Aug. 22, 2007

Oh, Canada

The United States is part of the Americas. Hence not all Americans are citizens of the United States — and it is a sign of imperial hubris to treat those terms as synonyms.

Or so runs a bit of routine language-policing, as practiced by many well-intentioned people. By many well-intentioned Americans, one should say – meaning “citizens of the United States.” I know because I used to be one of them. Then, a few years ago, while on vacation in Canada, my wife and I had an odd conversation with the woman who ran the place we were staying. When she used the expression “you Americans,” our half-baked cosmopolitan reflexes kicked in.

“You’re an American, too,” we insisted. “Canada is part of America!”

Our landlady thought this was crazy. Being Canadian, she was too polite to say so. But no amount of argument could persuade her that a person born and raised in Toronto could be an American. The very idea was absurd. And from paying attention to the news media, we soon learned that she was not being idiosyncratic. On that side of the border, the word “American” applied only to someone from the south. (And not too far south, either. While Mexico is undeniably on the North American continent, the expression norteamericano is not one that Mexicans use to describe themselves.)

So which is the worst case of verbal imperialism? Is it the unthinking use of “American” to mean someone from the United States? Or is it forcing the word upon people who emphatically do not consider themselves Americans? Endlessly absorbing as this miniature paradox of political correctness may be, I’ve found my interest shifting in the course of subsequent trips to Canada. Where is the real line of distinction between the countries — apart from the border, obviously?

One joke has it that a Canadian can be defined as an American with health insurance and no guns. By that standard, my wife and I are already Canadians, and from time to time we discuss moving there at some point in the next couple of decades. Especially if there is ever a president named “Jeb.”

But even while daydreaming of relocation, you know there is a stronger sense of Canadian national identity than that — resting on differences in history and culture that are large, but unclear, at least from this side of the divide.

Actually, even that may be a misleading way to put it. In fact, almost nobody here in the States thinks about the difference. Our default outlook is best summed up by “Blame Canada,” a rousing number in the “South Park” movie, which contains the line “It’s not even a real country anyway.”

This is satirical, of course — a send-up of how fast arrogant indifference can turn to belligerence. But the sardonic and foul-mouthed “South Park” lyricists have perhaps tapped into something that Canadian cultural critics themselves have, by turns, celebrated and deplored: the idea that the national identity is hard to grasp because Canada isn’t a “standard” nation-state. Political power is fairly decentralized, with the provinces retaining a lot of authority, if not autonomy. The legal category of Canadian citizenship only came into existence 60 years ago; before that, one had simply been a British subject living in Canada. The ethnic and linguistic composition has always been heterogeneous. And while its expanse makes it the second largest country in the world, most of the land is very thinly populated.

That’s not quite the same thing as saying “it isn’t a real country anyway,” by any means. But it makes for a relatively ad hoc and open-ended situation in defining the national consciousness. In 1970, Allan Smith, now an associate professor of history at the University of British Columbia, published an influential paper called “Metaphor and Nationality in North America.” (It is reprinted in an interesting collection of Smith’s papers.) He contrasted the American idea of the national “melting pot” and the preferred Canadian trope of the “mosaic” of different cultures.

“American nationalists have seen their nation as a vessel containing a single, virtually unblemished way of life,” wrote Smith, “and their language has, accordingly, been confident and assured. They have known who they were and what they believed, and their vocabulary has reflected the pride and security that this knowledge has brought. Canadian nationalism, in contrast, has been less exuberant and more diffident because it recognizes how fragile and uncertain is the structure it tries to celebrate, and how delicate must be the touch of they who would work all of its parts into a cohesive whole.”

While in Montreal last week, I picked up a new book called The Unfinished Canadian: The People We Are (McLelland & Stewart) by Andrew Cohen, an associate professor of journalism and international affairs at Carleton University, in Ottawa. As one reviewer there said, it “has already become a Canadian best-seller, which means that more than 5,000 copies have been sold.” (Now there’s a national trait: the Canadian knack for self-deprecation is quite well-developed.)

One complaint lodged against Cohen’s book is that it merely recycles discussions of national identity that are familiar to any well-informed Canadian. For the clueless American reader, that actually qualifies as a recommendation. Most of us did not know, for example, that one of the major nonfiction books up north during the past few years was called Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada, and the Myth of Converging Values (2003).

The author, Michael Adams, is a well-known public-opinion analyst, and the findings from his polls of Canadians and Americans in 1992, 1996, and 2000 suggested the emergence of a growing gap between the countries. And the fact that his book appeared two months after Canada declined to join the Coalition of the Willing certainly made this a timely claim.

Asked whether they agreed with the statement “The father of the family must be master in his own home,” Adams reported that 49 percent of Americans over the age of fifteen did, while the figure from Canada was just 18 percent. A quarter of Americans believed that “non-whites should not be allowed to immigrate to this country,” while only half as many Canadians agreed. Minivans outsold SUVs by two to one in Canada; the ratio was reversed in the U.S.

“Canada is becoming the home of a unique postmodern, postmaterial multiculturalism,” wrote Adams, “generating hardy strains of new hybrids that will enrich this country and many others in the world.”

Fire and Ice won rave reviews and prizes; and in 2005, the Literary Review of Canada named it one of the top 100 Canadian books of all time. In The Unfinished Canadian, Cohen agrees that Fire and Ice “cast a light on a corner of our national character,” but not in quite the way its enthusiasts believed. It revealed, he says, “our ambivalent and tortured relationship with the Americans, our struggle to understand them, our moral superiority in dealing with them.”

Cohen cites what he calls a “devastating critique” of the book’s statistical methodology by Joel Smith, a professor of sociology at Duke University, in The American Review of Canadian Studies. “At best, this is an op-ed piece spun into a book,” wrote Smith. “Despite its pseudo-scientific trappings, the basic message is only Adams’ personal views on where the two countries are heading.” As for respective sales in the minivan vs. SUV as proof of a deep-seated Green awareness, Cohen cited David Frum’s argument that the minivans probably sold better in Canada because they were cheaper and Canadians had less money. (Frum, who one tends to think of as part of the inside-the-Beltway conservative punditocracy, is himself Canadian.)

Cohen’s argument seems to be that his fellow Canadians are too prone to emphasizing that they are profoundly different from the Americans — while at the same time neglecting their own history, and otherwise remaining very loose about defining what counts as a Canadian citizen. He complains that students can leave school in most provinces without studying more than a very little of the nation’s history. By contrast, the license plates in Quebec bear the words Je me souviens (“I remember”): a nationalistic slogan of disputed origins, though the Acadian Expulsion in 1755 is doubtless at the top of the list of things not to forget.

“Unlike the United States,” writes Cohen, “which encourages and underwrites presidential libraries as repositories of artifacts and papers, Canada has no such practice.” He quotes a member of Parliament who said, “Visiting Washington, D.C., you would find a plaque anywhere George Washington sneezed, but we’re more modest.” Important prime ministers remain largely unstudied, while the winter 2006 catalog of the University of British Columbia Press lists titles such as Nutrition Policy in Canada, 1870-1939 and The Culture of Flushing: A Social and Legal History of Sewage.

As if monographic torpor did not threaten the nation enough, there is also the policy on dual citizenship. Cohen thinks it has gone from generous to latitudinarian. Late last year, when Stephen Dion became the leader of the Liberal Party — hence potentially the country’s prime minister — it came out that he also held French citizenship. “For a day or so,” writes Cohen, “his dual citizenship unleashed a frenzy of teeth-gnashing and forelock tugging in Parliament. Then it went away.”

It’s the culture war, then, under the maple leaf flag. What worries Cohen are “the elements of our character: the failure of memory, the weakness of citizenship, the tolerance of ethnic nationalism, the willingness to compromise one too many times.”

Some of Cohen’s complaints — about multiculturalist excess, and disrespect for the national founding fathers, for example — sound to an American ear like rallying cries of the right. But then he calls for taxes on the wealthy to be raised, and for them otherwise to be shamed into generosity. (“We criticize many things in Canada,” he writes, “but we rarely give our reluctant rich a hard time. We should.”) He’s also happy that Canada remains independent enough to be able to tell the U.S. that a war it is contemplating is a terrible idea.

For an American, reading about the national identity crisis there is a little like visiting Canada: A lot sounds familiar, though the accent occasionally falls on an unexpected syllable. But I’m struck in particular by a difference from the cultural polemics down here — the lack of our usual, almost apocalyptic stridency, which probably echoes the Puritan sermons from generations past.

“Once again,” writes Cohen about the future of his country, “Canada will have to find a way to muddle through, whatever its endless existential questions. Every generation has had to face down the forces of disintegration and every one has.” This sounds like a tone bred by facing one terrible winter after another for two or three centuries. It is neither wildly optimistic nor bitterly pessimistic; it just chops wood and waits. I can’t help wishing we could pick that tone up and make it American.

Scott McLemee writes Intellectual Affairs each week. He also blogs at Quick Study.

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Comments

Et ta Valeur, de Foi Trempée,

Having spent twenty of the past twenty-six years of my life in Ann Arbor, I couldn’t help but have an intimate relationship with Canada and Canadians, aye? Indeed, those of us who hang out from time to time in downtown Detroit are well aware of the fact that that remarkable land is just across our southern border. Occasionally I have even fired off an application for a posted position at a Canadian university.

Of course you’re right, Scott, there is something remarkably civilized about the place, especially as compared to the United States, and their universal health care and remarkable disdain for coveting the bizarre assortment of firearms that so characterizes our citizenry is indicative of our differences. [Of course, I don’t consider the “normal” guns and rifles that a rational person might utilize for “hunting” to be bizarre ... maybe sick, but not bizarre. I’ll have to admit that I get very little thrill from killing animals these days, and generally think there is little difference between Dick Cheney killing “planted” birds and Michael Vick killing pit bulls who are not willing to put up a fight. Civilization indeed!]

In any event, for almost three decades I have made an annual trip from wherever I happened to reside at the time to Stratford, Ontario for the Shakespeare Festival, and there you have an entire town that epitomizes what civilization is all about. Granted Stratford is an outlier even in Canada and granted Canada is – or used to be until we purchased it – the home of professional ice hockey, one of the least civilized games anywhere. Still, there is something very special about Canada and Canadians, so much so that it is often difficult to imagine that the male Caucasians who were so central to the definitions of the cultures of Canada, Australia, and the United States are, broadly speaking, from the same European stock.

Quite some time ago — back when Quebec appeared to be serious about succession, – I recall reading that a klatch of futurists had gathered and predicted that the Canadian provinces, starting with those in the West, would become states of the United States. I think it was supposed to be happening right now. In any event, we “Americans” still have no reasonable gun laws, we still don’t have universal health care, and we are currently governed by a very weird assortment of evangelical neo-cons. I can assure you there very few citizens of the Western Provinces who are even remotely interested in statehood.

And, Scott, two things:

First, please tell us why you and your wife don’t have health insurance.

Second, may I assume, now that I see you are reading all of this stuff about Canada and Canadians, that you are not hard at work catching up to the rest of us who have read all seven volumes of Harry Potter?

Frizbane Manley, at 7:20 am EDT on August 22, 2007

To first addres the subject of ‘American’...

There is no continent called ‘America’. There is North America and South America, and together they are called the Americas. If you wish to denote continental identity, you should refer then to a ‘North American’.

People living in the United States long ago appropriated the word ‘American’ to refer to themselves (and we see it used in that context every day). They are welcome to keep it — and rather less than welcome to include Canadians under the umbrella of whatever constitutes ‘being American’.

As to the rest of the column...

Conservative pundits in Canada have long pined for a ‘national identity’ they could pin on everyone who lives here.

When people, like Cohen, express fears about “the elements of our character: the failure of memory, the weakness of citizenship, the tolerance of ethnic nationalism, the willingness to compromise one too many times” it is seen by the rest of us as code for wanting a nation that is “white, right and polite.”

Despite our occasional export of neo-cons like Conrad Black, David Frum, Mark Steyn, and others, it is very much a minority view, one that struggles for lip service even in Canada’s right wing Conservative Party.

The vast majority of Canadians have embraced a far different picture, one that not only includes our social programs (including public health care) and non-violence, but which also explicitly endorses a ’salad bowl’ model of society.

If there is a ‘culture war’ in this country, it’s more an American-inspired insurgency among those who have difficulty tolerating people who are different from themselves.

The rest of us take things like freedom of religion to heart. We encourage people to celebrate their heritage, whatever it may be. And that’s why you see things like gay marriage accepted in Canada (and not merely tolerated).

It’s a popular fiction, for some reason promulgated among Americans, that we have simply ‘fallen into’ our national character, and that we will continue to ‘muddle through’. Nothing could be further from the truth.

In a paper I wrote a few years ago, My Canada, I argue that our national character is one of deliberate choice and policy — that we chose to be open, diverse, peaceful and accepting — and that we built it into the fibre of our nation. http://www.downes.ca/post/57

We are very proud to be Canadians — proud, not because we are all the same, but because we are all different, each of us with something unique and valuable to bring to the table, united by values of openness, sharing, and support.

The insurgency likes to depict Canadians as people who define themselves as not being American, but Canadians know better. Defining us in American terms distorts the picture; painting us in opposition to American values misses entirely the things that make us who we are.

The United States has ‘culture wars’, perhaps, but the same concept cannot be applied to Canada. There is no sense in which we expect one culture can reign supreme in this country — and it would be a very sad day for us all if one did.

Stephen Downes, at 7:45 am EDT on August 22, 2007

If according to your comment to the Canadian woman she is American does that make Mexicans Americans as well? Or is that only for people from this continent above a certain point. And what is interesting to me is that I would never have presumed to say to someone from Canada that they were American. That’s insulting and ethnocentric.

Philana, at 8:35 am EDT on August 22, 2007

Agreed that assuming non-U.S. citizens can/should be referred to as Americans is fairly ethnocentric. Most of my non-U.S. friends from the Americas are perplexed by our (largely the academy’s) obsession with this.

An Argentinean friend once pointed out to me that the U.S. is the only nation in North, South, or Central America that uses “America” as part of its official national title. He noted that if his country was termed the “Argentine States of America,” there might be some wrangling over the usage of American. But, otherwise, it’s fairly irrelevant. (But, this same friend is baffled over our usage of Latino, Hispanic, etc. so he thinks the U.S. is a pretty schizophrenic country to begin with.)

K.T., at 9:15 am EDT on August 22, 2007

One note I forgot to mention... if I recall, the last poll I saw on the issue noted that 40% of Canadians favored joining the United States, while 40% of Americans favored annexation of Canada. The North American Union progresses... then we can all be “Americans” or at least “North Americans.”

K.T., at 9:20 am EDT on August 22, 2007

To Mr. Downes

I wonder if the genocide of native peoples in Canada (http://www.hmb.utoronto.ca/HMB303...sion/Canada_Genocide_TruthComm.html) fits into your salad bowl theory of cultural peace and love. I’d be the first to admit that the U.S. and the Americans in it are far from perfect, but please get off your high horse, sir, and allow Canada to take some responsibility for its own actions instead of claiming that all the bad is influenced by your neighbors to the south.

Evil American, at 9:40 am EDT on August 22, 2007

Oh, Get Off It Philana!

First, I think it is safe to say I am not the stupidest or the least informed guy on the block ... and I am far from the most insensitive or ethnocentric. But before I read Stephen Downes’ post, I would have been inclined to think of Canadians as Americans and I would have made Scott’s “mistake.”

And, yes Philana, I would have thought of Mexicans – and, indeed everyone on these two continents — as Americans. If Scott suggested that we and the Canadians are “Americans” and the Mexicans are not, I must have missed it.

I admit that I’m convinced by Downes’ explanation, and I will never make the mistake of thinking of anyone but “us” as Americans in the future. But Philana is just so sanctimonious, I want to do it just for spite.

Frizbane Manley, at 9:40 am EDT on August 22, 2007

Point Taken

Mr. Downes is of course quite correct that there is no continent called “America.” I suppose that is why the first sentence of this column refers to “the Americas.”

Scott McLemee, columnist at Inside Higher Ed, at 10:50 am EDT on August 22, 2007

eh. it’s spelled ‘eh’

Cohen is fairly right-wing, and his views are not those of the majority here in the Canadian States of America.

I don’t know why you would go out of your way to call a Canadian ‘American’ when the commonsensical and idomatic usage is to refer only to US citizens this way. Even if you are technically right to so refer to us Canucs, you are, in terms of common practice, out of the norm.

In addition to its famous Shakespeare festival, Stratford has also become known around Southwestern Ontario for its burgeoning methamphetamine production labs and sales force.

A Morrison, at 11:55 am EDT on August 22, 2007

America

Actually, people in a large portion of the world count North and South America as one continent. I’ve met many, many South Americans who refer to themselves as “americanos", based on this view of a single American continent, and who complain indignantly about US citizens’ appropriation of the word “American” to describe only ourselves. It seems to me that theirs is just as valid a viewpoint as seeing two separate-but-connected continents.

Well, so what’s new? Points of view differ on this as on every other issue under the sun.... ;-)

Bridget, at 12:15 pm EDT on August 22, 2007

Oh Canada

As an American living in Canada, I have learned that the Canadian spirit is just as proud as the American one; one that I have come to appreciate a great deal. With its commitment to multiculturalism and social justice, Canada is indeed a distinctive society and one that enriches all of the America!

Clayton, Vice-Provost, Students & Registrar at University of Windsor, at 1:30 pm EDT on August 22, 2007

Fire, Ice, and Multiculturalism

It fascinates me that Michael Adams’ Fire & Ice, though a runaway bestseller in Canada, has yet to appear be published south of the border (it was published by Penguin Canada, but not by Penguin USA), despite the fact that it deals with the differences between American (U.S.) and Canadian social values.

I’m also struck, in light of our debate over immigration reform, that American liberals have objected strongly to something that is a notable element in liberal Canada’s immigration policy: awarding points to potential immigrants based on their education and job skills. The U.S., on the other hand, has long proclaimed, “Give me...the wretched refuse of your teeming shore,” and then objected when they came. Yet it takes only a quick visit to Toronto or Vancouver to see that multiculturalism is thriving there, and that the racial and ethnic tensions, the monolingualism, and the xenophobia that plague American society are muted, if not absent. Could there be a relationship between immigration restrictiveness and the social acceptance of multiculturalism?

Damon D. Hickey, at 1:45 pm EDT on August 22, 2007

I’ve lived in Northwestern Ontario for three years. I’m an American, which everyone here understands to mean “U.S. citizen,” and a permanent resident of Canada with no intention of leaving. My mother was Canadian and my family has deep roots here.

Of course the two countries are different. It’s interesting to be in social situations, like a dinner party, with ordinary Canadians who know my citizenship but don’t know me well. They sometimes criticize the U.S., its leaders, its policies, or its citizens’ attitudes. They then cast a worried glance at me and say, “No offense” or “Nothing personal.” They expect me to burst into a chorus of “God Bless the U.S.A.” at the first sign of an implied shortcoming.

In contrast, when ordinary Americans at a dinner party converse about Canada’s leaders, policies, or the attitudes of its citizens...oh wait, that doesn’t happen. Never mind.

My point is that the Canadians I know don’t spend a lot of time worrying about or discussing their national identity. They know their country is smaller in population and economy. They pay attention to U.S. news because the NYSE affects the TSX and a bridge collapse in Minneapolis affects the flow of goods. They do their best to live in the same neighborhood—but not the same house—as this giant country to their south.

They know they’re not Americans. They’re comfortable with that. And they don’t seem to feel the need to explain or justify or defend who they are—instead, they just go about their work and play. It’s a restful place to live.

Marion, at 2:30 pm EDT on August 22, 2007

What’s in a name...

Since Amerigo was an Italian...I think we should all stop the bickering and hat wringing and call ourselves Italians. Pasta anyone?

Bob, at 2:40 pm EDT on August 22, 2007

Granted, I Sometimes Go Off The Deep End

As you know, I touted Stratford, Ontario as one of Canada’s noticeably civilized burgs, only to have my prejudice confirmed by A. Morrison. I would also like to tout Victoria, BC as a Canadian center of civilization and tell you an interesting tale about my first visit there (to the University of Victoria ... and I would take a position at U of V at the flip of a salmon).

http://www.uvic.ca/

I flew from Detroit Metro to Seattle and, from there flew to Victoria on San Juan Airlines, fl 363. As we 30 passengers on the flight checked through the gate, we were each given a blank, color-coded, plastic card. It turned out that fl 363 was actually six separate Piper 6X aircraft, and six lucky passengers got to sit up front with their respective pilots. I hurried aboard the one color-coded blue to claim the seat next to the pilot and then relinquished my seat to an eleven-year-old girl who had never had such an experience. It took each individual component of “flight 363 about 30 minutes to arrive at Victoria, but it took the entire flight another 30 minutes to land. And it seemed as though, no matter which of the six planes was yours, part of your luggage was stored on the last plane to put down.

Needless to say, I loved that wonderfully cosmopolitan city, and had high tea on three occasions at the Empress Hotel.

http://www.britishcolumbia.com/attractions/attractions/empress.html

You must know that the average temperature in January in Victoria is 50 degrees Fahrenheit (pre-global warming), but, only three hours away by auto, you will be at Mount Washington, which has more annual snowfall than any other spot in Canada.

Anyway, on San Juan Airlines, fl 363 back to Seattle, all 36 of us were seated on the same plane, but to enable us to avoid the inconvenience of going through customs in Seattle, our plane put down in Port Angeles, Washington. There we all picked up our carry-on luggage paraded through the tiny terminal (it resembled a double-wide), each said “No” in our turn, and were back on the plane and off to our destination in a matter of minutes.

Civilization? Yes! God do I love that place. So, the next time you’re thinking about being off to Paris for a week, do a double-take ... and think, “Damn, I’ve never been to Victoria, BC. Maybe it’s time.”

I’m sure by now, 9/11. “W,” and Brownie have completely fouled up the pleasures I experienced in my round trip from Seattle to Victoria; however, once there ... well it’s Canada for God’s sake ... you’ll love it.

Frizbane Manley, at 4:05 pm EDT on August 22, 2007

Academics! ... Whew, What Can I Say?

There’s just waaaay too much academic blah, blah, blah on this issue. To see the truth of the matter, YouTube, as always, saves the day ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PS8UO0mYc2Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vxDDcTc64c&mode=related&search=

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLMkV7VyPns&mode=related&search=

Frizbane Manley, at 8:50 am EDT on August 23, 2007

Appropriating a title?

Forgive me if I am off-track here, but isn’t the term, American, a shortening of the epithet, American Colonist? I’m not sure that we Yankees purposefully appropriated anything. We merely failed to shed the epithet by achieving British standards of decency in our society.

Anglophile, at 11:45 am EDT on August 23, 2007

“...By contrast, the license plates in Quebec bear the words Je me souviens (“I remember”): a nationalistic slogan of disputed origins, though the Acadian Expulsion in 1755 is doubtless at the top of the list of things not to forget...”

The problem with that is that the Acadian Expulsion is more likely to be remembered in the Maritime provinces where it took place. As the wiki link notes, Acadia and Quebec were two distinct cultures. The Quebecois are more likely to recall the battle of the Plains of Abraham at Quebec City, and the Lower Canada Rebellion, and such events which took place in Quebec.

Canada has fewer people and more geography than the US. The geography is important. For instance, we did not have the vicious Indian wars on the prairies that the US did. This is because, being further north, we have a shorter growing season. So the US was settled first. The US frontier was a land settlement frontier, with settlers fighting the plains tribes over land. In Canada, the prairie tribes had suffered starvation from the extermination of the buffalo, and had settled on reserves before the major land settlement boom took place. The Riel Rebellion was mainly a Metis fight, with only a few Indians joining in.

Geography is important; Canada is a northern nation; the US is not.

V. Jobson, at 4:25 am EDT on August 24, 2007

Read George Grant

Anyone interested in Canada should read “Lament for a Nation” by George Grant. It is by far the most intelligent book on the question of Canada’s identity and, indeed, survival, as a society distinct from the U.S.A.

P.S. I am always grateful for articles about Canada in the U.S. media, but please, could we place an interdict on the phrases “Oh/O Canada” and “Great White North"? They have been used just one time too many.

Lisa Richmond, Wheaton College (IL), at 12:25 pm EDT on August 24, 2007

Canadian beef

As a Canadian expatriate of long-time residence in the States, I could punch out an exhaustive and exhausting response to McLemee’s piece, that, paved though it is with good intentions, proceeds inevitably to the destination indicated in the proverb. I won’t touch on his curious terminological norms, which pretzel Canadian objections to being called “American” into a form of political correctness. And, I won’t belabour other points, for instance the reliance on conservative commentators in a discussion of Canadian identity, or the surprise at the differences between the two societies. [The only people who seem to recognize these differences as a matter of course are Canadians, the INS, and Seymour Martin Lipset.}

What I would suggest, however, is that my compatriots and commentators like McLemee indulge in a set of shared oversights when discussing “national identity” and trying to link it to whether or not there is a “Canada” capable of commanding “true patriot love” like “real” countries. First, in the forty years since the celebration of Confederation’s centenary, successive generations of Canadian leaders—most notably Pierre Trudeau—have sought to define some stable and positive “Canadian” identity. This in a country that originally joined together colonies and Hudson Bay Country divided by very different historical experience, ethnic makeup and religious affiliation, enshrined in the metaphor of the mosaic—versus the melting pot—first coined in the 1930’s.

To be sure, being “not American” long served as a bedrock notion of Canadianism among the Dominion’s inhabitants, particularly those descended from United Empire Loyalists or who immigrated from the British Isles. This strain has weakened somewhat with the remarkable and admirable diversification of Canada’s ethnic composition since the late 1960’s, but persists in a widely-shared pride in differences ranging from health-care and social services, tolerant policies on sexuality and multiculturalism, to a sense of superiority about Canada’s international profile [cf. American students’ backpacks, Canadian flags on] or Tim Horton’s doughnuts.

Second, this long—chronic?—search for a Canadian identity has been bedevilled by at least two other factors. One of these is the notion that there is some stable form of identity able to accommodate the enormously multi-faceted ingredients that make up Canada’s population and historical experience, something vividly reflected, for instance, in the comments above, not least from those interested in the fate of First Nations populations in Canada. Surely, after three decades of post-annaliste reflection on mentalite, self-representation, identity, etc., we can come up with a model or rhetoric that incorporates and acknowledges the dynamic and unstable interaction of certain core concepts, discourses or whatever you want to call them. Could “American” stand up to similar scrutiny? I’d suggest that the flourishing state of various “studies” departments and the new strains of social and cultural history among Americanists at least complicates this issue.

But even more important is the fact universally unacknowledged that, in constructing a “national” identity,Canadians have only had access experientially to two linguistic traditions with which to describe their political community and its defining attributes—British and American, both grounded in categories of imperial scale and destiny. As inhabitants of a settler colony, on the notional periphery of “mother” Britain’s consciousness—McLemee should know that many Brits group Canadians under the rubric of “American—and jammed up against a culturally robust, self-confident and economically powerful United States, Canadians have for generations been steeped in two discourses of nationhood grossly incommensurate with the scale, resources, and traditions of their national history.

In this sense, Canadians share the fate of Scots, Ukrainians, New Zealanders and others fated by geography and history to stand in a secondary position to more dominant neighbours, but who can’t help seeing themselves as those same neighbours see them, or who find themselves condemned at the very least to validate and assert their worthiness on the scales they’ve appropriated willy-nilly from those same neighbours.

It’s a losing battle in the end, since we’ll never be as “big” or “important” as the States or even the UK. Still, the discussion has led to a quieter mode of self-distinction, whose prevalence has grown, at least in my own anecdotal observances, since at least the Reagan years, the first time I can recall my friends wondering how Americans could vote for a leader like that. I can certainly attest that the experience of the Bush Minor administration—should we call is the Bush League?—has catalyzed this process of self-separation at a rate measurable in parsecs.

As a result, the trademark courtesy, self-deprecation, moral superiority noted by Americans—often surprised or bemused to find them—might well be construed as making virtues of culturally-imposed necessities.

In a historiographical vein, the growing emphases on comparativity or transnationality or whatever you want to call it, hovering like Banquo’s ghost over the banquet of American exceptionalism [block that simile!] still largely omit to use Canada as an interesting or revealing comparison—I’ll except the debates over the middle ground and the post-White discussion of inter-imperial zones. One reads—or, I should say, I read or hear from my Americanist colleagues—very little to suggest that they know much or have any interest in the distinctively Canadian careers of feminism, or labour, or constitutional development, or public policy, or the politics of race and ethnicity. More often, the gaze turns southward or across an “Atlantic” that only includes British North America until the late eighteenth century; the same gaze seems to glaze when looking north. This, despite the shared background in intellectual history, intimate economic and cultural links that persist today, and important commonalities in confronting indigenous populations and those whom the resident anglophone populations regarded as minorities of various casts. How does one explain the very different outcomes?

Having taxed the bandwidth of these “comments” spaces, I can only close by noting that Canadians have long known thatwith the observation that an observation from Margaret Atwood, who codifies with characteristic elegance what Canadians haveI can’t help closing by remarking on the tone of surprise that always occurs in these American encounters with Canada’s “difference.” Canadians have long known that, to quote Margaret Atwood, the two countries are separated by “the world’s longest, undefended one-way mirror.”

David McDonald, Professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, at 6:00 pm EDT on August 24, 2007

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