Whenever I am mindful of my adopted Canadian identity, I am reminded of an anecdote how my nephew’s pre-teen son Ryan who lives in Skokie, Illinois, USA deepened my civic sense as a citizenship in this great nation called Canada. Not too long ago, I needed to reach out to Ryan’s dad for his professional insight concerning an unpreventable surgery on the cards not without dappled dispositions of dithering and resilience, anguish and reassurance. On the other end of the phone Ryan said, : “Hello”. He insisted on finding out the caller and as I took a crack at telling him that I was his dad’s uncle, he interrupted, “You are that proud Canadian uncle of my dad; I remember, you told me that you own the Niagara Falls ”. I snapped, “ I don’t, Canada does”. Still he wasn’t quite swayed like the rest of the folk who live south of the border. I said the jingoistic benediction, “Your fraction of the Niagara just trickles but we own the Falls”.

Having lived near the famous spring, almost too small and hidden to see, Lilly Creek in Lockerby – surely a serene sector of Sudbury in the past almost quarter of a century, longer than anywhere else on this fragile planet, if I am not a Canadian, who am I? Maybe a Lockerbite? Certainly a Southender! During the last municipal election, which was a reasonably short-lived and dreadfully low-cost deflection, unlike a holiday in the Bahamas, from a relentless hankering to complete writing my decisively closing assignment towards a post-menopausal academic accomplishment, someone cautioned me, “the fact that you are a minister could work either way…some wouldn’t support you and the odd ones may vote for you!”. One friend seriously advised me to change my name, in particular my last name into something that sounds more Canadian!. Several years ago, a new city slicker came to Parham Public School in the Frontenac County to teach; following the service at Parham United Church, perceptibly shocked to see a man with a permanent tan in the pulpit leading the worship service, the newcomer mumbled in my ears, “I see your name, ‘John Mathew’, tell me your real name”. My impetuous answer was, “Raj Bhagavan Gandhi”. The gullible worshipper spread the word in the community all week! When I get asked about my name, my impish rejoinder is, ‘When my ancestors saved a few lost British sailors hungry and thirsty in the Indian Ocean, they came in for a cup of tea (chai) and soon they robbed us of our tea plantation! After a long while, in fact 400 years later, Yohanon became John and Mathai became Mathew!”. Mahatma Gandhi had known what is christened as post-modern ‘roid rage’ and he was truthful when he said, “I f I had no sense of humor, I should long ago have committed suicide”.

Canada is one of the younger nations of our world such as the USA, New Zealand, Australia and perhaps South Africa, where nearly all citizens are visitors who never left. Was it a former prime minister who said that we are a nation of contrarians, perhaps contrarian immigrant folks, from our First Nations Peoples or Aborigines (from the Latin ab origine, meaning ‘from the beginning’) to the European colonial stoic settlers, from the post-colonial money-oriented, hedonistic trail-blazers to the epicurean economic immigrants and stateless refugees, from jingoistic flag-wavers to born-again extremist militants. Sir John Marks Templeton once described contrarian investors as patient, disciplined and courageous people who buy when others are unhappily selling, and sell when others are passionately buying. When the nations of the world hyped up about global warming and the Kyoto agreement, our contrarian leaders, who are relatively speaking neither polluters nor powerful on the international stage yet, are attempting to play the self-styled roles of brokers; comically such a role is decisively ambiguous as the worst polluters also are the most powerful. Contrarians are quite aware of the herd instinct and yet they would blaze the trail and head the opposite way.

I offer a theological perspective to capture our Canadianness. In the west, a positive Kataphatic theology describes what and who God is. In the east, a negative Apophatic theology describes who and what God is not. Both ways of thinking have intrinsic hindering and helpful qualities. Most nations have Kataphatic (via positiva) citizens while Canadians are Apophatic (via negativa) For example, the citizens of the most populous nation are Chinese; which is true of the Swiss, the New Zealanders, the Mexicans etc. But Canadians are those who exist by virtue of who we are not. Having lived four years in England and Scotland, my son is not impressed that he still has to remind his British and overseas classmates in the United Kingdom that he is not an American. We are not Americans. Thanks to Diane Marleau, our Member of Parliament for Sudbury; at the annual conference of Pastor-Theologians from the Center of Theological Inquiry, Princeton, NJ held last week at the Fairmont Le Château Montebello, Montebello, Quebec my American colleagues (148 out of 152!) gratefully received their free Maple Leaf lapel pins, which is a life-saver for them in an anti- George Bush (unquestionably not anti-American – thank goodness!) terror-stricken world. It was more than amusing when most of the speakers kept repeating, “here in the United States..” Now I know, unlike us Canadians who are almost pathologically self-doubting our identity even when we are home on our Canadian soil, our American hegemonic friends feel right at home no matter where they are! Not only do they feel at home outside their homeland but they think, the whole world belongs to them!

This “Our home and native land, the True North strong and free” land of contrarians is startlingly analogous to my adopted octogenarian Christian denomination in Canada, namely the United Church of Canada – unlike my native first-century St. Thomas apostolic pedigree, this one is a 20th century ecumenical or interchurch tryouts – a gumbo fusion of English Methodists, Scottish Presbyterians and transformed Puritans known as Congregationalists took place in 1925; a small pack of Brethren folk jumped into the wagon three decades into the ecumenical endeavor. For example, as a nation historically, in spite of our enduring Aboriginal ( from the Latin ab origine, meaning ‘from the beginning’), British, French and a miraculous meld or mishmash of cultural and racial heritages and legacies, we Canadians, or perhaps because of our very substantially noble seminal affiliations, are none of the above but an avant-garde breed of incandescent contararians. We are the nearest neighbors for our American friends but we are not Americans; maybe North Americans! Besides what late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau said, “Canada is a country whose main exports are hockey players and cold fronts. Our main imports are baseball players and acid rain.”, we also sell abroad maple syrup, hockey pucks and gold coins - all made, kind of, in Canada! One of these days, the Canada geese may be on American no-fly list; they might be need Canadian passports to cross the border!

Strangely, they like our beer, bacon, hockey and Maple syrup. Over three decades ago, when I announced to one of my Scottish teachers, the Rev. Prof. G N M Collins reminded me, “ Canada is different from the British Isles but as a British subject, I always felt more at home in Canada than in the States”. Up until now, I have been proudly successful, of course aided by my newly acquired Canadian contararian impulse, to combat my temptation to seek a sunny shelter in “the the land of the free and the home of the brave” as I begin to “ hail at the twilight's last gleaming” where I have more relatives and old classmates than anywhere else today! Not too long ago, when I lived in outskirts of the Irish town Boston, Massachusetts for a sabbatical, unimpeachably I felt more at home there than anywhere in Canada. The American forthrightness is exceptional; they are not afraid to tell you how much they love and/or hate you. We Canadians do not behave impetuously like our American cousins; we prefer to wolf down a few beers, or ingest mouthful of aspirins before we muster plentiful nerve to own up our characteristic numbness which help us to declare our hate or love. A meek but driven servant of the faithful as I ought to be, once upon a time when I was politically motivated, one of my defeatist colleagues nervously stated in the washroom, “ O! you look elegant”, I honestly could not reciprocate the compliment in kind to him. But I have obsequiously observed the fact my American colleagues in the past three years as Pastor-Theologians at the Center of Theological Inquiry, Princeton, New Jersey have been out-and-out easy, although obsessed in their high flier attitudes which makes the competition more candid and sincere.

Couple of weeks ago, one of students dropped by to discuss her summer plans which include a visit to the Buckingham Palace to see Her Majesty, the Queen as well as her Spring-Summer assignments. Hurriedly she voiced, “O you don’t like the royal family!” My wife Joyan, who grew up in Singapore where her dad faithfully for decades served the Royal Air Force, and I were utterly taken aback to hear such an impudent commentary! I have immensely high regard for the royal family as much as I respect all world leaders whom we all look upon for courage, faith, hope, direction and advice in frightening and nerve-racking global circumstances. Will Canada dump the crown and become a republic? About five years ago, 48.15% of the people polled said ‘yes’. And another 48.15% said, ‘no’. 3.70% didn’t one way or another! Most Canadians didn’t ever hear about it any way as they went shopping, picking blue berries or away on holidays. That is democracy at its best, the Canadian style.