The Great Flattening: How Canadian institutions shape children.

Colin, in many ways, is a lot like me. 

We were both born in Canada in the late ’80s. We both grew up in small towns. And we both learned early that the way we moved through the world did not quite fit what was expected of us.

He grew up in Ontario, attending private Catholic school. I grew up in British Columbia, in a public secular system. Different provinces. Different institutions. Different theology. Same pressure.

We came of age in the in-between.

Before the internet gave us language. Before online community. Before you could type a feeling into a search bar and find proof that you weren’t alone. We learned about ourselves through the reactions of others, in the hallway, the classroom, the playground, the church.

And the lesson was subtle but clear: shrink.

The idea that the system could stretch to meet us was never even on the table.

We were expected to adapt. The institution was not.

For Colin, the rejection wasn’t about being gay. It began earlier than that.

Much earlier.

He wasn’t doing anything wrong. He was quiet. Thoughtful. Gentle. But there was only one acceptable way to ‘be a boy’, and he didn’t fit it.

So he tried to shrink himself to fit.

But the problem was never him.

The problem was that the rules had already been set.

And those rules didn’t come from children.

They came from institutions — from schools, media, families, and churches that quietly decided what counted as normal.

When a school or family consistently praises one way of being over another, children notice. They try to mirror it, and by doing so, they end up protecting the system by policing themselves and each other on it’s behalf.

Children simply learn what gets rewarded and enforce it.

Schools, churches, media, families all carry quiet expectations about how children —and adults— are supposed to behave. Expectations of what success looks like. What confidence looks like. What strength looks like. What leadership looks like.

Those expectations shape everything: who gets praised, who gets corrected, who gets labeled “a good kid,” and who gets labeled “difficult” or “different.”

When a child doesn’t fit that mold, whether because of gender, personality, culture, ability, belief, or temperament — the institution rarely reshapes itself to fit that child. It asks the child to reshape themselves instead.

Because changing a child seems easier than changing the system.

It would be easy to blame religion alone.

And certainly, Catholic schooling shaped Colin’s experience. Faith complicated his understanding of himself. Shame was theological as well as social.

But I did not grow up in Catholic school. I did not grow up in church.

I grew up in a public, secular institution on the other side of the country — nearly 3,600 kilometres away.

And the exact same script was still enforced.

That’s the part Canada struggles to admit.

We like to believe that once overt religious authority is removed, freedom follows. But secular spaces are not neutral. Secular spaces still reflect the culture around them. They still decide which traits get praised and which get corrected. They still shape children toward one preferred way of being.

You don’t need a religious symbol on the wall to feel pressure to conform.

You just need a culture that celebrates one kind of strength and quietly disciplines the rest.

And that pressure isn’t really about belief. It’s not even about morality.

It’s about protecting stability.

Institutions like predictability. They like clear categories. They like knowing how people are supposed to act.

When someone doesn’t fit the expected mold — a soft boy, a quiet child, a kid who doesn’t perform confidence in the approved way — it creates uncertainty.

Uncertainty makes people uncomfortable.

And when institutions feel discomfort, they have two choices:

1. Stretch to include the difference.
2. Push the difference to adjust.

Most choose the second. Not because they are evil. But because it’s easier.

The in-between generation

Colin and I grew up before the internet became a place you could turn to for community.

When we were growing up, queer lives were rarely visible in ordinary ways. Media representation was narrow. Gay characters were often jokes, side characters, or tragedies.

You were only ever offered glimpses of who you are and who you could be, all in one, flat, unwelcome dimension.

There were no online spaces filled with people who looked like us. No social feeds offering language for what we were feeling. No easy way to find someone living a life that felt possible.

So the only place you could look for representation was your immediate world — your family, your school, your town.

And if you didn’t see yourself reflected there, you were left with one conclusion: you must be the problem.

When the world only gives you one version of yourself, you start to believe that is who you are, or who you should be. So, you shrink yourself to fit in it.

Gay marriage wasn’t legalized in Canada until 2005. The same year Colin and I graduated high school.

That means we spent our entire childhoods in a country where our future wasn’t legally recognized.

We had no visible teachers modelling it.
No neighbours living it openly.
No ordinary examples of stable, adult queer lives.

We weren’t just lacking representation. We were lacking a vision of our own futures.

How could we build confidence toward a future we couldn’t see?

How could we believe we were enough when the world offered no proof that people like us grew up whole?

By the time the law changed, our formative years were already behind us.

Laws matter. They protect people. They shift culture over time.

But inclusion that arrives after childhood cannot undo what childhood shaped.

Inclusion is about whether a young person can look ahead and see a future for themselves.

It’s about whether a quiet, sensitive boy can grow up strong and confident in who he is, without ever having to learn how to disappear to avoid the brutal confrontation between who you are, and who everyone wants you to be.

The lesson

Flattening doesn’t always look mean.

It doesn’t always look like bullying or shouting.

It can even sound helpful. Like advice. Like guidance.

“Why don’t you try to fit in a little more?”
“Be more like the other boys, maybe they’ll pick on you less”
“You’re going to have to toughen up because that’s just how it is.”
“Don’t be so sensitive.”

But the message underneath is the same:

Change yourself so others don’t have to feel uncomfortable… so others don’t have to change, or stretch, to fit you in them.

That’s what flattening is.

It’s when the world says:
Be less different.
Be less complicated.
Be less… you.

And when that message is repeated enough, kids start to believe that who they are is the problem.

That’s the harm.

Colin and I both grew up hearing, in different ways, that we were not enough.

Not straight enough.
Not rigid enough in our gender expression.
Not confident enough in who we are.
Not Canadian enough.

You hear that long enough, and it stays with you.

It follows you into adulthood.
Into relationships.
Into work.
Into your own inner voice.

It becomes anxiety.
It becomes low self-esteem.
It becomes the constant feeling that you are behind, or lacking, or one wrong move away from being exposed.

That is not a country where children thrive.

When children grow up believing they are not enough, it doesn’t disappear when they turn eighteen. It follows them into adulthood.

That is why the places where children grow matter so much.

If children are expected to shrink themselves to survive, then institutions have a responsibility to stretch first.

It is not enough for public institutions like schools, where all children grow and develop, to simply acknowledge diversity.

A poster on the wall is not the same as belonging.

Children do better when they are seen as whole, capable, wonderful people. When their differences are not tolerated but valued. When their softness, creativity, emotion, faith, questions, culture, and identity are treated as strengths.

Because they are.

Colin and I did not need to be hardened.
We did not need to be reshaped.

We needed adults and systems that could say: You are whole.

You are not a problem to fix.
You are not too much.
You are more than enough, just as you are.

When we celebrate diversity — truly celebrate it — we stop asking children to shrink so institutions can stay comfortable and easier to manage. We build spaces big enough to hold them as they are.

Only then do we create real freedom.

Only then do we raise adults who do not spend half their lives unlearning shame.

Only then do we build a Canada where children grow up believing they are enough because they were given mirrors to see it in themselves from the start.

Reimagining the Self-Help Arc

Colin’s book, The Blue Hour Gospel, illustrated by Toronto-based artist Ryan Futter, refuses to smooth life into something neat and easy.

It is fragmented. Nonlinear. Reflective. It does not offer a five-step healing plan. It does not promise that if you work hard enough, you will arrive at a polished, “fixed” version of yourself. It does not turn queerness into a clean success story.

That is intentional.

We live in a culture that loves before-and-after stories. We are told that growth should be visible. That healing should look productive. That pain should lead to something inspirational.

Be whole.
Be healed.
Be better than you were.

But real lives do not move in straight lines. Especially queer lives.

Colin pushes back against the idea that there is one right way to grow. He questions the media images and body standards that tell us what worth looks like. He challenges the belief that progress always means moving upward.

Instead, he offers something quieter and more honest: space to reflect without turning your life into a performance.

And if adults are still learning to stop performing, imagine what children need from the institutions shaping them.