What connects us as Canadians?
Events of the past several years have served more to highlight some of our differences than our commonalities. As much as we’d like to believe otherwise, the reality is that Canada is not one big national identity (Canada, eh?), but a composite of many such identities.
If you’ve travelled our lands, you’ll see the intimate connections that bond people to the places where they live, and which help to shape their outlooks. Locally or regionally, they may have a set of experiences and viewpoints that help to connect them into something bigger.
Nationally, it’s big events that could — even should — help to bond us as citizens in positive ways. Confederation. Repatriating the Constitution. A Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Centennials. Reconciliation. World Expos.
We’re exploring some of those big national event structures to see what we can learn from them. World Expo 2030 (WE2030 to us) might have been one of those events had it come to pass. Without it, we’ll have to invent something else with equal or greater impact.