A reader passed along this thoughtful piece by Thomas Lifson, at the American Thinker. It’s a nicely condensed version of the historical tug-o-war underlying the modern debate about Canadian “identity”.
Canada’s national identity has always been based on the fact of their being not American. This is an inevitable outcome of living next door to a behemoth with ten times the population and little concern for foreign countries, even (or especially) the ones right next door, whose differences with us are popularly regarded as retrograde imperfections. It is also a product of the fundamental fracture in Canada, between French and English Canadians, who have not embraced the concept of a melting pot, and who therefore do not have that much in common, other than being non-Yankees.
The Americans who have decamped for Canada have tended historically to be our dissidents, the dissatisfied, and historic losers – starting with the Tories who opposed the American Revolution, and reinforced by the contingent of draft dodgers during the Vietnam War. They looked back with anger and contempt at their less enlightened former countrymen. In contrast, the Canadians who moved in the opposite direction tended to be the ambitious strivers, like James J. Hill (the “Empire Builder” railroad magnate) or the current raft of entertainers like Jim Carrey and Martin Short. The exchange generally has not favored the Canadians. While American business and culture are studded with outstanding achievers of Canadian origin, the Americans fleeing to Canada collectively do not occupy a prominent place in the ranks of the accomplished.
Before the independence movement for Quebec became a dominant concern of English Canada, their relative Britishness gave Anglophone Canadians something positive to embrace, as a mark of their difference from Americans. They were a Dominion of the Queen, after all, not just a country. But when the Quebecois assaulted the rest of Canada with an outbreak of terror and assassination in the late 1960s and early 70s, followed by a serious popular electoral movement aimed at independence, the Union Jack had to disappear from the flag, and appeasement of the angry Francophones became priority number one for those who wished to save Canada as a viable nation.
Think of the emotional impact. That very Britishness, which had been embraced as a proud heritage and special difference from the Americans, now became a mark of inhuman domination. Quebec regarded The Union Jack and all that went with it as the lingering wound of an historic oppression with its ancient origin on the Plains of Abraham. This sudden need to discard a former source of pride was a traumatic loss for English Canadians, who take justifiable satisfaction in their inherent niceness. People who live through life-threatening winter weather every year tend to take seriously the obligation to help one another out, provide mutual aid and comfort, and offer a warm smile as the default setting when dealing with each other.
Now shorn of the positive symbols of English Canadian distinctiveness, always fearful of absorption into the overwhelming colossus to the south, and in desperate need of a way to reassure themselves that they were good people (in the face of many years of angry recriminations from the Francophones), Canada had no alternative but to embrace the newly-merging multicultural orthodoxy. This bizarre, murky, and constantly-evolving doctrine has no substance, other than decreeing that virtue is a function of oppression, or if no oppression happens to be available, a pale and lifeless virtue can be salvaged by deference to those who claim oppression.
Good observations. I have another.
I once had a heated debate over a bar table in northern Alberta with a man in his early twenties. He had a list of one word reasons for hating Americans – and he did use the word “hate”, along with “warmongers”, “Vietnam”, and “rude.” Strong words from a man who was otherwise a model of calm civility.
It didn’t make sense to me – it sounded like he’d met some particularly obnoxious people. Finally, I asked where he’d been in the US, to have formed impressions about ordinary Americans that were so different from what I’d experienced in my travels?
He had never been south of Calgary. I guess I should have known. His contempt was bred of a faux familiarity, based entirely on impressions formed by his exposure to various media – pop culture, movies, political news, historical information. Canada is unlike any other country in the way we are bombarded with American media. He was critical in a way you’d expect of someone who disliked a “drunken” cousin he’d only “met” through video of wedding dances. The poor fellow in the video is none the wiser – it’s not a two-way feed.
Had he walked into the bar directly in front of real live visiting warmongering Americans, arm in arm with the distant cousin – he’d still stand aside and hold the door open for them.
Our famous tendency to reflexive politeness is not urban myth – I have apologized too often for being inadvertantly jostled or having my foot stepped on to pretend otherwise. But it’s a phenomenon mostly reserved for strangers – the tendency disappears when we’re around people we know well.
The garbled mixture of scornful superiority and hyper-criticism, alternating with pronouncements and polls affirming our “friendship” and shared values, may be partly a consequence of this struggle. The US as both the stranger and the familiar family member. Mix in a goodly percentage of cultural and economic incest, and it’s a wonder Canadians haven’t come completely off our rockers.
