Brian Kalt’s a lawyer, and a sometimes columnist. Most recently with the National Post, where he’s had published a little item entitled Get over yourselves.
Over the past few years, I have noticed a shift. The turning point came in 2000 with Molson’s Joe Canada “rant” commercial. It must have felt good to blow off all of that steam that you had patiently stored up over the decades. And it was all well and good until the last line, declaring that Canada “is the best part of North America.” It’s one thing to be frustrated by Americans’ ignorance of all things Canadians, or to insist on calling it a chesterfield. It is quite another to bask in your own perceived superiority. I know that it didn’t escape Canadians’ notice that, in rallying around such a declaration, Canadians were exhibiting precisely what bothered them about Americans.
If ever there was an instance of pots and kettles getting each other dirty, then this was one.
I’m currently engaged in an email debate with Brian. Haven’t had this much fun in ages.
Now, from a purely ethno-cultural point of view, the Canadian–American (or American–Canadian, if you like) dichotomy has been playing out for decades. Centuries, even. It didn’t start with Trudeau (a former Prime Minister), but he best laid it out with his comment that:
Canada’s relationship with the United States is like that of “a mouse in bed with an elephant…no matter how friendly…one is affected by every twitch and grunt.â€
Canada’s sense of place in this world is notoriously (to us Canadians, at least) tenuous. But we take great pride in being rated the best country to live in ten times in the past 26 years, and consistently ahead of the U.S.
As if our sense of self worth relied on denigrating the Americans. Which mine doesn’t, just for the record.
Anyhow, use Brian’s article as the first stopping off point for a discussion of patriotism and the like. We Canadians display too little, I believe. And when we do, we get shat upon by the intelligensia from Lansing.
Can’t win, can we?