One Thing Americans Should Do on the Fourth of July

I’m not on Twitter (are you really going to make me call it X?) anymore because I have shit to do, but periodically I like to check my mentions. The latest tweet I received came from a fellow Canadian (according to their user bio) irked by a recent piece I wrote about Hillary Clinton: “For a CND looking in you have some tough opinions and protected tweets … How about participating in a real democracy in the lower 50?”

Good point! As a Canadian with permanent residence in New York, I often find myself in the role of outsider, trying to make sense of whatever you lot are doing down here. College? As expensive as possible. Deductible? A word—and concept—that never should have come into common parlance. Taxes? Higher than in Ontario, and yet with even fewer services provided. Treading on me? Don’t.

This year will be my fifth Fourth of July on record. I never participate in the festivities—because the beauty of America is that you have the freedom to shit all over it, even on its birthday—but I have developed one annual tradition of sorts. Every July 4, I ask myself the same question: Why didn’t anyone wish me a happy Canada Day?

Yes, it may surprise you to learn that every year, Canada Day is July 1, always a few days before the Fourth of July. But it always goes unacknowledged by every American I meet. My choice to live in the United States is precisely that: a choice. But it forces me to recognize an unalienable fact, which is that you guys are annoying. America does nearly everything worse, noisier, and, broadly speaking, more. What stings the most—even more than the American crime that is cheese in a can or the way you make a meal out of the word pasta—is that you forget that we exist at all. This Fourth of July, after another Canada Day has floated on by with nary a hint of recognition, I demand penance. I demand self-flagellation. Be Canadian for once and just feel bad!

America’s Independence Day is perpetually under harsh criticism; after all, it celebrates a nation that remains divided, in debt, with racial inequity a load-bearing pillar of national life. But did you know that on July 1, Canadians also have fireworks, police drones, cookouts, arguments with our conservative family members over how dangerous right-wing politicians actually are, street fairs, little flags to wave around, and a convenient mass amnesia over the fact that our country was full of Indigenous people before we gave them smallpox? We’re just not as flashy about it as Americans are. You think you invented being jingoistic about a holiday predicated on colonialism and the attempted eradication of people who were there first? Please! We’ve been doing that since John Cabot ruined Newfoundland in the 1490s. This shameful history is so bad that, in 2022, my alma mater had to rename itself after all those murdered Indigenous children were found buried under a school the previous year; turns out my university was named after the guy who helped develop the residential school system in Canada.

I’m not asking for much. Just some acknowledgment that the United States doesn’t have a monopoly on being a crumbling society built on the foundations of genocide and oppression. Maybe throw in some ketchup chips at your Fourth of July cookout. Learn how to make a Caesar (delicious) instead of a Bloody Mary (salad juice). A little something to remind me of how much living here is like being back home. It’s just funny we have so much in common, without even really trying at all.

I will give you this, though: You guys make a nice hot dog. Love the hot dog culture down here. You get that dog in me, and I’m Googling the words to “The Star-Spangled Banner” and rooting for those gallantly streaming ramparts. Everyone has their price.