Conrad Black: On July 1, Let’s Recognize Canada’s Past Achievements and Potential for Greatness

Commentary July 1 has come again and naturally raises thoughts, however cursorily, of what Canada has been in the 157 years since Confederation was launched on July 1 of 1867, as well as of what it might become. In 1867, the United States had just finished defeating the South and ending the insurrection of the terrible Civil War in that country in which approximately 750,000 people perished of a population of 31,000,000. Five of the secessionist states were practically smashed to rubble and burned to ashes by the victorious Union armies of Generals U.S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman. As the Grand Army of the Republic slogged through the confederacy, its men sang the great anthems of the Union, including Julia Ward Howe’s “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,” which ended with the uncompromising exhortation: “As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free!”...