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Editor's Note: The following is an expanded online version of the debate published Saturday in the Focus Section of The Globe.

We stand on guard for … what?

This Tuesday, July 1, Canadians celebrate. But in a new century of changes at home and abroad, what still binds us? It must be more than lazy clichés about beer, lakes and hockey.

John Allemang talks it out with fellow Globe writer Michael Valpy, CBC host Evan Solomon and Jennifer Welsh, a Canadian scholar at Oxford University

John Allemang: I have to admit from my perspective, that Canada Day feels just a little corny and synthetic, which is why I wanted to chat with you three. Do you feel the desired warm, inner glow when July 1 comes around? Do you know how you're supposed to celebrate it? Or are our uncertainties about Canada Day (right down to its vague name) indicative of its essential summer-holiday meaninglessness?

Evan Solomon: For me, Canada Day starts with memories: fireworks with the family, my mother teetering between the pleasures of bursting lights and the terror of the kids getting killed; a lake just starting to be bug-free and turning to warmth; the beginning of summer, the permission to be lazy, so unCanadian. I was born in 1968, a year after Expo, when Canada suddenly came of age, so the Dominion Day of my past had a genuine thrill to it. Being Canadian felt like the coin of life had been flipped and we called the right side. The July 1 of my past retains the sepia colours of nostalgia not just for family memories but for a past when national character meant something.

Should I apologize now for being so earnest so fast?

Jennifer Welsh: Like Evan, I associate Canada Day with the start of summer. And God, how we rejoice at warm weather after that freak snow storm in May. July 1st: Feeling sun-burned after a sports day and barbecue, lying on the lawn in Wascana Park in Regina watching the fireworks. Bug-free? Dream on, Evan. I remember more than just a whiff of Off around the picnic table (surprised we didn't all die young from inhaling it.)

Canada Day, like the country, is endlessly decentralized. There doesn't seem to be a central recipe for how to celebrate it— chalk it up to the nature of the federation. My brother took his family from Bowen Island, B.C., to Atlantic Canada one summer, stopping in Ottawa for Canada Day. The entire family was overwhelmed to realize we actually had an interesting capital and a pretty glitzy Canada Day. Doesn't this sum up Ottawa's problem? It throws a bash and people hardly notice.

The part of Canada Day that brings a lump to my throat is the sight of those immigrants who have recently become citizens, who chose to make our community their home and profess commitment to its values.

As to national character, in my field, international relations, national character is seen as a source of a country's power.

What am I actually doing for Canada Day? I'm in the U.K., where it isn't a holiday. But in the past few years, I've adopted the subversive practice of wearing red and white on Canada Day. This year, perhaps I will dress my baby daughter in that too.

Michael Valpy: Frankly, July 1 doesn't mean much to me, although it's okay to have a national day hanging around. I don't like its godawful name. (What is this official penchant to be bland when we're really not?) I've ceased being proud of my country — over its me-first foreign policy, its desiccated aid, its UN voting pattern, its environmental record, its widening inequality at home. I run up the Queen's Canadian standard (yes, I have one) on the flagpole at the farm as a kind of private conversation with myself and otherwise ignore the day.

Jennifer, like you I enjoy seeing immigrants initiated into citizenship. But I confess to an enormous curiosity about what's going on in the minds of our new citizens, given the phenomenon of transnationalism that buzzes immigration scholars these days — a lot of people having equally deep and complex allegiances both to their old and new cultures.

Jennifer Welsh: Michael's point on the Canadian diaspora is intriguing, and I am indeed part of it here in England! The foreign policy establishment in Canada is starting to think a lot about how immigrants and diaspora communities are affecting the make-up of foreign policy. Some of this investigation is too negative: how Serb-Canadians and Lebanese-Canadians living in Toronto and Montreal are demanding particular stances on issues; or the alleged links between some immigrant communities and home-grown terrorism. This is no doubt part of the story.

But there are also the connections that hyphenated Canadians have to their former countries, and how these might be leveraged in more positive ways. How do Canadians living outside of the country contribute to Canada's advancement of its interests internationally? Does this diaspora have to be threatening to Canadian identity? Would it be so bad to think of Canada as a network of people and values whose hub is north of the 49th parallel? Interestingly, we even have a microcosm of this within Canada — in the relationships that aboriginals foster with the communities on reserves when they choose to move to larger urban centres.

John Allemang: It disturbs me to hear from Jennifer that this shapeless thing we can't quite define called "national character" is actually considered a source of power — at least in the opinion of the power brokers. I associate it much more with an Old World, pre-modern sense of nationhood which no longer applies in a dynamic migratory culture like Canada is forever becoming. And quite honestly, I'm never sure it was all that persuasive in countries like Britain, except as a device to ensure that everybody knew their place and all was right with the world. That, to me, is why it's so much easier to reflect on our national character in the nostalgic terms of childhood (our personal Old World, as it were), or as something other people choose when they decide to become Canadian — we have no idea what it is, but there must be something there because why else would these people disrupt their lives in order to travel halfway around the world to have it?

But aren't these two symbols of Canadianess mutually antagonistic? You don't need to be the Bouchard-Taylor Commission to recognize that the established values of nationhood and cultural tradition are in conflict with constant waves of newcomers and whatever enduring values they bring with them. Hasn't Canada set itself up for an ongoing loss of identity and an eternal crisis of confidence?

Jennifer Welsh: How can our national institutions keep working amidst all this diversity? John Stuart Mill had it right when he said that the greatest value of the nation, and nationalism, was that it made representative government work better. Common media, shared values, a similar historical experience — these all make institutions easier to construct and maintain. So what is the fate of Canada's institutional configuration if we don't have that common history and aren't reading/watching the same stuff? I know I sound like a social engineer, but citizenship has to be worked at.

There is also an international dimension to the revival of national character. Let's call it the debate over "democracy promotion" — the idea of fostering democratic systems elsewhere is motivating a lot of European and Canadian foreign policy. We don't want to admit it, but our conditional foreign assistance is hardly neutral: We are projecting and encouraging very particular kinds of programs and structures in other countries (not to mention pushing gender equality pretty hard).

In many places, we are absolutely not perceived as neutral. Our stance with respect to Hamas has definitely marked a trend toward taking sides. And let's not even talk about Afghanistan, where we are part of a very particular alliance pursuing a strategy that is anything but middle of the road.

What worries me is that we've become very sheepish about discussing and promoting values, as if it's American and pushy. But it can be done on our terms. What lies behind this is a kind of national character.

Michael Valpy: By the way, John, the notion of national character being considered a source of power, is called public diplomacy, and the rationale for it is that foreign publics will understand your foreign policy aspirations once they understand your values.

John Allemang: I have no idea how national institutions are supposed to work when our shared values are so fragile. How do you speak for Canada? But wait a second, I do know — we develop a fake national character that requires much less thinking and treats the Hockey Night in Canada theme song or some product change at Tim Horton's as fundamental to our national values.

Michael Valpy: John, there's reason to think that Canadians' common values are anything but fragile. Pollster Michael Adams has found that there's nowhere near the divergence of values in Canada that there is across the border: The values of Albertans are much closer to the values of Quebeckers than the values of New Englanders are to those of Texans. Poll after poll shows we have very distinct values from the Americans and even from the Europeans. When The Globe and Mail a few years did its look at Canada's newest generation of adults, what came through very strongly is that young Canadians in particular had a clear sense of their national values. No uncertainty. No fragility.

John Allemang: But does the rest of the world understand this vague cohesiveness of ours? I'm always intrigued when some international survey ranks Canada near the top for liveability and yet the country remains an international byword for boring. Jennifer, you must get undertones (or even overtones) of that in England. Is a lack of a specific national character or self-assertiveness, the sort of thing that makes us appear internationally dull, actually a good thing? Should we be glorying, not in our fireworks displays or those concerts in Ottawa nobody outside Ottawa knows about, but in our sheer boring boringness. (Though presumably, as a marketing device to attract tourists, we'd want to refine those terms).

Jennifer Welsh: Yes, there is a perception of boring when others think of Canada. I find this amusing in Europe, where people get so hot and bothered about the myopia of the Bush Administration and congratulate Canada for staying out of Iraq — yet they'd much rather holiday in the U.S. than in Canada. I could extend this discussion to the international realm, where much of Canada's well-intentioned middle-power diplomacy can sometimes make people yawn. The middle-power approach to foreign policy is all about process: getting people together, using soft power, forging consensus. But sometimes others just want to know what you stand for.

But do we want to be on the side of the provocative, or is it better — and safer — to be boring and therefore go largely unnoticed? Sometimes I am glad others pay less attention to Canada, because it allows us to rest on our laurels. For example, many in the European public just assume Canada is 'green' — little do they know.

By the way, John, national character doesn't have to be fixed or defined. I have a much less ethnic sense of what this is — and therefore it's more compatible with immigration and diverse cultures. And certainly the rising new powers, such as China and India, and older ones, like Russia, are based on a strong and serious political nationalism. For Canada, this may mean that national character is going to become more relevant.

Michael Valpy: Our foreign policy has been labelled preachy since we first had a foreign policy. But since the Sixties and Seventies, we've cut our foreign aid, shrunk our military and shrivelled our contributions to UN peacekeeping — the cardinal Canadian mythology. So why should anyone listen to us when all we contribute are values? Well, in fact, that's not a totally empty equation because our demonstrated openness at home to the Other (we welcome the world into our society better than any other country) still gives us currency at the United Nations. But on the second point, we've eviscerated our foreign service, closed embassies and haven't fielded a prime minister capable of achieving world stature in diplomacy since Brian Mulroney went to Africa in solidarity with the front-line states against apartheid South Africa.

Jennifer Welsh: The problem with Canadian foreign policy is not so much that it can be values-driven but that we often present those values vis-a-vis the U.S. as a form of superiority. There is also a great deal of hypocrisy in our foreign policy which we don't want to acknowledge — we profess to be free traders while shutting out developing-country products and protecting certain segments in Canada for electoral reasons. And it's worth asking if our values are just declaratory or are there concrete policy ideas to put on the table? Stephen Harper seems to accept that we will be taken seriously (particularly by the U.S.) if we have boots on the ground in Afghanistan.

Evan Solomon The great social experiment of the coming century, when we're all worrying about clashes of civilizations and the chaos of globalization, might just be: Can you have a successful nation without nationalism? Perhaps that is Canada's unique proposition and this holiday's own ambiguity may reflect that quest.

After all, our idea of " national character" is evolving, just like this holiday. Our friends to the South celebrate Independence Day, a clean break. Confederation wasn't so much a break as a bridge. In 1867, we began a long process of shedding ties to the Motherland, slowly, deferentially, in that Canadian shuffle we call progress. Even the old title, Dominion Day, celebrates being someone else's Domain. Who throws a party because their masters have simply eased up a bit on the rules?

Michael Valpy: But, Evan, "Dominion" didn't refer to someone else's domain, as in that of our colonial rulers. Leonard Tilley, the New Brunswick Father of Confederation, got it from the 72nd Psalm: "He shall have dominion from sea to sea" — "he" being God and "from sea to sea" being our national heraldic motto. Too bad we got rid of it. Dominion Day is a hell of a lot more stirring, more grand (given our mythology of the land) and carries more mystique than Canada Day.

Evan Solomon: Our national character struggles between country and colony. In Quebec, July 1 is an exercise in federal politics and has none of the genuine passion of Saint-Jean Baptiste Day on June 24th. In Newfoundland and Labrador, the memory of the Battle of the Somme, where so many men from the Newfoundland Regiment were killed, has turned Canada Day into a day of genuine sorrow where the ancient building blocks of nationalism, blood and sacrifice, trump the more modern versions of beaches and sunshine.

We can't help but compare our Canada Day to the U.S. Independence Day. But the U.S. has managed to turn their "holidays" into Holy Days (while religious occasions, like Christmas, are now almost secular). Their nationalism has become their book of prayer, one that unites the disparate population. Our holidays are still just that, holidays. We are a younger country, built neither on the blood and sacrifice like the U.S., nor what you see in Newfoundland and Labrador. So perhaps this transition, if it happens, will take more history. The kind of history that is unfolding every day in places like, dare I say, Afghanistan.

Michael Valpy Evan, I suspect Quebeckers — and Albertans and Nunuvutians — invest more meaning in July 1 than you might think. I was incredibly moved the other night, listening to CBC radio show Ideas, when historian Jocelyn Letourneau gathered a bunch of young Quebeckers around his dining room table to talk about their ideas of Canada and Quebec. They're proud to be part of both, and irritated by their elders' fixation on Conquest politics.

John Allemang: I'm glad Evan dared to mention Afghanistan.

This, to me, is one of the best current examples where a supposedly young and naive country on a quest for its national identity has gone completely off the deep end. Fifty years ago, Lester Pearson (who'd served in WWI and presumably knew the lessons of Vimy better than our jingoistic contemporaries) could win the Nobel Peace Prize for doing what Canada's so well-placed to do: playing the honest broker, negotiating solutions between people who shoot before they think. For decades, we've gloried in our image as peacekeepers to the world. Now we've turned into this gonzo nation of warriors, clearing Afghanistan of "scumbags" in Rick Hillier's unevolved language, and mocking those who suggested diplomacy, talking to people, was once again the best solution. Afghanistan is a mess, after all these years, but, hey, at least we have national pride — and a Highway of Heroes!

What's happened to us? In hockey terms (which seem appropriate since the iconic Don Cherry has emerged as one of the military's biggest boosters), we've gone directly from perennial Lady Byng winners to shameless goons.

Evan Solomon: I have to disagree with John's view of both the mission in Afghanistan and his characterization that we have gone off the deep end. A UN sanctioned, NATO-backed mission where there is a legitimate bad guy — the Taliban — that oppresses and abuses innocents makes a compelling argument for this mission. Invoking the Pearson legacy and the role of peacekeepers is one thing, using it to legitimize what by default sounds like isolationist policy is another thing.

Jennifer Welsh: Jack Granatstein has called this nostalgia for the tidy Pearsonian role in the world the "peacekeeping myth." He is right that the identity of peacekeeper was consciously constructed by foreign policy makers in the 1960s and 1970s, and that it suited Canada's interests (and pocket book). He is also right that it has become deeply embedded in the Canadian psyche. This is why there was and still is so much confusion about the Afghan mission.

We have not always been neutral — nor should we always be neutral. What we have tried to be is impartial, which is a different thing. Sometimes this can work in conflicts, which is why traditional peacekeeping can in some cases be effective. But impartiality isn't suited to all kinds of conflict.

So, what I am trying to say, in short, is that John's depiction of what our country is and should be globally seems dangerously recent to me. It's not the whole story.

Indeed, when I think of ceremonies other than Canada Day, the biggest one in our family is Remembrance Day. That is the one that actually creates the biggest lump in the throat, and where symbols are incredibly powerful. My childhood — and even my adulthood — was filled with memories of going with my father (who lost two of his brothers in the war) to the cenotaph on cold November Days, with the sound of trumpets playing.

Now the World War II generation is aging, and so perhaps the experience is less prominent in the Canadian identity. And this image of Canada resonates much less with immigrants to this country. But it cannot be dismissed.

To me, Afghanistan is all about a 21st-century conception of the national interest: becoming involved in far-flung places that could impact on us and thus contributing to international stability and wider prosperity. In general terms, I think Canada's participation in the Afghan mission is laudable. Rather than talking about how we can play a role in the world, we are actually doing it — with all the mistakes that that entails.

But we also need to understand the opportunity cost. Afghanistan is both the biggest military mission for Canada since Korea and the biggest development-assistance package in Canadian history. But are we really saying that Afghanistan is the most deserving country for our foreign assistance? Militarily, what I find worrying is the degree to which the Afghan mission is defining what shape the Canadian military should have for the 21st century.

We need to be sure we are diversified enough to be able to play a role in other kinds of situations.

Evan Solomon: One thing I must say to clarify something for John: the purpose of the blood and sacrifice in a place like Afghanistan is not nation-building. But it does, undeniably, have a by-product — to forge a sense of nation, not as the top-down exercise it used to be but from the bottom up.

John Allemang: What bothers me about the Afghanistan mission, quite apart from its intended purpose or strategy, is how it has been turned into an infomercial for a gung-ho military mentality, with Rick Hillier as John Wayne in The Green Berets. And we, the polite and docile Canadian public, have played along — the few critics of the military in Canada, unlike the more robust protest culture in the United States, have to proceed with extreme caution, lest we give offence.

Michael Valpy: I can't find a moral principle behind our military presence in Afghanistan — apart from the argument that al-Qaeda was the puppet-master of Afghanistan when it carried out 9/11, and 9/11 was an attack on a NATO member and our NATO treaty obligations require us to respond to an attack against one as an attack against all. In reality, we're in the middle of a civil war, and only a very few NATO members are doing the heavy lifting. I'd rather see us in Darfur where there's genocide.

Like John, I find fascinating the cultural impact at home of the Afghanistan mission — the autopsy route from CFB Trenton to Toronto being named the Highway of Heroes, the proliferation of support-our-troops ribbons that have come to be a proxy for a whole political mindset about how Canada should work; the rededication of a national war cemetery in Ottawa, and the bizarre circle of military heroes' busts — they look like a ring of hobbits — around the national war memorial

The astonishing thing about the "peacekeeping myth" is just how deep its hold is on Canadians — years after we've seriously done any traditional peacekeeping. Which means the myth is still being passed from generation to generation, embracing successive waves of immigrants and young people. Just amazing. So if this is what Canadians want their military to be doing, why is it doing something else?

Jennifer Welsh: With Afghanistan: the moral imperative has come in as an add-on. The original imperative for Afghanistan was an expanded notion of the national interest — what's known as forward security. I don't disagree that it is having a big impact on the country as a whole, but this isn't a surprise given the stakes and the fact that we haven't had this kind of a military engagement for a very long time. Wars redefine nations — just think back to Vietnam.

The alternative of being in Darfur is a false one. This is constantly thrown out as a critique of Afghanistan, but we have to fight in the conflicts that actually present themselves — not in ideal ones.

Evan Solomon: Is the genocide in Darfur worse than the systematic torture and violence of the Taliban? I just want to know if there's a systematic way to measure the evil involved so that when it reaches a certain level you decide it is legitimate to intervene. I personally cannot tell the people of Afghanistan that their suffering is not yet worthy of intervention. Helping people, stabilizing states, securing the world is hard, messy, dangerous work. Is this kind of world part of the Canadian identity? I think it is.

John Allemang: Evan, I think you're subscribing to a very Canadian failure of logic: Just because our troops in Afghanistan are engaged in hard, messy and dangerous work doesn't mean that we are stabilizing a state and securing the world. I wish we were, but there's a lot of daily evidence pointing the other way. One problem with finding our self-meaning through war is that we focus on the virtues of our hard-working soldiers, and miss the messiness of the bigger picture, as if it were not also about us.

No wonder we fall back on the more conventional "support our troops" jingoism — it makes us feel a lot better about ourselves than accepting the possibility that we're supporting the lesser of many evils in a civil war that has no good end. And that reminds me yet again why I'm uncomfortable being a stereotypical Canadian on Canada Day — we do so hate to face the facts and confront the hard truths. We yearn for simplicity, if it makes us seem upright and honourable and good. You can get into a lot of global trouble that way.

Evan Solomon: As Churchill said in the midst of a much messier attempt to stabilize a continent, "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many long months of toil and struggle." And while we are debating the war, let us not forget Roméo Dallaire — what was the messiness of the big picture there? There is an old saying, "To save one life is to save the world." Isn't that part of being Canadian?

Michael Valpy: In a conversation John Ralston Saul and I once had about Canadian mythology, he pointed out that the purpose of mythology is to simplify complex issues. But the central mythology of Canada, he said, is that everything in the country is complex. I think that we've been explaining Afghanistan in simple terms — just that there's more than one explanation.

John Allemang: I don't know that what's simple for us four would come across as all that straightforward is the places where the war is being sold to Canadians, like Coach's Corner. Speaking of which, have you seen the recent recruitment ads for the Canadian military? Real rock 'em, sock 'em stuff, more like an action-hero film than a paean to peacekeeping. But also rather dark and brutal-looking, to catch the game-playing generation that likes its war in the raw, with none of that patriotic flag-waving stuff from the olden days.

Jennifer Welsh: At one point, I thought military recruitment in Canada was being enhanced by all of our natural disasters — Manitoba floods, the ice storm, etc. The image of the military was a soft and fuzzy one — carrying civilians out of flood zones. Now the appeal is obviously to war games. But to what extent do you think national character is shaped by big disasters? We know that the hurricane in New Orleans, and the U.S. government's response, said a lot of ugly things about America.

John Allemang: You know, I think there may be some images in the recruitment ads of rescuing people in the middle of natural disasters — but it still looks like one of those post-Apocalyptic video-games.

I believe we had our New Orleans moment and no one noticed — some of the remote and desperate native settlements are almost the exact equivalent of Hurricane Katrina. Only the disaster is permanent, not temporary, and man-made, not an act of God. If you want to mess with the fuzzy feelings of Canada Day, just ponder what the future will be for a child growing up in these places. But fortunately they're few in number and far away, so they don't intrude on our thoughts or our TV screens very often, and the Prime Minister has no compulsion to go there and look helpless. Plus, the native people don't come with a slavery narrative, so our guilty consciences aren't quite so weighed-down.

Jennifer Welsh" The state of our reserves and the inner districts of prairie cities are facts that should make Canadians temper their pride on Canada Day. I recently went, for the first time, up to Nunavut. What I found there was a mix of optimism and concern. A variety of social problems, land-claims settlements that are still not being properly implemented, young men and women abusing alcohol. But I also saw Nunavut's legislature — itself a remarkable testament to Canada's ability to accommodate different values and aspirations. And in talking with younger aboriginal leaders, I didn't find blanket condemnation. One of them said: "Only in Canada could we have achieved this new territory, and only in Canada could we be bargaining in the non-violent way we are over how to give a better life to our people."

What aboriginal Canadians demonstrate, to me, is a wonderful Canadian trait: adaptability. My great grandfather, Norbert Welsh, was a buffalo hunter in what is now Saskatchewan and Manitoba. When the buffalo disappeared, he became a farmer; when he got fed up with the prairie winters, he started freighting flour between Western communities. Later he became a rancher and shop owner. Too interested in making money to join Riel's rebellion — but a contemporary of his. Never formally educated, but spoke seven languages. He personified adaptability.

John Allemang: As I flail about trying to pin down the elusive Canadian identity — or avoiding it, when it turns up a little too brashly on places like Coach's Corner — I've started to think that maybe outsiders can see us more clearly than we see ourselves. I read interviews in British or American papers of performers like Feist or Ellen Page and the writer will comment on how different these women are from the usual divas. They come across as deeply introspective but funny, clever and yet nice, simple in manner but complex in thought, preferring to say the unexpected because it's true than mouth platitudes that are so clearly false.

Invariably, the interviewer will call them quirky, when we Canadaians know they are much like the rest of us — refreshingly normal, if only by our standards. There's always a moment when the interviewer is surprised that these women don't behave like stars, usually after some polite remark on the part of our fellow citizen. For once, I feel proud and touched — they're in a position when they could be as awful as they want, and yet they prefer to remain purely Canadian.

Jennifer Welsh: Do you think, by the way, that a particular sense of humour can be attributed to Canada? I sometimes read that we have a more sophisticated sense of humour than Americans. But the Brits seem way out in front — their intelligent banter and comic phrasing is just so well-developed.

Michael Valpy: In answer to Jennifer's question, I think we're wickedly funny about the Americans; I've often thought our humour about ourselves misses the mark.

John Allemang: Yes, we've exported a few comedians to the States, but we are an extremely unfunny as a nation. All good comedy is criticism, and we are reluctant to hurt other people, at least to their faces. The British have a tradition of class hatred and xenophobia that makes it far easier to go on the attack with a clear conscience. But we know comedy is bad for the social harmony we crave.

Evan Solomon: May I point out that we are talking about Canada Day and have not mentioned music, winter, donuts, Halifax donairs, bagels, hunting moose, land, language, ingenuity, adventure, writing, painting or leadership?

John Allemang: Okay, a quick run. Music: Glenn Gould, more than almost anyone else, makes me proud to be a Canadian. I doubt that his eccentricity would be welcome any more. We don't have time for high-minded oddballs, though in his day he was a CBC regular and his music carried Canada's name to the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. Winter: I once told someone I felt more comfortable on skates than I do in shoes, which is strangely Canadian. Donuts can't compare with butter tarts — too heavy and synthetic, apart from the authentically maple ones you get in Quebec and the Polish ones stuffed with prune jam.

Montreal bagels, while strange in that inescapably boiled-dough way, are still the best. Flavours (not counting poppy-seed or sesame) are an abomination unto God. Real men don't need to hunt, moose or anything else. I think every Canadian should have to take a compulsory language course every decade — French, of course, for us unschooled anglophones, but also Greek, Arabic, a native language, whatever. It keeps you humble, makes you see Canada through different eyes, and may even help you order souvlaki, understand the Middle East and hunt moose.

Michael Valpy: Gordon Lightfoot's Canadian Railroad Trilogy still makes me teary — "the green, dark forest was too silent to be real." The great Stan Rogers was English Canada's Shakespeare. I am Canadian to my unalloyed mushy core in my awe of the majesty of our land: My country is French and English and Cree and Iroquoian and Inuktitut and many others; language is the crucible and genesis of the multiculturalism that is our boast to the world.

The CBC, progressively throttled by every government since Pierre Trudeau's, is still our voice. Innovation: the Canadarm, the BlackBerry, the Ballard battery. Why have we never been able to invent the Canadian car? Red Toryism: the notion that the state is the terrain of the commons where Canadians come together to defend each other's class interests and thus benefit the whole — survival. Tim Horton's: I don't understand the cultural phenomenon of Tim Horton's. I intellectually get the significance of hockey but not why it delays Peter Mansbridge. I get Peter Mansbridge. And Lloyd Robertson.

When I lived in Zimbabwe 25 years ago, the Canadian community was always nonplussed by diplomatic invitations specifying "national dress."

Evan Solomon: Our music is Canada Day: kd lang, Gordon Lightfoot, Stan Rogers, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and Ian Tyson's Four Strong Winds. The teary old ballad, Un Canadien Errant, written after the Lower Canada Rebellion of 1837, could be the national anthem.

But let's not let nostalgia swamp us. Listen to new bands like Wintersleep, singers like Jeremy Fisher and Ron Sexsmith, The Apostles of Hustle and Sloans latest record and you realize that new treasures like Feist are just part of a fast bubbling pool of talent redfining us. Is MuchMusic as important to us as the CBC? Almost.

Our writers keep defining us out of the two solitudes and into multiples that mix into one thing called Canada. Hell, we forgot about beer. Our other holiday, May 24, resonates because it is also easy code for what to bring to the party — a two-four. The land: I spent two weeks walking the Arctic on King William Island last summer, in search of relics from the lost Franklin voyage. This is a land that turns us into adventurers.

John Allemang: Evan and Michael, it's not for me to say — what a Canadian way to begin — but I can't get over how sentimental and nostalgic you guys sound when you reach for your Canadian pleasures. Hockey, beer and bittersweet music, the great empty solitudes of the North, teariness and survival. Stan Rogers still gets to me, 25 years after his death, but if I'm going to be honest, he was a throwback even then. Escapism at its best is a highly underrated pleasure, but I'm deeply bothered by the fact that when we try to grasp our essential Canadianness, we shut out our more troubling day-to-day realities.

Omar Khadr, a Canadian kid who probably never played hockey, danced to Sloan or knocked back the better part of a two-four, is locked up in Guantanamo on pretty dubious charges after being shot and tortured. He's rotting in prison, wasting his life, with the consent of our government, which means us. And if it weren't for his born-again U.S. military lawyer making waves, we'd probably have forgotten about him. Why do we retreat into our comfortable Canadianness so readily? I think it's the flip side of our vaunted national inferiority complex, a search for contentment and self-affirmation. But when will we learn how to make noise, to shout out, to be dissatisfied with who we are.

Jennifer Welsh: The music I listen to is full of Canadian women: Sarah McLauchlan, kd lang, Jann Arden, Sarah Craig, Holly Cole. So we've moved beyond the great male folksingers, wonderful as they are.

A random tribute to our egalitarianism: At the Cape Dorset airport in Nunavut, and a little girl from the community sees a picture of Michaelle Jean in my colleague's magazine. "Hey," she said, "I know her! And she is really cool."

I don't mind the focus on hockey and beer, but we need to realize that both soccer and cricket have become popular Canadian sports, so there's a sense of retreating into the familiar and comfortable when we talk about Hockey Night in Canada along with Gordon Lightfoot. Sorry to say it, but this doesn't feel like the dynamic Canada I sense in our urban centres. I agree with John: I think we need to be making a bit more noise, taking a few more chances, not accepting the status quo in all cases. But would this be un-Canadian?

Evan Solomon: When will we learn to make noise, you ask? I think the anti-globalization protests in Quebec City were pretty loud. I think the referendum in Quebec where we darn near split as a country were pretty noisy. I think the debate about the war in Iraq was noisy. I think the protests outside the closing of the GM plants were noisy. I think the voters letting the leaders know that no party is worthy of a majority government is noisy. I think First Nations road blockades are noisy. What kind of noise do you want?

We have lively debate without bloodshed. That is worth celebrating.