> I find it curious that the easy going, tolerant Canadians would tolerate this intolerance.
In a bizarre way I understand my Countrymen and can see how and why this would happen in Canada.
You see, in Canada we have a concept called “The Cultural Mosaic”. Your analog in America is “The American Melting Pot”. Both are analogies as to how each country will deal with diversity. And while they sound similar — both imply that there will be diverse peoples involved — the concepts are radically different.
Starting with the Melting Pot: you Yanks take people from all over the world, chuck them all together and blend them into a reasonably-uniform “American”. The idea being they become American first, last, and always — who just happens to have originated in Italy or Ireland or South Africa or...
The Cultural Mosaic is a different concept. If you think of a mosaic, it is a whole bunch of tiles separated by grout that, together, form a picture. No one tile is more important than the other, and no one tile comprises the entire picture. There is no attempt to blend the tiles together: they remain separate. As with tiles, so with cultures: Canada has been structured to be a country that comprises a large number of separate national identities, with no attempt to blend them or to develop a uniform “Canadian” culture.
Now, if you can get your head around those two very different concepts, hopefully alot about your Canadian neighbors will suddenly make sense.
Being American is almost a Religion: almost. Being American comes loaded with a whole bunch of values and shared beliefs. This became very obvious to me when I visited the Monuments in Washington DC. “The Faithful” came from all over the US — even in the pouring rain — and lined up to see Monuments. Almost like muslims visiting Mecca — except without the Evil islamic overtones.
Being Canadian is, well, not being American. Canadians would never line up in the rain to see Monuments, because the values and shared beliefs just aren’t there. Being Canadian is not at all like a Religion.
OK, so all of this can happen because there is no strong sense of unified national identity, and there is an accepted baseline view that everybody’s tile in the mosaic is as valid as everybody else’s, and each one must therefore be protected from everybody else...
I hope all that makes sense: it kinda does to me.