Okay, so I know I don't get all worked up about the "motherland" very often, but this morning I couldn't sleep and ran across this article on www.cbc.ca. I couldn't help but post it here.

What will Canada look like in the year 2020? To encourage a debate about the major challenges Canada will face in the coming decades, the Dominion Institute and the Toronto Star have invited 20 leading thinkers to write about an issue or event that they think could transform the country by 2020.

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By George Elliott Clarke

The strangest truth about Canada, as many Americans and other observers are now recognizing in this momentous year, 2020, now that the "Great White North" is dissolving, is that Canadians had always been ambivalent about their country.

And not only the French-speaking ones (whose ambivalence — or actual enmity — was most loudly articulated), but everyone: Aboriginal people rightly discontented with their powerlessness and their poverty; immigrants who often, generations after arrival and settlement, felt strong emotional and psychological ties to homelands that many had never seen; "Westerners" jealous of "Eastern" political dominance; "East Coasters" resentful of "Central" Canadian financial clout; and "Northerners" alienated from "imperial" Ottawa and the "South."

True: Canada had always been a peculiar place — a North American wilderness whose actual head-of-state was located overseas (and seldom visited), with two official languages spoken, really, unilingually (depending on geography), and the slightly weird practice of stamping, on the reverse of the monarch's face, the images of animals its heavily citified population never saw.

Bizarrely, too, Canadians were always looking outside the country — to Britain, France, the United States or to China, India, and the Caribbean — for their cultural support, for a reflection of "themselves" and even for respect.

It is now clear that Canadians, in general, never had faith in the decision of their Yankee and "Habitant" ancestors who rejected the American Revolution and set about creating — in truth — a deliberately reactionary country (even though this winter-influenced state had to accept social spending, government programs and a national police force).

The big surprise for most outsiders is that, after Quebec voted for clear independence last year, the "Rest of Canada" so quickly splintered into regional entities, too.

Of course, the rich Western provinces, whose raw resources and water are so appealing to the United States, have found it relatively easy to coalesce, setting up a government headquartered in Calgary.

Although now independent, Quebec finds it necessary to maintain a close economic and semi-political union with Ontario.

(How ironic that the originating cause of Canadian Confederation — the union of colonial Ontario and Quebec — is once again a de facto reality. They should call it "Canada II”).

Most observers of the collapse of Canada had written off the "Atlantic Provinces" — Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland (especially after Quebec annexed Labrador as part of its settlement with Canada) — but that supposition was based on a deep ignorance of history.

Canada's first "separatists" — way back in 1867 — were Nova Scotians. Long before the Bloc Québécois ever entered Parliament, Nova Scotia returned 19 anti-Confederation MPs in the first federal election.

During the Meech Lake Crisis in 1990 and the second Quebec referendum in 1995, Nova Scotian leaders had mused publicly that, if Quebec left Canada, they would try to join the United States.

The lure of the Atlantic seaboard

Many scoffed at this suggestion back then, but now it is coming to be. And why not?

First, there are strong cultural and familial ties between New England and Atlantic Canada. No one there forgets that when Halifax, N.S., suffered, in 1917, the biggest man-made explosion before the A-bombing of Hiroshima, Japan, the first medical help on the scene came from Massachusetts.

Second, there are sound economic reasons for the formation of "Atlantica" as the new nation — and economic union with northeastern New England and upstate New York — is to be called. Together, Atlantica and its main partners in the northeastern US, comprise some 12 million people and an economy that is, respectably, the 20th largest on Earth.

Already, many Atlantica businesses — led by Irving Oil, McCain Foods, Sobeys, Moosehead Breweries, and the new, state-owned Atlantic Petrol — are expanding rapidly throughout New England.

At the same time, increased trade with China, India, the West Indies and Europe is leading to record-breaking container-shipping tonnage for the ice-free, deep-water ports of Halifax and Saint John, N.B.

Also crucial to the developing success of the former East Coast of the former Canada is an expanded commitment to higher education and to immigration — interests that have always been part and parcel of Atlantica.

Atlantica reborn

During Confederation, a common joke was the greatest East Coast export was "brains." Two of Canada's Big Banks — the Royal Bank and the Bank of Nova Scotia — were started in Nova Scotia, a province that also boasted ten respected universities, including six in the capital, Halifax.

(Back in 2005, Halifax's Dalhousie University's medical school outranked Harvard's, and it was the only Canadian one to crack the top 10 list.)

John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, and his brother, Robert, a senator for New York, both received honorary doctorates in, respectively, 1956 and 1967, from the University of New Brunswick-Fredericton, a city whose provincial art gallery hosts a Dali.

The Atlantic provinces of Canada always were highly sophisticated in terms of post-secondary education, just as Atlantica is now.

But expanding immigration is where the incoming government is concentrating its energies.

One reason why the United States dominated the 20th century economically and culturally is because, generally, it welcomed immigrants, especially those from Europe.

However, since "9/11/01" and the expansion of the non-Anglo (and nonwhite) population, Americans have so restricted immigration that the nation is becoming less open to innovation, experiment and the world.

Atlantica is intent on avoiding this mistake. The new government is planning to streamline acceptance of foreign accreditation of medical, engineering and science professionals, while ensuring that newcomers are security screened enough to satisfy wary Americans.

If it succeeds, it may serve to help America once again welcome "aliens" and enjoy the benefits of their creativity and productivity.

(Then again, for much of the last century, the first part of Canada that most immigrants saw was Halifax, even if they refused to settle there.)

Ingenious development

One far-sighted and ingenious development, tied to education and immigration, is the introduction of compulsory Chinese, Hindi or Spanish in Atlantica's universities. Students who graduate with one of these trade-important tongues (along with, of course, English or French) enjoy the first pick of civil service careers — that is, if they do not accept the lucrative offers of the private sector.

The primary challenge for Atlantica will be to improve communication and transportation around its constituent parts and also into the United States. If it can do that, the day may come when Quebec or other ex-Canadian provinces will be seeking to join it.

Then again, prior to Canadian Confederation, during the days of sail, Britain's Maritime colonies — Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick — enjoyed relatively high prosperity. They were sites of risk-taking and entrepreneurial activity.

There is every reason to expect Atlantica will restore that "Golden Age."

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A native of Nova Scotia, George Elliott Clarke is the E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto. His latest book is Black (Raincoast-Polestar), a collection of poetry.