Expecting me to engage you in a tedious conversation that is based in history is a little too much. I can not be expected to do so everytime a member requests such debate. You do realize that this a highly heated debate, right?
Second, I saw myself as a Canadian first, too, at one time. That sort of changed after 9/11 when people started looking at me weird, and suddenly I realized that even if I saw myself as Canadian, many saw me as a terrorist. It was very upsetting but now I deal with it--unsuccessfully no less. I do prefer to think of myself as Canadian but others won't let me. You won't believe how many people were looking at me suspiciously after 9/11 and how many very curiously would ask me: "so...what do YOU think about 9/11" and everybody in the room would look at me as if I was supposed to say: "I am planning to kill all of you today. All my polite behavior in the past was simply pretense." And I would take out a gun and shoot them. I would not be lying if I said all this has made me more radicalized.
I so very much wanted to just punch all those people, and it was for the first time I realized how some black folks feel. It was as if I was suddenly a different person and I didn't know about it myself.
Think of the whole Chinese and communist thing in US, some time ago.