"As we’re seeing more and more every day, this entire country is a real-life Indian burial ground—one that criminals parading as teachers, religious leaders and politicians took great care to cover up." - Alicia Elliot
Years ago, I ceased “proudly calling myself Canadian.” I had persistently been disabused of imagining our country to be “righteous,” built, so the false narrative goes, upon “Christian” values–thought squandered in modernity–to which the “godly” of the land must call Canada back to save “our home and native land.” So as said the false narrative goes.
Our motto, finalized in 1921 along with a Coat of Arms, came about thus:
A Mari usque ad Mare comes from the Bible’s Psalm 72:8, which reads in Latin: Et dominabitur a mari usque ad mare, et a flumine usque ad terminos terrae. The King James version puts it into English: “He shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.”
…
On 29 September 1921, after viewing the final design, Joseph Pope, federal under-secretary of state at the time, wrote in his diary: “Our Arms are very handsome … everything that can be desired. The motto A Mari usque ad Mare, which is an original suggestion of my own, I regard as very appropriate.”
And “Dominion?”
. . . the term dominion was chosen to represent Canada as a whole when the British North America Act was drafted in 1867 [the year of the birth of Canada as a nation, known as Confederation].
In 1992, I bought a T-shirt produced by my then colleague Menno Wiebe of Mennonite Central Committee Canada, that reads:
In 1492 the Americans discovered Christopher Colombus on their shores. What do you suppose they thought about that?
A few notes about the above history, and some theological context:
The word “dominion” is from fraught translations in Genesis 1:26 & 28 with reference to nature; and in Psalm 72:8 with reference generally to people. In short, though tragically taken this way repeatedly over the centuries1, it should never have been taken as “domination.”
Comments