My dad’s family came to this country 200 years before it became a country. My mom’s 
family arrived shortly after Confederation. I’m not sure about the exact time because my grandfather doesn’t have a birth certificate but I do have the record of oath made by his father that the birth took place in New Brunswick. To the best of Great Granddad Joseph’s recollection (manly men not generally expected to be anywhere near a room where the women folk were whelping) it was December 13, 1886…At least that was what he’d wrote in the bible and, in those days, if it was written in the family bible it was as close to word of God as mortal man got.
I present this as my credentials for saying I am a Canadian. It used to make me reach for the family fighting shoes whenever someone would ask me, ‘no, really, where is your family from…I mean really where…?”
This is not to say, however, I am more of a Canadian than anyone else who can lay claim to a passport. And that is my point. It is frequently pointed out that anyone who has to go through a citzenship exam and sing the anthem in front of a judge or other representative of the great white mother, probably knows more about the laws of this land than those of us to the maple syrup born.
All I’m really trying to say is that it isn’t a matter of winning the birth lottery that makes us Canadian. Heck, I can think of someone who won that lottery plus the willy wonka
gold ticket only to tear off his maple leaf long johns for an ermine collar and red velvet cushion on the mother ship but I won’t mention any names. Apparently he’s been given an opportunity courtesy of the American judicial system to contemplate at leisure his many actions (not just the repudiation of citizenship).
I guess what it comes down to is this, I may not know what makes me a Canadian or anyone else who wants to stand beside me in the passport line other than the desire to be here. But if someone wants to be here, to work here and raise their family here, well, if that was a good enough reason in 1660, then it’s probably good enough now.