Blog Guelph: Get Real

Day Three | Getting Centered, a photo by Krista Kruger on Flickr.

So, recent events and conversations have provoked me into thinking about being Canadian and what that means.


A lot of people would point to our “freedoms” or our health care system, our peaceful edicts, our abiding good natured pacifism, perhaps our empire of Tim Horton’s coffee, or our large and diverse lands ranging from ocean to ocean with the largest freshwater bodies in the world somewhere in the mix along with huge prairie flatlands, rugged mountains, both salt and fresh water islands, and wild arctic habitat with polar bears.


Yet, if we were to really get real for a moment, the truth is our “freedoms” are extremely limited, our health care system is under threat and buckling, our irreverent passive attitudes are disarming us (literally), Tim Horton’s coffee is nowhere as good or as successful as our American counterpart Starbucks, and our beautiful ecology and environmental diversity is being destroyed by export demands and bad management.


To say nothing of the fact that our education system, old age security, and women’s rights are being targeted by government in a bid for money and power. To extort money from children and the old, to control women’s bodies. What right do they have?


Okay. Let’s get real. Canada has an identity problem.


Worse, Canada has an authenticity problem.


One example of this came across my desk just yesterday in the form of Culture Days. They unveiled their new marketing campaign featuring an I (Heart) Culture logo. Culture Days is a federally and provincially sponsored creative movement to encourage art and culture across Canada – could they have not come up with an original logo for Culture Days? The logo is a swipe from the I (Heart) NY design by Milton Glaser used in the 70s to promote New York. It gained popularity after the tragedy of 9/11. Out of respect to the artist, the history of this logo, and the events that took place in New York, I really think they should have thought that through.


I mean, could they have not commissioned a Canadian artist to do a logo? 


Let’s get real, man. That’s just shabby, wrong, and cheap. It insults Canadian culture.


And if we take that as a symbol for the broader problems in Canada, it speaks volumes about who we are and what sort of country we’re going to become unless we change – the imitators, the land-stripping barons, the naïve world watchmen, the takers from the vulnerable…


I don’t know about you.


But I’ve had enough.  And it’s time to get real.


We need to make change.


~ Aidan M.D. Ware