How Stephen Harper is remaking the Canadian myth

The $20 bill is the most common currency in the land. The paper version in your wallet features Bill Reid’s iconic sculpture The Spirit of Haida Gwaii. The futuristic new polymer note, unveiled Wednesday, will honour the military instead.

On the first anniversary of Stephen Harper’s majority government, much attention has focused on tax and spending cuts, the law-and-order agenda, the Prime Minister’s promotion of free trade and the increasing estrangement of Quebec.

But the Conservatives are also bent on transforming the idea of Canada, by changing the national myth.

Many of this country’s most cherished symbols and values – the flag, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, peacekeeping, public health care, multiculturalism – are the product of Liberal policies.

The Harper government seeks to supplement, or even supplant, those symbols with new ones, and old ones revived. These new symbols are rooted in a robust, even aggressive nationalism that celebrates the armed forces, the monarchy, sports, the North and a once overshadowed Conservative prime minister.

Original Article
Source: Globe
Author: John Ibbitson AND Erin Anderssen