Thanksgiving time again. Other than the fact that it

is the last long weekend of the year, with nature at its most colourful, many seem not to be sure for what it is that we give thanks. Or to what or whom we should give it. Is not everything we have our heritage and our right? Many would admit that, all things considered, they are more satisfied than thankful that things here are as they are. Some may have seasonal homes elsewhere but Canada is where their roots and pensions are. For others those roots here may be so shallow that they maintain dual citizenship in another land. But to the question "Is there any place you'd rather live?" the answer for most of us is "No way!". It is not the idolatry of nationalism; it is the virtue of patriotism. That it is the majority opinion is one thing for which to be thankful

One is acquainted with many people who came here from Europe, other parts of the Americas and from farther afield. Some came seeking a new beginning and greater opportunities for their children. There are those who are struggling because they chose, or had to choose, an already crowded urban are in which to settle. Unlike so many of our pioneers, they were unwilling or unable to break new ground beyond the centres of population. Newcomers often say that they should be seen as praiseworthy because they left an old world behind them to start again. Not so if they went no further than to the older parts of a new world or created there ethnic ghettoes as much like their homelands as possible. To be fair, earlier arrivals did much the same thing in the first generation or so after immigration but healthy multiculturalism means progressive integration and broad tolerance of differences. We should be thankful for places in which we see that taking place.

Others came to escape the stifling atmosphere of older societies where entrenched aristocracies or traditional orthodoxies maintained palaces, stately homes, cathedrals and temples that were symbols of past inequality or dogmatism. Canada has its nabobs' enclaves and places where none but the most privileged feel comfortable but ostentation, discrimination and inequality are increasingly considered unwelcome here. We value our social welfare net and suspect those who would destroy it. We should be thankful for a co-operative rather than a crassly competitive society.

Those who have arrived among us since Pierre Trudeau's liberal multiculturalism began to remake the nation - and a few still damn, rather than thank, him for it - are thankful that most of us welcome them here, knowing that their skills are needed. As our indigenous population ages and by our own 'mischoice' our birthrate declines, Canada depends on immigration. One suspects that there are future millions who will seek the freedom of North America without having to become USAmericans.

As Canada is a future "energy superpower', it should also be a land free from our neighbours' imperialism and aggression and the increasing division there between the superwealthy and the poor. As the world's formerly longest undefended border is policed by electronic devices and gunboats on the Great Lakes, we need a new Canada First policy. We should be thinking about what political action will achieve it. We should be thankful for those who warn us of the chipping away of our freedom. Someone said the other day that Canada stands today where a once egalitarian United States stood two hundred years ago when it had the will and the leadership to achieve it.

In Canada we have some who came here chiefly because it was a step towards a later move to the U.S.A. which currently has the world's most rapidly growing population other than China. It is estimated that if Canadians of the past three generations had stayed at home this nation would now have a population of 125 million.

Without the losses in the wars of the 20th Century it would be over 200 million. Who is monitoring our demographics and what should we learn from them? Our cultural mix is not as important as a determination to guard our independence from those who, as Hugo Chavez of Venezuela said recently, act as though they own the whole world. If that freedom thinking is growing in Canada, we should be thankful.

Canadian America is increasingly joined at the economic hip with the world's most mistrusted, if not most hated, nation. There are those among us who see no reason to regret that (the dependency, not the hatred) nor would they support plans to reduce it. More corporate money and more military integration will solve everything, they seem to think. And certainly no national examination of conscience nor act of repentance seems to be expected in spite of the politically influential Bible Belt's emphasis on those virtues. No cause for thanksgiving there.

But let us give thanks for the procession of the seasons in this wonderful part of the world. Only the self-indulgent or the effete would wish to live in perpetual summertime. That preference administers no rebuke to our growing hedonism and to the conspicuous consumption of an overweight nation.

We should aim to regain the seasonally regulated hardiness of this northern country where we need no California raspberries in December nor corn on the cob in February. Whatever happened to preserving what we need for the winter and appreciating home-grown produce in season? Strawberries and melons coming north in winter should face the same tariff schedules as does softwood lumber going south at any time. We should be thankful for who and where we are and for what we can grow here. That's patriotism.

Surely those packaged and adulterated foods we can buy, Mulroney's notoriously porous free trade agreement and the Hollywood level of interpersonal morality are not reasons for thanksgiving? We need deliverance from the licentiousness that masquerades as liberty, the decadence that calls itself democracy and the selfish capitalism that calls itself free enterprise.

Even though we may be thankful for what we have, are we aware of what we are in danger of becoming?