and Labrador.

As nations go, Canada is very young, relatively speaking, with little history compared to European and Asian cultures that have existed and evolved over the millennia. Even compared to our more or less equally youthful neighbour to the south, Canada has a much less storied and dominant history as a nation.

It’s a country known for its vastness and for its cold, snowy winters, its forests and lakes, and especially for its ‘niceness’. (I don't pretend to claim that this country is perfect: our treatment of Indigenous peoples, our internment of Japanese during WWII come to mind, and we certainly have our fair share of serial killers, rednecks and deadbeats, suburban sprawl, pollution and political imbroglios), but generally speaking, Canada gets the rep of a nice, pleasant, picturesque, hockey-playing, eh-saying place. Beyond those stereotypes, however, there is a lot more.

A big part of that ‘more’ is in fact the essence of what it means to be a Canadian. Because being a Canadian means you can be anyone or anything you want. It’s perfectly common and ok to hyphenate, to qualify ‘Canadian’ with an adjective or two, like French, Indigenous, Italian or Sudanese. For better or for worse, the Canadian identity is sufficiently supple and generous to embrace and include otherness. And for that I am both grateful and proud. It might be hard to define ‘Canadian’, but that’s kind of the point.

I was born in the U.K. When I was four years old, my father left our young family and came to Canada in search of a job. This was back in the day when the British Commonwealth was still a thing, and immigration movement was free and fluid among the ‘colonies’. He had the choice of Australia, South Africa or Canada, and he came here first, found the job that he needed and wanted, secured a rental apartment, saved for a few months, then brought his young family over here to live.

Soon we were able to move to a better, more modern rental in the north end of Toronto, and some of my first memories are of being in the Sikh-Canadian superintendent’s apartment, devouring homemade chapattis, admiring the colourful saris of the women, and making friends with their children. My dad found an Indian cricket team and joined up. My sister and I began school. My mother met other young mothers and made friends who remain amongst her closest these several decades hence.

I grew up ‘Canadian’ but certainly not stereotypically Canadian. I camped a bit, but I didn’t paddle a canoe everywhere nor did I learn to snowshoe until I was in my early teens. And truth be told, I have never, ever adjusted to the point of greeting winter with anything less than angst and dread. Oh, and I think hockey is boring.

In fact, my family remained steadfastly British: I grew up reading Beatrix Potter, Noddy, and Ladybird books; dad played soccer; my mother cooked roast beef dinners and Yorkshire puddings every Sunday. We crossed arms and pulled on Christmas crackers and wore the silly paper hats. We had an endless succession of Labrador retrievers. We listened to the Beatles and to the Saturday evening radio show ‘Calling all Britons’ that gave news of ‘home’ as well as all of the day’s football scores. My dad found the closest semblance to a British pub and that became his ‘local’, where all of the other expat Brits would gather and form friendships. We ate Cadbury chocolate. I took horseback riding lessons (English seat, of course) and did Scottish Country dancing for years. We liked Niagara-on-the-Lake and Oakville because they reminded us of ‘home’. Well, they reminded my parents of ‘home’. Because my home was Canada, and I considered myself fundamentally Canadian.

Is it a coincidence that my father's birthday, like this country's, was the 1st of July? I like to think not. I think perhaps Canada was where we were meant to be, and where we learned what it meant to be Canadian.

My story may be my own, but it’s a variation of that of so many Canadians, whose parents or grandparents came to this country in search of something better. And they found it. They found a place for themselves where they could feel a sense of belonging as well as one of individuality, a sense of patriotism as well as a sense of personal patrimony. A place called Canada.