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An outsider’s view of Canada and things Canadian…

It was my geography teacher, when I was 17, who gave me my first inkling of what it must be like to be Canadian, when he suggested that Australians had a stronger sense of national identity because they were an island continent. Canadians, on the other hand, have been separated from the most powerful nation on Earth by only a very long, often invisible line.

Forty years and numerous visits to different parts of Canada later, I think he was both right and wrong. On the one hand, no-one can deny that Canadians do share many cultural values, social principles and lifestyle features with their dominant neighbour – Canadians even have their own distinct version of that uniquely American “world” sport known as American football, though hockey remains the national passion.

I'm a stranger here myself!

But on the other hand, the perpetual need to differentiate themselves from the USA seems to have bred in Canadians a patriotic need for differentiation.

So while American consumer and cultural “imperialism” has made strong advances north of the border, Canada’s institutions and ethos of fair-mindedness have always seemed to have more in common with Europe’s liberal democracies.

After all, Canada has banned the death penalty, has, unlike the USA, grassroots universal health care and other social services, doesn’t have its neighbour’s levels of gun crime, and doesn’t indulge in “born again” Christian fundamentalism. Nor does it start wars. Indeed, one British national newspaper commentator suggested not long ago that Canada should join the EU before Turkey, and the notion, if wacky, remains the currency of more than a few blogs.

For me, Canada actually combines some American positives – a sense of can-do and ambition – with the European notion that work is not everything in life. And how important is that in a country with such vast open spaces in which to play and reconnect with nature?

Canadians still pride themselves on being a “vertical mosaic”, as opposed to the American melting pot, of immigrants from many parts of the world, especially the Commonwealth, to the extent that historical tensions between its Anglophone and Francophone communities now seem to be more about language rights than cultural origin. But those big spaces seem to me the greatest leveller.

Visit a campground in Québec, Ontario, or anywhere in this vast land and you’ll struggle to see the difference. Similar people will emerge from the same Winnebagos; they’ll play volleyball in camp and take the same sort of hikes through bear country. They’ll gather round the same barbecues and in all probability drink the same beer and eat the same burgers and wings. And breakfast on blueberry muffins and pancakes smothered with maple syrup.

Canadians seem lured by a sense of adventure spawned by their distinct sense of place and that’s as true of the vast wilderness of northern Québec as it is of pristine territories such as the Yukon.

Yet, for all the fierce sense of independence, Canadians aren’t always as confident as they might be that national identity and cultural sovereignty will prevail – the federal system and historic regionalism mean that provincial governments often jostle for economic parity within Canada. And so, in more lugubrious moments Canadians, may fear the incursion of American mega-corporations in Alberta, the Texas of the north, while BC could assimilate with the US West Coast, Yukon with Alaska, while Ontario would defiantly stand alone, leaving Québec to finally go its own way as a sovereign nation and the rest to fumble along somehow.

“The grunting elephant as bedmate” is a phrase commonly used in Canada, which refers to an important and obvious topic, which everyone is aware of, but isn’t discussed because it is uncomfortable or unpleasant. It usually means the big scary neighbour to the south.

Recently, however, the editor of www.canadianimmigtant.ca, Naeem “Nick” Noorani, used a similar phrase to open a debate on racist attitudes among both “established” and new Canadians.

He wrote: “I was speaking to a group of immigrants when one person of Indian origin came up to me and said, ‘What I don’t like about Canada is the huge number of Chinese people here.’ Obviously he thought that since I was of Indian origin, I would agree with him.

“Instead I replied, ‘I have many Chinese friends and I don’t think like you do. This is Canada. We all live in a multicultural society, and that’s something you should get used to’.”

It cast my mind back to that geography classroom all those years ago. Then, if you said Canada, people thought of Mounties and lumberjacks. Even when Ben Johnson won, and was then stripped of, his Olympic Gold, I don’t think my generation had grasped the multicultural nature of Canada society.

The road is never easy, but Canada has much to be proud of in the way it has welcomed diverse ethnic groups and cultures. Indeed, perhaps the most telling statistic of the 2001 census is that more than 11 million people chose to describe their ethnic origin as Canadian – more than double the number who selected English, French, Scottish or Irish – rather than the fact that there were 30 ethnic groups of 150,000 people, including a million First Nations People and 300,000 Métis.

Long live the Canadian national dream!

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