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Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.

He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.

In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.

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On Canada Day's eve I ask myself a simple question: What does it mean to be Canadian or live in Canada? Let's compare Canada with its southern neighbor - the United States.

When I was a student, I was told that the youngest among the great powers - America, has the oldest written constitution. It's true considering that the United Kingdom, the former master of American colonies, still doesn't have a written constitution.

But anyway, it's an indisputable fact that the United States has a constitution that can be read and understood in less than couple of hours even more than 200 years after it was written. How many democratic countries in the world can claim to have such an old and understandable basic political document?

On the other side, we have Canada that has no written constitution accepted by all the provinces. The so-called repatriated constitution of early 80s was rejected by Quebec. The later version of political compromise was also rejected by some of the provinces. Quebec refused by a popular vote to be a part of the constitution, but also by referendum the majority in that province twice refused to separate from the rest of Canada.

When you ask Canadians what they know about their constitution, their smile is most often the only answer. Only a few lawyers in Ottawa know what this constitution is all about, some say, but is this enough for keeping alive the fire of rights and liberties?

One of the results of all this constitutional mess is that Canadians don't pledge in private a loyalty to the state symbols as the citizens of the United States do. When an American citizen came to visit me recently in Montreal, he was very surprised by the fact that he could hardly see a national flag except on the public buildings. When he finally found one, it turned out to be...the flag of the United States.

Asked how they see the idea of abandoning the national currency and adopting the US dollar, the majority of Canadians think it could happen in the next 20 years and they shouldn't oppose such move.

All that said, how it's possible for Canada to exist? What is the force that brings this vast country together? Is this, as some think, only the result of the laziness of the people to change things? Or is it the result of deeply rooted British conservatism - when you can't imagine something new and better, you just keep things going?

Perhaps we have here a little of both. But there are some special conditions that allow this political experiment called Canada to exist and to flourish. Look at the map. The only border that Canada shares on land is with the United States. If there had been another country, ruled by an undemocratic or military regime, hungry for more territories to the North, Canada might not have withstood during the last two centuries. Not many countries in the world have the chance to live in peace without even bothering to keep large armed forces on guard.

We began answering our question by comparing Canadians with their southern neighbors. We should continue answering by saying what Canadians aren't. They don't consider themselves to be very patriotic, they aren't Canadian citizens first and foremost, they aren't (except some individuals) ready to fight for their ideals, they don't like to see scenes of violence on their TV screens coming from around the world and most of all, they don't like to be called Americans.

So what is a Canadian? Canadians are a peace-loving congregation of people with no clear feeling of nationhood, living in democracy and prosperity only because nobody from outside tried to steal these precious gifts while they are sleeping. So on July 1st we will celebrate our freedoms and secretly we'll hope that our southern friends continue to celebrate their July 4th. Without the US Independence Day there wouldn't be a reason for us to celebrate either.

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