By: Donovan Martin Sr, Editor in Chief In the decades leading up to Confederation, people living in what would later become Canada did not understand belonging as something issued by the state. There was no Canadian citizenship certificate, no federal registry, and no statute defining who qualified as Canadian. Identity was not administered. It was lived. That reality matters today because it explains how modern Canada produced a group now known as Lost Canadians. Lost Canadians are individuals who were born in Canada, raised here, or born abroad to Canadian parents, who lived their liv