Simple ‘Canada 150’ legacies can be most memorable
Legacy of our nation’s 100th birthday is still all around us today.

thestar.com
By Shawn Micallef
Jan. 8, 2017

You can find the spirit of 1967 scattered all around the sidewalks of Toronto. People who pay attention to their local pavement will know that each section of sidewalk has a date stamped into it. It’s a way to unreliably date the last time any major construction happened in a particular spot, but sidewalks laid in 1967 were special: the Canadian centennial logo was stamped into Toronto’s wet cement that year.

Though not as ubiquitous as it once was, the Stuart Ash design of 11 triangles forming a stylized maple leaf remains a familiar sight 50 years later, tiny versions of the suave and modern Expo ’67 style Canada embraced when it turned 100. Today we still live among that legacy, a moment in the country’s history when it decided it was going to will itself into being an adult country.

In Etobicoke, Centennial Park with its ski hill created out of landfill still bears its 1967 heritage proudly, at least in name. The Ontario Science Centre is another legacy; originally called the Centennial Centre of Science and Technology, delays in construction pushed its opening until 1969. The St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts was a centennial project and St. Lawrence market and hall and Todmorden Mills in the Don Valley were all restoration projects tied to 1967 too. Caribana was launched that year as well.

Other centennial recreation centres and libraries can be found across Toronto, the region and country. Canada went big in 1967: institutions were created and buildings were built, and we’ve not seen a national civic-minded boom like that since, a spirit that was most exuberantly expressed with Expo ’67 in Montreal.

Now we’re into the first week of Canada 150, a year-long sesquicentennial celebration, and already I’ve seen more than a few grumps say they’re getting tired of the 150 hype. Certainly there were cynics in 1967, but they’ve been lost to history, replaced by a nostalgic glow that is still remarkably strong, and not just because of the sidewalk markings.

Born in the decade following 1967, it felt like my generation was living in the happy shadow of that year. Certainly that has a lot to do with the glut of baby boomers that came of age then who’ve kept the memory alive. I doubt later generations of Canadians, whose parents don’t have their own 1967 experiences, have such strong hand-me-down memories, but this year’s 150 celebrations still have to compete with Canada’s biggest civic year.

Canada 150 may not have any projects on the scale of Expo or the Science Centre, but maybe the grumps should keep an open mind: it’s an opportunity to have a year-long deep think about what it means to live in Canada today.

One thing to watch for are the projects that will come out of the Canada Council for the Arts “New Chapter” grants, a new program that is funding many dozens of art projects across the country, works that will continue to appear beyond 2017. Artists are good at digging through identity and finding new ways of looking at ourselves.

One of the most inspired and simple 150 initiatives are the free passes offered by Parks Canada. In 1867 only 1 in 10 Canadians lived in cities but today upwards of 8 out of 10 of us live in and around metropolitan areas. We are an urban nation now, a dramatic change in the way we live over 150 years, especially in a country whose identity is wrapped up in a natural landscape we rarely experience. These “discovery passes” could help connect and reconnect new generations of Canadians to the land, especially new Canadians who might not yet have been introduced to this aspect of Canadianess.

It’s too soon to know what the Canada 150 legacies will be, but perhaps the simple ones will be the most memorable.