Challenge: Blood and Soil Canadian Nationalism

There are some Canadian patriotic songs that describe battles during the War of 1812 in which the Canadians fought off attempts by Americans to conquer their country. I believe these verses have fallen out of favor in recent years.

Even though these are songs celebrating the defeat of my country by another, I can respect that kind of patriotism/nationalism.

That got me thinking...

How might we need to rework history so that there's a really hard-core sort of Canadian nationalism?

I imagine, for starters, it would be rather anti-American, since we're the big danger to them.
 
I'd imagine that you'd need to actually get involved in some serious wars, rather than the clusterfuck that was the War of 1812, and the subsequent border disputes with the States. Maybe, I dunno, a Canadian revolutionary war that results in a Canada antagonistic to both Britain and the U.S? Just to survive, they'd need to have hardcore nationalism.
 

Sachyriel

Banned
You know we COULD Balkanize the USA just to make this easier. I know it's after 1900s but I'm thinking a Grander Depression event early in the century that makes the US break out in a civil war of Socialists vs Republicans, forcing Canadians to become more reliant on other nations for trade and with this increased contact with foreign cultures who aren't the USA helps create an atmosphere more 'Canadian' on the Home Front. With the Socialists and Communists being a really big threat (I mean look at the Balkanized USA!) Canada needs to keep people feeling Canadian, and to do this the best way is to do this is to fight Imperial Russia for Alaska (which they stole after America fell) and not let young men think of Socialism.

So Canada drags the rest of the British Empire into a short quick war with Imperial Russia, which finally loses to the Soviets and now Communism is a gigantic blot on the map. The Commonwealth tightens together to fight it, however Canada's been independent for so long they don't want to go back to being just another part of the English Empire, and declare this so. Being the respected modern nation we think we are as opposed to the back-water province of a globe-spanning empire that we actually are, we're soon fighting against the British Empire in order to maintain our sovereignty.

The British call it the Canadian Rebellion in their news, we call it our Great Canadian Struggle in our news. Different terms for the same conflict, but you see how one creates the feeling of Canadian Nationalism while the other makes us sound small.

Anyways, we fight and though we don't win at sea we've got enough land to fight a war of attrition so hard that the British sign a truce with Canada in order to go back to fighting the Communists (who are like, infesting Europe). It was only a few fights anyways, good friends still, kinda...

After all this war Canada needs time to rebuild, isolationism kicks in and soon enough we're not 'Americas Hat' but more like 'The Biggest Nation in the World, beat the USA, beat the Russians, beat the British'.

It will take some time after the period of isolationism for the feeling of being Canadian to set in to the younger generation who have never seen war. But when Canada needs its troops, you can bet they won't be American Puppets or British Subjects. They'll be Canadian.
 
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