Canada Day: Unwrapping the Myth of Modern Nations

A 12,000-year memory collides with modern-day mythmaking. In this deep-dive, we dissect how a freshly minted national birthday slams into stories that long predate the lines on any map.

By Kanishka S. for Atlas October

Just before dawn on July 1, Taiji Park on Thunder Bay’s Lake Superior shoreline is still blue-grey and quiet. A handful of people shuffle toward a small circle where Elder Anthony (Tony) DePerry stands beside an unlit braid of sweetgrass. At exactly 6 a.m., he kindles a flame, sending a thin column of smoke into the morning chill. The circle grows—settlers, Anishinaabe families, a couple of sleepy tourists clutching Tim Hortons cups. No one sings O Canada; instead, people breathe the smoke, offer a silent prayer, and watch the first sliver of sun clear the Sleeping Giant. Elder DePerry reminds them that the light they honour was here long before any parliament or provincial line, and will be here long after the fireworks fizzle tonight. In this moment, Canada Day begins not with a cannon salute on Parliament Hill, but with a quiet assertion that the land’s oldest stories are still being told—even if the map now calls this place “Ontario.”

Across the country, other sunrise gatherings echo the same refrain. On Signal Hill in St. John’s, a flag-raising kicks off Canada Day an hour and a half earlier, positioning the eastern edge of the continent as the day’s first official celebration—yet even there, the ceremony starts with the rising sun, not the waving flag.

A Very Brief, Very Contested History of Canada Day

From “Dominion” to statutory holiday (1867-1879)

Confederation arrived on 1 July 1867 with the British North America Act; bells rang in Toronto’s Cathedral Church of St James and bonfires lit Halifax’s waterfront, but nothing like a unified party existed. A year later Governor-General Lord Monck merely invited subjects to mark the anniversary, and it took until 1879 for Parliament to declare “the anniversary of Confederation” a legal holiday—soon nicknamed Dominion Day after the Act’s description of Canada as “a dominion.”

A sleepy birthday, suddenly re-branded (1917-1982)

Large federal celebrations erupted only at milestone anniversaries—golden (1917), diamond (1927) and the 1967 centennial. Yet dominion felt increasingly like imperial baggage. After years of stalled bills, just 13 MPs were on the Commons floor the afternoon of 9 July 1982 when private-member Bill C-201 zipped through all stages, officially renaming the holiday Canada Day. Some of you reading this were likely around to see the news on TV then, or read it in the paper.

Celebration meets reckoning (1990s-2020s)

Renaming never solved who the birthday actually honours. By 2021, after more than 1,000 unmarked residential-school graves were confirmed, cities from Victoria to Fredericton cancelled fireworks and #CancelCanadaDay trended nationwide, recasting 1 July as a day of mourning.

Canada-Day-by-any-other-name

Nation-birthdays everywhere get make-overs: Myanmar’s Union Day recasts a colonial fracture as unity, Ghana’s Founders’ Day spreads independence credit beyond one hero, and Turkey’s Republic Day wraps the modern nation in red flags.

Turtle Island’s Pre-Contact “Cartography”

No straight lines, only stories

In many Northeastern Woodlands creation stories—Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe, Lenape—Sky Woman tumbles through a hole in the sky toward a world covered in water. One by one the water-animals dive for soil until Muskrat surfaces, lifeless, his claws clenched around a pinch of earth. The animals press that mud onto the back of a giant turtle; the turtle grows, the mud spreads, and the great island we now label North America appears.

Because the ground itself is a living being, millions of Indigenous people still call this continent Turtle Island, a name that centres relationship over ownership and predates every survey stake hammered into it. When we speak of Canada as Turtle Island we evoke a geography of responsibilities—river to sturgeon, cedar to smokehouse, neighbour to guest—rather than the hard geometry of provincial borders and boundary treaties.

Over 70 Indigenous languages, grouped in a dozen families, once mapped those relationships by sound and story instead of lines and coordinates.

Trade routes that ignored today’s borders

Copper mined on Lake Superior’s Keweenaw Peninsula travelled thousands of kilometres to what is now Florida and the Yukon, handed from canoe to snowshoe in a vast “down-the-line” exchange network. These paths—portage trails, river corridors, prairie “medicine lines”—functioned like arteries connecting dozens of nations, not walls separating them.

Wampum belts as GPS

Instead of parchment deeds, Great Lakes nations wove wampum belts—flat cables of white and purple shell beads threaded on sinew—to record law in pattern and colour. One of the oldest, the Dish With One Spoon belt, shows a dark oval “dish” crossed by a single pale “spoon.” Struck as early as the 12th century and re-affirmed in 1701, it bound Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe hunters to share the game of the Great Lakes basin without taking more than their share—a sustainability treaty that today straddles Ontario, Michigan, Ohio and New York.

A century later diplomats strung the Two Row Wampum: two parallel purple rows separated by three white ones. The rows represent a European ship and a Haudenosaunee canoe travelling the same river; the three white lanes stand for peace, friendship, and respect. Crucially, neither vessel may steer the other. Scholars call it a visual constitution for perpetual coexistence rather than conquest, and generations of Haudenosaunee leaders still present the belt as proof that nation-to-nation diplomacy predates—and transcends—Canada’s borders.

A living atlas, overwritten but not erased

Seen through these lenses, Turtle Island looks less like a jigsaw of provinces and more like a tapestry of overlapping responsibilities—shared hunting grounds, seasonal fishing rights, kinship trails. The Canada-USA line bisecting Lake Superior slices straight through centuries-old copper highways; the Manitoba-Ontario border cuts across the dish depicted on the early wampum belt. Yet the older map still flickers: sunrise ceremonies re-trace ancient portages, language revitalization apps ping across Wi-Fi in places the treaties never intended to carve up.

(If Bastille Day or Australia Day claim tidy origin stories, wait until we lay their borders over the pre-colonial trade webs of Europe and the Pacific—coming to Atlas October in the future.)

Spectacle & Silence: What the Party Papers Over

Noon-show optics

At 12 p.m. sharp CBC cuts to LeBreton Flats: pop singer Amanda Marshall belts out Let it Rain, Indigenous Elder Claudette Commanda offers a brisk land-acknowledgement, and Prime Minister Mark Carney promises that “under the maple leaf we come together.” The camera lingers on red-and-white confetti; no time is left to ask whose lands those paper flakes settle on.

Patriotism for purchase

By the time the anthem fades, the real marketplace has opened. Payment-processor DRS calls Canada Day “a golden day for retailers,” citing spikes in flag tees, disposable décor and maple-leaf pool floaties. Even February’s Trumpian scare mongering juiced business: flag maker Flags Unlimited doubled sales as nervous patriots stocked up on cloth banners four months before July 1. This is nationalism on tap—buy two, get one free.

Fire in the sky, smoke in the air

At night a 14-minute pyrotechnic show—cost undisclosed until “after final tallies,” Heritage Canada says—turns hundreds-of-thousands dollars into sparks. Industry-funded studies insist the plume is “no worse than a bus ride,” yet independent epidemiologists find particulate spikes five-to-six times above baseline for hours after a display. Cities facing wildfire haze have begun to cancel the ritual altogether. Carbon, cost, ecosystem disruption, and risk are folded into the sky—out of sight, out of budget line.

What the confetti misses

Land acknowledgements book-end the program, but few Indigenous artists make the main stage; fewer still decide the budget. Outside the cordon, #CancelCanadaDay vigils and teach-ins remember the 1,000+ unmarked graves that forced scores of municipalities to call off fireworks only four summers ago. The noon show invokes “unity,” yet the script never utters treaty names like Dish With One Spoon or Two Row Wampum—the very agreements that would make coexistence more than a chorus line.

Hold that thought for Bastille Day

Every flag-waving birthday runs the same playbook: merch, military flyovers, a flash of gunpowder, then a collective forgetting. In July we unwrap Canada; later this month France will drape the Eiffel Tower in tricolour LEDs, and Australia will push “snags on the barbie” come January. Different brands, same smoke.

What’s a “Nation,” Really?

Picture a kid with a crayon drawing a line across the living-room carpet—“my side, your side.” Now scale that tantrum up to two million square kilometres, add uniformed adults to guard the line, and you have a modern nation. Borders aren’t mountains or rivers; they’re stories we’ve repeated so often they hardened into walls. Flags? Just coloured cloth convincing strangers to kill or cheer in synchrony. Anthems? Nursery rhymes that swap “twinkle” for “glory.”

A nation promises protection, but first it must invent an outside threat. It pledges belonging, then sells passports at a premium. It calls itself ancient, yet most dates of independence fit on a single spreadsheet column—newer than steam engines, younger than light bulbs. Under the lawn fireworks and TikTok tributes, the whole apparatus is paper-thin: tear up one treaty, redraw one map, and suddenly yesterday’s patriots are today’s refugees.

Here’s the truth the confetti can’t cover: a nation is a story about ownership masquerading as a story about family. Believe it, and you might die for a line on somebody else’s paper. Question it, and the paper burns.

Re-imagining July 1 for Canadians: From Reflex to Intention

Micro-shifts you can make today

• Greet the sun, not the cannon. Look for your city or town’s nearest Sunrise Ceremony; most cities now post similar open invitations on municipal or Indigenous calendars.

• Swap bangs for light. Drone shows cut smoke, startle fewer pets, and centre story over shock. Langley, BC and LaSalle, ON both replaced fireworks with themed drone displays this year—proof your council can, too.

• Playlists that pay rent. Run only Indigenous artists on your July 1 soundtrack (start with Aysanabee, Silla & Rise, William Prince). Every stream bumps royalties and algorithmic reach. If you have favourites, drop their names in the comments below.
  

Meso-moves for the whole month

• Redirect the merch budget. Canadians spend ~$90 each on fireworks and flag swag; funnel that cash to a land-back or language-revival fund instead. The David Suzuki Foundation’s Land Back hub lists vetted campaigns; GoFundMe’s Land Back page aggregates smaller, community-run projects.

• Make treaty names visible. If your workplace hoists a maple leaf on July 1, add the local treaty flag beside it—Dish With One Spoon in the Great Lakes, Numbered Treaties on the Prairies, Peace & Friendship in the East. QR-code a one-paragraph explainer.

• Volunteer where the story is told. Museums, friendship centres, and pow-wow committees need hands more than hashtags. One afternoon on admissions or garbage detail does more than ten Instagram posts.
  

Macro-pushes for 2026 and beyond

• Drone-show the capital. Pitch your municipality to follow Langley’s lead: fewer carbon tons, less wildfire risk, better storytelling canvas. Gather signatures; cite the BC and Ontario precedents above.

• Legislate a Treaty Day. Call MPs to back a statutory “Treaty Recognition Day” adjacent to—or replacing—Canada Day. No law bars a federal holiday swap; Dominion Day became Canada Day with thirteen MPs in the room. (See the section above.)

• Tie procurement to land-back. Demand that every Canada-Day contract—from stage scaffolds to souvenir tees—include a 5 % tithe to local Indigenous land trusts. Cities already add eco-levies; social-levies are next.

If July 1 is your Country-Day, start here.
If yours comes later in the calendar, we’ll meet you there.

Endnotes

TBNewsWatch. “What to expect for Canada Day in Thunder Bay,” Jun 30 2025 (details of Elder Anthony DePerry’s 6 a.m. Sunrise Ceremony at Taiji Park). tbnewswatch.com

VOCM. “Canada Day Celebrations Kick Off at Sunrise on Signal Hill,” Jun 30 2025 (announcement of 6 a.m. sunrise ceremony and flag-raising in St. John’s). vocm.com

Government of Canada — “History of Canada Day.” Cultural Heritage, last modified Dec 2 2022. (canada.ca)

Government of Canada — “Dominion Day: Origin and Special Observance.” Cultural Heritage archival page. (canada.ca)

Huble Homestead Historic Site — “Parades of Patriotism.” (Ringing bells & bonfires, 1 July 1867). (hublehomestead.ca)

Canadian Bar Association (BarTalk) — Tony Wilson, KC, “Confederation Day.” Aug 1 2015 (Bill C-201 & 13-MP vote). (bartalk.org)

The Guardian — Leyland Cecco, “Calls to cancel Canada Day after graves found.” Jun 30 2021. (theguardian.com)

Frontier Myanmar — “Myanmar 101: Celebration time.” Feb 12 2018 (Union Day origin). (frontiermyanmar.net)

Graphic Online (Ghana) — “Founders’ Day: Significance, controversy.” Aug 4 2022. (graphic.com.gh)

Daily Sabah (Türkiye) — “From East to West, Türkiye comes together for Republic Day celebrations.” Oct 29 2024. (dailysabah.com)

Statistics Canada. “Indigenous languages across Canada.” 29 Mar 2023. www12.statcan.gc.ca

Toronto Metropolitan University Pressbooks. Indigenous Entrepreneurship – “Pre-contact Trade Goods.” (Great Lakes copper distribution). pressbooks.library.torontomu.ca

Jumblies Theatre & Arts – Talking Treaties. “The Dish With One Spoon” treaty guide. talkingtreaties.ca

Canadian Museum for Human Rights. “The Two Row Wampum.” 14 Nov 2018. humanrights.ca

John G. Spragge. “The Medicine Line: Canada and the United States.” The Spectacle, 1999. spectacle.org

The Canadian Encyclopedia – “A Dish With One Spoon,” updated Dec 13 2023. thecanadianencyclopedia.ca

Whose.Land – Treaty profile: “Dish With One Spoon,” 2024 update. Whose.land

Briarpatch Magazine – “A Short Introduction to the Two Row Wampum,” Mar 2014. briarpatchmagazine.com

Art Canada Institute – “Two Row Wampum Belt, 1613,” in War Art in Canada, 2022. aci-iac.ca

Oneida Indian Nation. “The Haudenosaunee Creation Story.” (Sky Woman, Muskrat, Turtle) oneidaindiannation.com

Deadly Story. “Turtle Island: Creation stories behind the name.” (Definition & continental scope) deadlystory.com

Urban Native Collective. “Turtle Island” resource page. (Living-land worldview) urbannativecollective.org

Canadian Heritage – National Noon Ceremony programme, Canada Day 2025 (canada.ca)

Global News live report from LeBreton Flats (Carney speech) (globalnews.ca)

DRS Payments – “Canada Day: A Golden Day for Retailers” (28 Jun 2025) (drspayments.ca)

Reuters – “Canadian flag sales surge after Trump threats” (14 Feb 2025) (reuters.com)

CityNews – “Ottawa won’t release its budget for Canada Day festivities” (25 Jun 2025) (toronto.citynews.ca)

AtkinsRéalis study via The Canadian Press – limited air-quality impact claim (29 Mar 2024) (ottawa.citynews.ca)

Earth.org – “Environmental Impact of Fireworks” (16 Dec 2022) (earth.org)

Global News – Fireworks raise PM2.5 five-to-six-fold (1 Jul 2022) (globalnews.ca)

Geographical – Wildfire bans cancel Ontario fireworks (30 Jun 2023) (geographical.co.uk)

Reuters – “Cities scrap Canada Day celebrations amid unmarked graves” (1 Jul 2021) (reuters.com)

Drone-show precedents: Langley Advance Times, “Drone show returns for Canada Day in Langley,” 24 Jun 2025; Yahoo News, “Drones will light up the night sky in LaSalle,” 30 Jun 2025. (langleyadvancetimes.com, ca.news.yahoo.com)

Average $90 spend & donate-instead exhortation: The Indigenous Foundation, “Why you shouldn’t be celebrating Canada Day— and what to do instead,” 29 Jun 2022. (theindigenousfoundation.org)

Land-back resources: David Suzuki Foundation, “What is Land Back?”; GoFundMe, “Land Back: Help Reclaim Indigenous Land.” (davidsuzuki.org, gofundme.com)