Canada National Identity Essay

Canada’s national identity is one that has been formulating since the initial days of human life on this incredibly special piece of rock. The indigenous groups that inhabited this land long before Europeans hustled onto the scene, have left their own imprints on our collective identity, yet the recorded events that took place in this country from when the first colonists arrived to now, are more widely know as the events that shaped Canada’s history. Out of the multitude of events and features that have made Canada the place we know today, two of the most significant and unifying are the completion and building of the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Confederation that brought colonies together under one common government. These events are the two of the most important pieces when puzzling out Canada’s national identity are essential concepts when relating to this country's historical impacts on modern life. Canada’s Confederation in 1867 was perhaps the most pivotal moment for the formation of a Canadian sense of nationalism and was the officially documented birth of our pride for the unique
and decidedly un-American identity we share today. Confederation has shaped the very essence of this country and even in the early days was breaking the boundaries of Canadian knowledge. Take for example Alfred Selwyn and his group of surveyors with the Geological Survey of Canada that mapped, charted and surveyed huge portions of land that we now know as Alberta, the Yukon and British Columbia. They were allowed to do so after the selling of Rupert’s Land from the Hudson’s Bay Company to the newly formed and unified Canadian government in 1870. Expeditions such as this one, that mapped out new territories and made it easier for the Canadian Pacific Railway to lay down the tracks that would ultimately unite our vast country, are what now define the landscape of our country.
Our geography, for many Canadians, is an essential and defining feature of our national identity.
Confederation not only brought together upper and lower Canada but also built on to the country with the purchase of Rupert’s Land and the sending of surveyors to map out places that no European man had ever been before. These actions now mean that we as Albertans can go and enjoy the mountains without falling down a gorge we didn’t know was there or that people living in the Yukon can do so because that land is Canadian land, not Hudson’s Bay land. Ultimately, Canadians take pride in the landscapes that they are surrounded by and that pride contributes to our sense of national identity. Huge aspects of that identity were created by the Confederation of Canada which has, in more ways than the one represented here, changed the way Canadians view and love this country of
ours.