Canada: What Distinguishes Us from the Americans (No anti-Americansim here… nope… nosireebob!)

The National Post ^ | March 5, 2003 | Mark Kingwell

[quidnunc]

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Why do Canadians and Americans, the continental cousins, suddenly find themselves no longer friendly? The imminent Iraqi war, conflict within NATO, and friendly fire deaths — not to mention old disputes over softwood lumber, border security and hydroelectricity — have all contributed to a growing dysfunction in this formerly close relationship.

Whatever the Bush administration might believe, the solution is not for us to fall into line but for Americans to spare a thought about why we don't want to. This would be good for both Canadians and Americans, but it will take some doing, and Canadians have to be a little less polite about it. We've grown far too accustomed to letting your policy drive ours just because we don't have any aircraft-carrier battle groups.

It's true that this relationship has always been unequal. Most Canadians, it's fair to say, think of Americans with the mixture of admiration and fear nebbishy boys reserve for their older brothers who captain the football team. With a population roughly equal to California's and a land mass exceeded only by Russia's, its cities strung out in a necklace hugging the southerly reaches, Canada is an unlikely country at the best of times. Naturally a hulking powerful neighbour makes us uneasy and, sometimes, resentful.

The unease grew after the Sept. 11th terrorist attacks, which of course included many Canadian deaths. President Bush's failure to mention Canada in his list of thanks to foreign friends was a textbook definition of taking someone for granted. And, predictably, this resulted in paroxysms of self-hatred depressing and familiar to Canadians: One cadre of public opinion excoriated the Bush administration for its lack of regard; another attacked the first as "anti-American," arguing that we deserved the snub because, among other things, our Armed Forces are so puny.

Indeed, the strident pro-Bush voices in this country display a new form of inferiority complex, forever enacting a sick codependency which involves berating the Canadian government and people for lack of guts while reading every criticism of American foreign policy as lack of loyalty. They are reminiscent of colonial elites of old: More American than the Americans, they greet a National Review hack-fest advocating invasion of Canada, or brain-dead "Canuckistan" jokes, with something approaching treasonous glee.

The charge of anti-Americanism, meanwhile, is incoherent: How could opposition to foreign policy, illicit use of power, or even certain television shows, be equivalent to condemning an entire nation of 300-million? No, the only anti-Americans here are those supporters of the current Bush administration who really do equate it with America, then attack critics of the first as enemies of the second.

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[spodefly]

Great things about Canada: RUSH, skiing in Banff, lots of unpopulated woods in the northern parts of the country.

Sucky things about Canada: Everything else.

[MEG33]

I wrote my first letter to the editor to Lorrie Goldstein to thank him for a healing article. I wrote another today to another writer on Canada.Goldstein wrote me a thoughtful analysis of "the rift". France isn't part of the family.My cousin Canada is causing me trouble of the heart.