The Canadian maple leaf was not red, but batik at this year’s Canada Day celebration in Jakarta. The redesigned maple leaf was unveiled by Canadian Ambassador to Indonesia and Timor Leste Peter MacArthur and Canadian Ambassador to ASEAN Diedrah Kelly in celebration of Indonesia-Canada relations at Fairmont Hotel on Monday.

Indonesian and ASEAN leaders, diplomats, Indonesian and Canadian business and civil society representatives and others gathered to commemorate the 152nd Canada Day. The theme of the festivities was Canada’s four seasons, with the speeches and the decor highlighting Canada’s commitment to environmental protection.

“Taking on heat waves and bad air requires the replacement of coal with renewable energy, whether solar, wind, biomass, hydro, geothermal — which Indonesia possesses in great abundance,” MacArthur said in his opening remarks. “Canada is there to help make the transition. The green shift beckons.”

MacArthur also emphasized Canada’s commitment to meet all its Paris Accord obligations to slow climate change. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau agreed to reduce annual emissions to 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 in the 2016 Paris Agreement.

During Monday’s event, each guest was gifted a reusable straw set in line with Canada’s push to ban single-use plastics by 2021.

“Between Canada and Indonesia, I am happy to say that Canada is one of the few foreign countries that Indonesia has invited on the steering board for the new and national Plastic Action Partnership,” said MacArthur. The partnership was launched by the Indonesian government in March in an effort to reduce plastic waste pollution, particularly in the ocean.

Canada Day commemorates the 1867 unification of the British provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Quebec and Ontario into the Dominion of Canada. Although the celebration is sometimes referred to as “Canadian independence day”, the unification was only a step toward and not an act of independence from Britain.

Sacha Stevenson, who is from Halifax, Nova Scotia, has spent virtually her entire adult life in Indonesia. She will not be celebrating this Canada Day, but not by choice.

“I WISH I had an excuse to paint my face red and white and talk loud and drink beer and eat bacon and wave a flag and dress head to toe in maple leaf attire […] at like Monas or something […] but somehow I don’t think anyone will join me,” she told The Jakarta Post via email on Sunday. “So I’ll probably just stay home.”

Stevenson, a popular YouTuber with more than 877,000 subscribers, first became famous for her series “How to act Indonesian”.

The Canadian community in Indonesia is small, with less than 1,900 Canadians with foreign worker permits in Indonesia. In 2018, Canada did not make the top 10 list of countries with foreign workers in Indonesia. There are “several thousand Canadians who are residents here”, according to MacArthur.

“I have noticed a few more Canadians here recently but, then again, I live in Bali now and there are just more foreigners around in general,” said Stevenson.

There will be a private Canadian community event at Fairmont Hotel this Saturday organized by the Canadian Alumni in Indonesia, an association for Canadians and Indonesians who studied in Canada, to celebrate the day, according to MacArthur.

— The writer is an intern at The Jakarta Post.

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