Author, journalist and broadcaster, Carol Off, remembers witnessing the first time the Canadian flag was raised. She was 10 years old. She talks about that experience in her latest book, True Patriot Love. Reporting from the Frontlines of Canadian Sovereignty. She also details time spent with Canadian forces in Afghanistan. “You’re in this strange place, and you see that flag, and your heart swells,” she said in a recent interview with The Highlander.
Off, a guest of the Friends of the Haliburton County Public Library on Sunday (Nov. 1), describes her latest offering as a story arc based on her experiences and observation through various eras of Canadian development, “and tried to give people an understanding of where our strengths might come from in resisting some of the negative forces that are coming from the United States.”
Off covered the free trade agreement negotiations in the 1980s, between then U.S. president Ronald Reagan and former Canadian prime minister, Brian Mulroney. She said there was a sentiment among Canadians that, “I’d like us to be more sovereign, an independent country, but at the same time, we might have cheaper vegetables, and maybe a condo in Florida. There wasn’t enough strength in our commitment to the country.”
She added those decisions are now the “very thing that Mark Carney is now saying have saddled us with this connection to the U.S. It gives them this much control. So, everything that happened 40 years ago in the 1980s with that free trade agreement has come back to bite us in the bum.”
However, she said when threatened by U.S. president Donald Trump about becoming the 51st state, “I just saw Canadians get up on their hind legs and roar in a way I’ve never seen before; strenuously defending the country and knowing they do not want to be a vassel state of the U.S. and that didn’t exist before. There’s just been this maturity of the country; I don’t think we even knew how much we had matured as a country until we were threatened.”
She maintains Canada is not an identity, but an idea, “that we can live in a society that is tolerant and open to others, we believe in the rule of law, we have a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, we defend each other’s rights to their religion, their thoughts, and their way of life as long as it doesn’t impinge on that of others. They seem like simple things, but they’re being threatened in other countries, like the U.S. We realize how important we are to the world right now.”
She said there are political extremes in Canada, however, “the vast majority of us live in the middle, and we like to get along and live our lives and be fair and tolerant.”
Asked what her takeaway will be for a Haliburton County audience, Off said, “I’m going to try and give people a bit of inspiration; a bit of a positive thinking, because there’s just so much negative stuff going around and people feel in despair for what the future is.
“I think we’re in a really good place in this country. It’s going to be rough economically, but we’ve gone through some rough economic patches before. The important thing is to stick together and to see this idea of Canada is a good one. We’re not going to give it up.”
The event is being held at the Haliburton Legion. Doors open at 1 p.m. Off’s presentation begins at 2 p.m.
