The Passport Meltdown

I just returned from a 10 day vacation to TERF Island (also known as the UK). Through both our journey out of and back into Canada, my passport was routinely checked by customs officers, security agents and machines. In one case, after going to retrieve something through airport security that we had accidentally forgotten, a customs officer evaluated my passport and boarding pass very carefully. He wanted to make sure I wasn’t up to any funny business, seeing as this was an airport and all. But he let me through, and things were as smooth as air travel ends up being.

You’ll notice how my experience with using my passport for air travel didn’t once mention Vimy Ridge, Terry Fox or maple leaves. That’s because it’s a passport. Nobody actually cares one fraction of a shit about what’s inside of one.

No no, seriously consider that for a moment. When, in your life, have you ever done anything with a passport that wasn’t either applying for one, examining it when you received it for the first time, used it for travel, or looked at stamps you got on it. When have you lovingly pawed through the pages, examining the pieces of Canadian history? When have you showed other people the images of your home country’s primary travel document? When have you gazed upon the majesty of the fathers of confederation between your typically mug shot looking photo and the textured outer sleeve?

Never. Not once. It is a booklet to travel to other countries. That’s it. If you have, you are lying. I’ll lay money on the ground you’ve looked at album artwork longer than the inside design of a Canadian passport.

But oh the pain- the pain of it all- that has erupted from the most asinine corners of Canadian media since the new passport redesign was unveiled. You’d think Trudeau had personally slapped their mothers with the anguish and cries of betrayal that’s been unleashed with this latest change.

Here’s what it entails: the new redesign has added an outline of a maple leaf to the front and changed out pictures of Canadian historical moments with day-in-the-life tableaus of average Canadians enjoying themselves. There’s illustrations of deer, bears, owls, children having fun in the summer, and children having fun in the winter. These have replaced historical moments in Canadian history, like Confederation, Terry Fox, Vimy Ridge the Northwest Passage and RCMP officers.

But this mild change of passports to reflect modern Canadian life has apparently boiled the blood and piss of any culture warrior who has hung their hat on fomenting outrage for clicks. Their rage is untethered and it knows no bounds.

Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has pledged to undo the changes, because of course he did, saying that Trudeau used “woke and out-of-touch ideology” to make it an ego trip. How? Well Trudeau swam at Harrington Lake as a kid. Swimming at a lake, of course, being only an action for the rich elite liberal woke-cucks. Quick question: what the fuck is he talking about?

But no, Poilievre’s culture war hawking is merely the predictable beginning. Our nation’s dullest minds have gotten together to collectively winge about a goddamn border booklet. Andrew Coyne called it a "cringe fest,” Jen Gerson wrote she was “tempted to read too much into this” after penning a column that read too much into this. Konrad Yakabuski said that this was the culmination of the “culture war Mr. Trudeau has deftly stoked.” He referred to Trudeau’s interview with the New York Times after his election to Prime Minister in 2015 to make this point. As such, it’s a “culture-war attack on patriotic symbols,” that “rejects seminal events on our path to nationhood.”

How do these people sleep at night when their entire way of life is under attack from a standard redesign? What have they said about thin blue lines on Canadian flags worn by police officers, which would similarly be a desecration of a Canadian symbol? Oh? Nothing? Well colour me shocked.

This one-two punch of ludicrous belly-aching then stern finger-wagging at finding the former to be devoid of any intelligence is embarassing. I am somehow now even more embarassed to be a Canadian, let alone a Canadian in news media.

Yakabuski’s column acts as the original outrage wave, using right-wing populist arguments to cry and wail about a “snowperson” (kill me) being on the new passport. He claims the point is to make the passport not distinctly “or even representatively” Canadian. Yakabuski, did you never enjoy wildlife as a child? Did you not jump into the lake with your friends? Were these not formative memories of you in Canada? Or did you spend your time adding dicks to your friends’ snowmen so you knew what pronouns to use?

Gerson’s column specifically is meant to stoke the indignation. In attempt to be funny (I assume), Gerson laid out some true bangers. She said it was a “bland cartoon of Canadiana that looks better suited to my toddler’s placemat,” and the removal of historic Canadian moments was so bad they “should have strangled a beaver in maple syrup and gone for the trifecta.” How drole! That last joke works because she hates bland cartoons of Canadiana, like beavers and maple syrup. She even cited Wikipedia on the Corporate Memphis design school! I do believe my sides have split.

But in all earnestness I have to know: How much did you get paid to write this Gerson? Just so I know how much to ask the next time an editor reaches out to me for pitches on useless bullshit.

The most telling moment is when she shamefully shakes her head and bemoans the redesign as a symbol of destroying everything Canada ever worked towards.

There’s no deeper symbolic meaning to the fact that they have chosen to remove the rough edges, blood, sacrifice, and failure of the past and replace it with a two-dimensional cartoon version of the country.

I hate to break this to you, but the worship of Vimy Ridge as a defining moment in Canadian history is a two-dimensional cartoon version of the country. It’s praising the meatgrinder of WWI as a stamp of “Real Country (TM)” on Canada, when Vimy Ridge was the needless sacrifice of countless lives for the imperial ambitions of a continent that didn’t threaten them at all. Other than “respect in war,” what, exactly, did Vimy Ridge do for the average Canadian, other than destroy the families of the men who died needlessly?

You’re the one demanding a two-dimensional representation of this country. Even worse, you’re projecting that it’s the reverse.

There really isn’t that much to say after this point. The idea that this passport redesign is the same as destroying history is an absurd one. Comparing it to tearing down Sir John A. Macdonald statues (which Yakabuski does) is very apt. Not because each are acts that destroy history, but because they are lightning rods for right-wing populists to uphold images of Canadian nationalism. People don’t learn history from statues or passports. Any attempt to claim otherwise makes you look like a giant toddler.

Beyond this, there have been criticisms that the designs themselves are bland and even ugly with the colours being used. To that I say, maybe dare to venture into ugly patterns.

And if that doesn’t convince you, I reiterate: It’s a fucking passport.