July 1, 2008
Canada Day celebrations are underway today throughout Canada. This year’s national holiday carries additional significance, as the 400th anniversary of Quebec City’s founding is celebrated. In his first visit to the provincial capital, Paul McCartney is scheduled to play at the Plains of Abraham in a free concert on July 20 to mark the anniversary.
Musically, Canada has brought us Bryan Adams, Inuit singer Susan Aglukark, heartthrob Paul Anka, Barenaked Ladies, Michael Bublé, Leonard Cohen, Céline Dion (sorry about that!), the Cowboy Junkies, Maynard Ferguson, Nellie Furtado, Robert Goulet, the Guess Who, bluesman extraordinaire Jeff Healey, flutist Paul Horn, k. d. lang, Avril Lavigne, Gordon Lightfoot, Natalie MacMaster, Sarah McLachlan, Joni Mitchell, Alanis Morissette, Anne Murray, the Rankin Family, Buffy Sainte-Marie, rocker Neil Sedaka, Paul Shaffer from the David Letterman Show, Steppenwolf, Shania Twain, Stompin’ Tom Connors and Neil Young.
Canada has also blessed us with: basketball (Sorry America, invented by Canadian James Naismith in 1892); the electron microscope; frozen fish; green plastic garbage bags; insulin (1921); IMAX; ginger ale; kerosene; the telephone; the pacemaker; paint rollers; roller skates; the snowblower, snowmobile and snowplow; Superman (1938); Trivial Pursuit; washing machines; and zippers (1913). And oil. Lotsa and lotsa oil.
Speaking on Parliament Hill before an audience estimated at 75,000, Prime Minister Stephen Harper marked Canada Day by saying that this year’s Canada Day was a time of both reconciliation and celebration. He referenced an historic apology which the goverment made last month to native students who lost their culture and language while enrolled in Canadian residential schools throughout Canada.
Learn more about the aboriginal residential schools in Canada, and how one determined woman, Nora Bernard, successfully sought reparations for the failed mainstreaming of First Nation people.
Photo credit: The [Montreal] Gazette
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