Cowboys vs. Mounties: Americans love John Wayne, Canadians look to Dudley Do-Right.

HEADLINE: Cowboys vs. Mounties: Americans love John Wayne, Canadians look to Dudley Do-Right. That says it all, according to Sarah Vowell, one of Canada's secret American admirers.

BODY:
Canada haunts me. The United States's neighbour to the north first caught my fancy a few years back when I started listening to the CBC. I came for the long-form radio documentaries; I stayed for the dispatches from the Maritimes and Guelph. On the CBC, all these nice people, seemingly normal but for the hockey obsession, had a likable knack for loving their country in public without resorting to swagger or hate.

A person keen on all things French is called a francophile. One who has a thing for England is called an anglophile. An admirer of Germany in the 1930s and '40s is called Pat Buchanan. But no word has been coined to describe Americans obsessed with Canada, not that dictionary publishers have been swamped with requests. The comedian Jon Stewart used to do a bit in which a Canadian woman asked him to come clean about what Americans really think of Canada. "We don't," he said.

Keeping track of Canadians is like watching a horror movie. It's Invasion of the Body Snatchers in slow-mo. They look like us, but there's something slightly, eerily off. Why is that? The question has nagged me for years. Asking why they are the way they are begs the followup query about how we ended up this way too. There's a sad-sack quality to the Canadian chronology I find entirely endearing. I once asked the CBC radio host Ian Brown how on Earth one could teach Canadian schoolchildren their history in a way that could be remotely inspiring, and he answered, "It isn't inspiring."

Achieving its independence from Britain gradually and cordially, through polite meetings taking place in nice rooms, Canada took a path to sovereignty that is one of the most hilariously boring stories in the world. One Canadian history textbook I have describes it thus, "British North Americans moved through the 1850s and early '60s towards a modestly spectacular resolution of their various ambitions and problems." Modestly spectacular. Isn't that adorable?

One day, while nonchalantly perusing the annals of Canadian history, I came across mention of the founding of the Mounties. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, called the North-West Mounted Police at its inception, was created, I read, to establish law and order on the Canadian frontier in anticipation of settlement and the Canadian Pacific Railroad. In 1873, Canada's first prime minister, John A. Macdonald, saw what was happening in the American Wild West and organized a police force to make sure Canada steered clear of America's bloodbath.

That's it. Or, as they might say in Quebec, voila! That explains how Canadians are different from Americans. No cowboys for Canada: They got Mounties instead -- Dudley Do-Right, not John Wayne. It's a mindset of "Here I come to save the day" versus "Yippee-ki-yay, motherf---er." Or maybe it's chicken and egg: The very idea that the Canadian head of state would come to the conclusion that establishing law and order before large numbers of people migrated west, to have rules and procedures and authorities waiting for them, is anathema to the American way.

Not only did the Mounties aim to avoid the problems we had faced on our western frontier, especially the violent, costly Indian wars, they had to clean up after our spillover mess. In a 19th-century version of that drug-war movie Traffic, evil American whiskey traders were gouging and poisoning Canadian Indian populations. Based in Fort Benton, Montana, they snuck across the border to peddle their rotgut liquor, establishing illegal trading posts, including the infamous Fort Whoop-up in what is now Alberta.

You can't throw a dart at a map of the American West without hitting some mass grave or battleground -- Sand Creek, Little Bighorn, Wounded Knee -- but it's fitting that the most famous such Canadian travesty, the Cypress Hills Massacre, happened because American whiskey and fur traders were exacting revenge on a few Indians believed to have stolen their horses. The Americans slaughtered between 100 and 200 Assiniboine men, women, and children. Never mind that the horse thieves had been Cree. That was 1873. The Mounties were under formation, but they hadn't yet marched west.

The most remarkable thing about the Mounties was their mandate: one law. One law for everyone, Indian or white. The United States makes a big to-do about all men being created equal, but we're still working out the kinks of turning that idea into actual policy. Reporting to the force's commissioner in 1877, one Mountie wrote of Americans in his jurisdiction, "These men always look upon the Indians as their natural enemies ... I was actually asked the other day by an American who has settled here, if we had the same law here as on the other side, and if he was justified in shooting any Indian who approached his camp after being warned not to in advance."

Word of the Canadians' fairness got around. Some northwestern tribes referred to the border between the United States and Canada as the "medicine line." ...

To Canada's dismay, the northern side of the medicine line became an attractive destination for American Indians, including the most famous, most difficult one of all, Sitting Bull. On the run after Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull and entourage settled near Canada's Fort Walsh, under the command of Maj. James Walsh.

Maj. Walsh and Bull (as he called him) became such great friends that the Canadian government had Maj. Walsh transferred to another post to separate him from Sitting Bull. Sitting Bull was an American problem and the Canadian government wanted to boot him south. Maj. Walsh even defied orders and went to Chicago to lobby on Sitting Bull's behalf, but to no avail, ensuring that Sitting Bull would die south of the medicine line.

All the Sitting Bull complications make Maj. Walsh my favourite Mountie. But he's a very American choice -- he bucked the system, he played favourites for a friend, he defied policy, he stuck out. ...

When Maj. Walsh heard that Sitting Bull had been fatally shot in Minnesota, he wrote, "Bull's ambition is, I am afraid, too great to let him settle down and be content with an uninteresting life." This strikes me as almost treasonously individualistic, with American shades of "pursuit of happiness" and "liberty or death."

Everyone knows what the individualistic American cowboy fetish gets us: shot. It all comes down to guns. The population of the United States is 10 times that of Canada, but we have about 30 times more firearms. Two-thirds of our homicides are committed with firearms, compared with one-third of theirs. (Which begs the question, just what are Canadian killers using -- hair dryers tossed into bathtubs?)

The famous (well, in Canada) historian Pierre Berton, in his surprisingly out-of-print book Why We Act Like Canadians, informs an American friend that it has to do with weather. Having been to Edmonton in January, I cede his point. He wrote:

"Hot weather and passion, gunfights and race riots go together. Your mythic encounters seem to have taken place at high noon, the sun beating down on a dusty Arizona street. I find it difficult to contemplate a similar gunfight in Moose Jaw, in the winter, the bitter rivals struggling vainly to shed two pairs of mitts and reach under several layers of parka for weapons so cold that the slightest touch of flesh on steel would take the skin off their thumbs."

Most of the time, I feel Canadian. I live a quiet life. I own no firearms (though, as a gunsmith's daughter, I stand to inherit a freaking arsenal). I revere the Bill of Rights, but at the same time I believe that anyone who's using three or more of them at a time is hogging them too much.

I'm a newspaper-reading, French-speaking, radio-documentary-loving square. A lot of my favourite comedians, such as Martin Short, Eugene Levy, the Kids in the Hall, are Canadian. I like that self-deprecating Charlie Brown sense of humour. As Canadian-born Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels once put it in a panel discussion devoted to the question of why Canadians are so funny, a Canadian would never have made a film called It's a Wonderful Life because "that would be bragging." The Canadian version, he said, would have been titled It's an All Right Life.

So I mostly walk the Canadian walk, but the thing about a lot of Canadian talk is that it sounds bad. When I went to Ottawa, the "Washington of the North," to see the RCMP's Musical Ride, which is sort of like synchronized swimming on horseback, I was telling a constable in the Mounties about a new U.S. army recruiting ad. The slogan was "an army of one." It aimed to reassure American kids that ... they could join the army and still do their own thing.

The Mountie was horrified. He said: "I think we have to try and work as a team and work together. If you start to be an individualist, then everybody's going their own way. ... You need conformity. You need everybody to stick together and work as a team."

It hurt my ears when he said, "You need conformity." I know he's probably right, and what organization more than a military one requires lockstep uniformity so that fewer people get killed?

But still. No true American would ever talk up the virtue of conformity. Intellectually, I roll my eyes at the cowboy outlaw ethic, but in my heart I know I buy into it a little, that it's a deep part of my identity. Once, when I was living in Holland, I went to the movies, and when a Marlboro Man ad came on the screen, I started bawling with homesickness. ...

The Mounties on the Musical Ride dress in the old-fashioned red serge suits and Stetson hats, like Dudley Do-Right. Seeing them on their black horses, riding in time to music, was entirely lovable, yet lacking any sort of, for lack of a better word, edge. I tried to ask some of them about it.

I say, "In the States, the Mountie is a squeaky-clean icon. Does that ever bother you that the Mountie is not 'cool?' "

He laughs. "That might be one of the things that upset the Americans, because we're just that much better." Then he feels so bad about this little put-down that he repents, backtracking about how "there's good and bad in everybody," that Americans and Canadians "just have different views," and that "Canadians are no better than anyone else."

Another constable, overhearing, says, "Our country is far younger than the United States, but at the same time, the United States is a young country when you compare it to the countries of Europe."

The Spanish Inquisition

Man: Trouble at mill.
Woman: Oh no - what kind of trouble?
Man: One on't cross beams gone owt askew on treddle.
Woman: Pardon?
Man: One on't cross beams gone owt askew on treddle.
Woman: I don't understand what you're saying.
Man: (slightly irritatedly and with exaggeratedly clear accent) One of the cross beams has gone out askew on the treddle.
Woman: Well what on earth does that mean?
Man: I don't know - Mr Wentworth just told me to come in here and say that there was trouble at the mill, that's all - I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition.
(JARRING CHORD - The door flies open and Cardinal Ximinez of Spain enters, flanked by two junior cardinals. Cardinal Biggles has goggles pushed over his forehead. Cardinal Fang is just Cardinal Fang)

Ximinez: NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is suprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... Our three weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... Our four...no... Amongst our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, surprise.... I'll come in again. (Exit and exeunt)
Man: I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition.

(JARRING CHORD - The cardinals burst in)

Ximinez: NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as: fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope, and nice red uniforms - Oh damn! (To Cardinal Biggles) I can't say it - you'll have to say it.
Biggles: What?
Ximinez: You'll have to say the bit about 'Our chief weapons are ...'
Biggles: (rather horrified) I couldn't do that...
(Ximinez bundles the cardinals outside again)
Man: I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition.

(JARRING CHORD - The cardinals enter)

Biggles: Er.... Nobody...um....
Ximinez: Expects...
Biggles: Expects... Nobody expects the...um...the Spanish...um...
Ximinez: Inquisition.
Biggles: I know, I know! Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. In fact, those who do expect -
Ximinez: Our chief weapons are...
Biggles: Our chief weapons are...um...er...
Ximinez: Surprise...
Biggles: Surprise and --
Ximinez: Okay, stop. Stop. Stop there - stop there. Stop. Phew! Ah! ...our chief weapons are surprise...blah blah blah. Cardinal, read the charges.
Fang: You are hereby charged that you did on diverse dates commit heresy against the Holy Church. 'My old man said follow the--'
Biggles: That's enough. (To Man) Now, how do you plead?
Man: We're innocent.
Ximinez: Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

(Superimposed caption: 'DIABOLICAL LAUGHTER')
Biggles: We'll soon change your mind about that!

(Superimposed caption: 'DIABOLICAL ACTING')
Ximinez: Fear, surprise, and a most ruthless-- (controls himself with a supreme effort) Ooooh! Now, Cardinal -- the rack!
(Biggles produces a plastic-coated dish-drying rack. Ximinez looks at it and clenches his teeth in an effort not to lose control. He hums heavily to cover his anger)
Ximinez: You....Right! Tie him down.
(Fang and Biggles make a pathetic attempt to tie him on to the drying rack)
Ximinez: Right! How do you plead?
Man: Innocent.
Ximinez: Ha! Right! Cardinal, give the rack (oh dear) give the rack a turn.
(Biggles stands their awkwardly and shrugs his shoulders)
Biggles: I....
Ximinez: (gritting his teeth) I know, I know you can't. I didn't want to say anything. I just wanted to try and ignore your crass mistake.
Biggles: I...
Ximinez: It makes it all seem so stupid.
Biggles: Shall I...?
Ximinez: No, just pretend for God's sake. Ha! Ha! Ha!
(Biggles turns an imaginary handle on the side of the rack. The doorbell rings. the man detaches himself from scene and answers it. Outside there is a dapper BBC man with a suit and a beard, slightly arty.)
NEW SCENE: (Cut to snapshot which is being held by an Old Woman. Pull out to reveal she is sitting with a large photo album on her knees, lovingly extracting photos from the pile on top of the album and passing them to her friend sitting on the same settee. Her friend is a young lady, who tears up the photos as they are handed to her. The Old Woman is in a world of her own and does not notice.)
Old Woman: This is Uncle Ted in front of the house. (she hands over the photo and the young lady tears it up) This is Uncle Ted at the back of the house. (she hands over the photo and the young lady tears it up) And this is Uncle Ted at the side of the house. (she hands over the photo and the young lady tears it up) This is Uncle Ted, back again at the front of the house, but you can see the side of the house. (she hands over the photo and the young lady tears it up) And this is Uncle Ted even nearer the side of the house, but you can still see the front. (she hands over the photo and the young lady tears it up) This is the back of the house, with Uncle Ted coming round the side to the front. (she hands over the photo and the young lady tears it up) And this is the Spanish Inquisition hiding behind the coal shed. (Friend takes it with the first sign of real interest.)
Young Lady: Oh! I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition.
(Jarring chord The door flies open and Ximinez, Biggles and Fang enter.)
Ximinez: Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
(Cut to film: moving over Brengel drawing of tortures; epic film music.)
Voice Over: (and caption on screen) 'IN THE EARLY YEARS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY, TO COMBAT THE RISING TIDE OF RELIGIOUS UNORTHODOXY, THE POPE GAVE CARDINAL XIMINEZ OF SPAIN LEAVE TO MOVE WITHOUT LET OR HINDRANCE THROUGHOUT THE LAND, IN A REIGN OF VIOLENCE, TERROR AND TORTURE THAT MAKES A SMASHING FILM. THIS WAS THE SPANISH INQUISITION . . .'
(Torchlit dungeon. We hear clanging Jbotsteps. Shadows on the Grille. The Jbotsteps stop and keys jangle. The great door creaks open and Ximinez walks in and looks round approvingly. Fang and Biggles enter behind pushing in the dear old lady. They chain her to the wall.)
Ximinez: Now, old woman! You are accused of heresy on three counts. Heresy by thought, heresy by word, heresy by deed, and heresy by action. Four counts. Do you confess?
Old Woman: I don't understand what I'm accused of.
Ximinez: Ha! Then we'll make you understand! Biggles! Fetch...THE CUSHIONS!
(JARRING CHORD - Biggles holds out two ordinary modern household cushions)
Biggles: Here they are, lord.
Ximinez: Now, old woman -- you have one last chance. Confess the heinous sin of heresy, reject the works of the ungodly -- two last chances. And you shall be free -- three last chances. You have three last chances, the nature of which I have divulged in my previous utterance.
Old Woman: I don't know what you're talking about.
Ximinez: Right! If that's the way you want it -- Cardinal! Poke her with the soft cushions!
(Biggles carries out this rather pathetic torture)
Ximinez: Confess! Confess! Confess!
Biggles: It doesn't seem to be hurting her, lord.
Ximinez: Have you got all the stuffing up one end?
Biggles: Yes, lord.
Ximinez: (angrily hurling away the cushions) Hm! Whe is made of harder stuff! Cardinal Fang! Fetch...THE COMFY CHAIR!
(JARRING CHORD - Zoom into Fang's horrified face)
Fang: (terrified) The...Comfy Chair?
(Biggles pushes in a comfy chair -- a really plush one)
Ximinez: So you think you are strong because you can survive the soft cushions. Well, we shall see. Biggles! Put her in the Comfy Chair!
(They roughly push her into the Comfy Chair)
Ximinez: (with a cruel leer) Now -- you will stay in the Comfy Chair until lunch time, with only a cup of coffee at eleven. (aside, to Biggles) Is that really all it is?
Biggles: Yes, lord.
Ximinez: I see. I suppose we make it worse by shouting a lot, do we? Confess, woman. Confess! Confess! Confess! Confess!
Biggles: I confess!
Ximinez: Not you!

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