In this spoken monologue, the speaker reflects on their experience with Canada’s former federal fitness program, Participaction, which awarded badges (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Excellence) for meeting performance benchmarks and a pin for those who failed. The badge system, they argue, equated physical performance with personal worth, creating shame for those who could not meet arbitrary standards. The speaker contrasts this with the broader American Dream narrative, critiquing its emphasis on meritocratic success, burnout culture, and structural inequities that reward those with privilege while marginalizing others. They note that Participaction was discontinued in the early 1990s and replaced with a more compassionate program that focused on effort and support rather than punitive labeling. The speaker uses this shift to argue that Canada, despite its flaws—including historic mistreatment of Indigenous peoples—generally strives to lift people up rather than rank them, suggesting that a reimagined “American Dream” would be a system that avoids labeling failure and prioritizes collective well‑being. The monologue ends on a hopeful note, reframing personal failure as a broken test rather than personal inadequacy.
Chapters
I feel like I finally understand what this so-called American Dream is people talk about all the time. And you know what helped me get there? Participaction. Participaction was a federal fitness program here in Canada in the '70s and '80s. Don't just think about it, do it, do it, do it. Participaction. Although Canadians of a certain age probably remember it because it was an annual fitness challenge that kids had to do in school. Every kid had to do it. It wasn't optional. That was the point. And every spring, the gym teacher would drag us outside with a stopwatch and a clipboard and make us run laps and climb knotted ropes and do sit-ups until our lungs burned. It never felt like a test of health. It felt like a test of worth, because at the end of it, you didn't get a grade, you got a badge. There were 4 badges: Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Excellence. But I didn't get any of those. I got the pin. You got the pin when you couldn't even pass the most basic of fitness standards. A small plastic reminder that you had been there and failed to be impressive. I'd run just as far, I'd pushed just as hard, probably harder. But I wasn't fast, or coordinated, or strong. But ParticipAction didn't reward sweat, it rewarded stats, it rewarded performance. And if you didn't meet the benchmark, well, Then here's your pin. Be grateful. There's a lot that the US is really good at. They have nailed community spirit. They are better, or maybe louder, at showing off patriotism than we are. Most of them still trust doctors and scientists more than that uncle of yours who forwards emails titled "What the government doesn't want you to know about kale." But from the outside, it's always seemed to me like America emphasizes the wrong thing. If you show up, you work hard, you do your best, you'll get a badge. That success is a color that you can wear on your chest. But the tests aren't stacked evenly, and everyone knows it. The standards are arbitrary. Some kids have personal coaches. Others tie borrowed sneakers with broken laces. Some get breakfast, others don't. Some are already winning before the stopwatch even starts. And when it's over, the winners say, "See? Hard work pays off." hard work pays off. The rest of us stand there clutching a pin that says we existed. America's always been fat— infatuated by this concept of the American Dream, which is a myth, I think. It claims to value merit and excellence but actually leaves most people behind. You see it everywhere, in workplaces that glorify burnout and call it ambition. Promotions go to the ones who have the luxury of staying late. Not the ones who work just as hard, contribute just as much, but also have to get home to feed the kids. This concept of an American dream is so fundamentally lopsided. What if your best isn't better than someone else's worst? What if you gave everything and the system still says not enough? It's not about try hard enough and you'll succeed, and everyone knows it. They discontinued participaction in the early '90s. They replaced it with one that was much more compassionate. It looked at effort. And when someone couldn't climb to the top of that knotted rope, they didn't pin them with quiet shame. They asked what they needed to get there the next time. We don't always get it right in this country, but when we do, it reminds us why we keep trying. Is it possible that this American dream, all this time, has simply been Canada. We don't hand out badges for excellence anymore, but we also don't make failure a scarlet letter. We've tried in our better moments not to make survival a competition, or healthcare a business, or poverty a moral failure. Canada is not perfect. You only have to look at how we've treated the Indigenous peoples to understand that. But Canada, most of the time, has been a nation that measures its worth by how well we lift other people up, not how far we leave others behind. And maybe that's the real American dream: building a system where no one gets left with a label that says, "Well, you were here." Still got that pin. For years it made me feel like I failed, but now with everything going on south of the border, I look at it differently. I showed up. I ran my heart out. And it turns out that all that time, it was the test that was broken, not me.
