The biggest birthday bash in Canada is but a few short days away, my friends.
Our dear beloved Canada is turning another year older.
What exactly do you buy a country that’s over a century and a half old, anyway? A lifetime supply of poutine? Enough ketchup chips to fill Lake Diefenbaker? Maybe a fifty-foot high wooden maple leaf constructed solely by beavers of Canadian heritage?
Whatever the case, our amazing country will turn 152 years old on Monday, July 1.
Canada Day is one of my favorite days of the year on the calendar. I say that both personally and professionally.
Personally, Canada Day brings back a flood of memories as a kid down at the Elk sportsgrounds in Conquest. Ball games would take place at every diamond, games of Bingo were being called, the concession lines were packed with people wanting slice after slice of homemade pies, and it wasn’t quite a day at the Conquest Elks Park until every kid got a ride on the row of wagons being pulled by Russ Wyatt.
The sense of community was incredible. It felt like nobody else was celebrating Canada Day the way we did in Conquest at that time. Nowhere else existed in my developing mind in those days.
The years went by, I got older, and soon my friends and I all had our licenses, so Canada Day became a day where we all hung out together. My buddy Chris used to say that he didn’t consider it to be summer vacation from school just yet until July 1 had arrived. I could understand that, as those last few days of June are when you’re finishing up final exams, clearing out your locker, and then you go and grab your report card. So, when everything is said and done, you’re almost glad to see June finally end, and then BOOM, it’s time to celebrate your country!
We would cruise around town, check out all the businesses decorated in red and white colors, and enjoy Canada Day together doing all the things that teenagers do (as long as I simply say that, no one gets incriminated, right guys?)
Ultimately, we’d end up at the fireworks show. Later that night, we’d blast off some pyro of our own outside of town courtesy of those multi-packs you can buy at the gas station. What can I say, we liked seeing things blow up in the sky that produce all those pretty colors.
The years continued to roll on, people started going their separate ways, and life just had a way of ending our Canada Day festivities by way of things like work and “adult responsibilities”. But that’s okay, because I wouldn’t trade any of the memories with my friends for the world.
Instead, I came to further love and appreciate Canada Day in a professional aspect. It’s become my favorite day of the year as a small-town journalist whose motto is basically, “Have camera, Will travel”. On that day, I’m armed and ready for anything, eager to snap away and hopefully capture some of the pride that we have for our country here in rural Saskatchewan.
That pride isn’t just captured in Outlook, either. Oh no, Canada Day events have taken me out of the vicinity of the “Town by the River” (that’s gotta be a future marketing slogan, am I right?) and down south to places like the resort village of Elbow, where I enjoyed a heck of a supper at their annual Fish Fry last year, as well as a street dance. Or there was the one year I zipped up Highway 219 to take in the fireworks near the Dakota Dunes Casino. That’s a show that I highly recommend.
Canada Day for me has morphed over the years, starting as a day that helped me celebrate community pride in my small neck of the world as a young kid, then changing into a day where my friends and I celebrated our “own way” and began to look at the world in new ways, and then finally as a day where I watch, through the lens of a camera, how a place such as Outlook celebrates our country. Families come together, neighbors come together, and a community comes together. Petty differences are forgotten, if only for just a day, so that we can kick back and enjoy the freedoms that we have in this amazing land we call home.
There are so many past Canada Day events that conjure up great memories – like the incredible Canada 150 events in Outlook from 2017, or the awesome “throwback” events in Conquest from 2011 that also happened to coincide with the village’s centennial – but the overall feeling is the same.
Canada is a one of a kind place, comprised of one of a kind people.
Happy Birthday, Canada! You don’t look a day over 132!
For this week, that’s been the Ruttle Report.
