thedrifter
07-14-03, 06:25 AM
Pretty Edgy, Eh?
Low-key Canada lets its hair down, making America look fussy by comparison.
By David Montgomery
THE WASHINGTON POST; Washington Post staff researcher Margaret Smith contributed to this report.
July 14, 2003
Peaceniks, pot and people of the same sex exchanging wedding vows: It's a trinity from the church of high liberalism, or a right-wing trifecta of decline and doom.
Either way, it's a perfect storm of cultural weather patterns that you'd expect to be brewed only in, say, the East Village, Dupont Circle or the intersection of Haight and Ashbury.
But no! Can you say Saskatoon? Banff? Nunavut? Just when you had all but forgotten that carbon-based life exists above the 49th parallel, those sly Canadians have redefined their entire nation as Berkeley North.
"It's like we woke up and suddenly we're a European country," says Canadian television satirist Rick Mercer.
"We're supposedly the reactionary society," says Rudyard Griffiths, director of the Toronto-based Dominion Institute, which promotes Canadian citizenship and history. "We didn't have the revolution. You'd think we would be an inherently conservative society. There's the irony."
In March, Canada decided it was unwilling to join the "coalition of the willing" for the attack on Iraq. Unlike French wine and toast, Canadian bacon avoided boycott because somehow Canada's defection escaped notice.
In May, Canada proposed to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana and refocus law enforcement on traffickers. An herbal blend out of British Columbia known as "B.C. Bud" is attaining a reputation reminiscent of the old Panama Red and Maui Wowie.
In June, Canada decided to allow same-sex marriages. In comparison, the U.S. Supreme Court's striking down of the Texas sodomy law last week seems tame. Since the Canadian marriage right is construed as inalienable and open to all - sound familiar? - hundreds of gay Americans are streaming north to get married. Their nuptials will not be recognized at home, where a 1996 federal law decreed that marriage is strictly a man-woman thing. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), appearing July 6 on ABC's "This Week," called for amending the Constitution to ban gay marriages.
The news from Canada is just a little disorienting - no, shocking - for Americans. Depending on your view, isn't America supposed to be the cradle of the coolest, most cutting- edge culture? Didn't we invent civil rights? Alternatively, if such so-called cool culture is corrupt and these "rights" wrong, at least by golly we're supposed to get to Hell first.
Now Canada is leading the way.
And America is looking fussy, Victorian and imperial.
What happened to that clean, cold land of Mounties, Dudley Do-Right, loons on lakes, loons on coins, cheese on French fries? What of the goofy, front-teeth-missing, bad-haircut, lovable beer-and-doughnut civilization of hosers like Bob and Doug McKenzie, the characters created by Canadian comedians Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas? Eh? Bob would ponder conundrums like: "What is a six-pack equal to in metric conversion?" That's a Canada we recognize, where everyone speaks in a crisp nasal deadpan, even the French. It is the home of a self-deprecating and polite-to-the- point-of-invisible people. In Michael Moore's 1995 satirical film "Canadian Bacon," the Canadians say "pardon me," "excuse me" as the Americans club them like baby seals during an invasion to keep the military in business after the Soviets caved.
Toronto, observes one of the invaders, "is like Albany, only cleaner." In more noble moments, we admire the benefits that seem to come with a passive, upstanding, low-key, noncontroversial existence.
Moore's new film, "Bowling for Columbine," hails Canada as an unarmed, low-crime utopia Where Front Doors Are Unlocked.
But Canada is also like the well-behaved child who is fun to pound on the playground. "Blame Canada," goes the song in the 1999 "South Park" movie, which depicts another invasion scenario. (Why is the idea of going to war with Canada such an easy laugh?) "It seems like everything went wrong since Canada came along."
"We tend to think of them as the quiet, good people to the north," says David Biette, director of the Canada Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.
Canadians are surprised by the stunned reaction to current events of their friends to the south. Is America's image racier than the reality? "I find it interesting that a country like the United States ... isn't at the same level on these issues as we are," says Amanda Hachey, a university student from New Brunswick, in Washington for an internship with an international consulting firm. "For example, you only have to go as far as watching 'That '70s Show,' where they're smoking marijuana on that show. It's an American show. You'd be thinking American culture would be accepting of those things." Or: "You watch 'Will & Grace.' There's two gay men on that show. It seems to present that it's totally accepted."
"Certainly we are ahead - if you want to call it that - on those two issues," says Lorna Hundt, manager of Great Canadian Holidays in Kitchener, Ontario. "As a Canadian, I'm proud." Majorities of Canadians support their government on the war, marijuana and same-sex marriage. The most negative reaction, at least to gay marriage, is coming from Alberta, which Canadians call their most "American" province: cowboys, oil men.
Maybe it's time to overhaul some old assumptions about national character.
At one time, all you needed to know was that America was created through revolution, under the slogan "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Canada was born of evolution and compromise under the slogan "peace, order and good government." America invented itself; Canada sort of happened.
The English settlers of what would become the United States were driven by religious freedom, as well as economic opportunity. The land of woods and lakes to the north attracted Frenchmen and Englishmen in pursuit of fur and a passage to Asia.
In America, groups besides white males acquired rights, immigrants came, industry was built, wars were won, music was made - and, in the process, the nation forged an identity.
Similar things happened in Canada, except the identity part. The nation has struggled to figure out who it was.
The winner of a radio contest some years ago to define the Canadian identity in one sentence was: "As Canadian as possible under the circumstance."
"In Canada, we're a nation of institutions, we're not a nation based on an idea or a set of founding documents," says Griffiths of the Dominion Institute. "There's no bedrock, there's not a terra firma to Canadian identity. It's something we make up very much on the fly." Plenty of Canadians have made their mark, but somehow that hasn't really helped define their homeland.
"People look at Celine Dion and say she's Canadian," says Biette.
But "is what she does Canadian?" And what about: Margaret Atwood, Douglas Coupland, Geddy Lee, Bruce Cockburn, Peter Jennings, Margaret Trudeau, Mike Myers, William Shatner, Keanu Reeves, Dan Aykroyd, Jim Carrey, Michael J. Fox, Margot Kidder, Pamela Anderson, Carrie- Anne Moss, k.d. lang, Neil Young, Alanis Morissette, Robbie Robertson, Paul Shaffer, Paul Anka, Shania Twain, Alex Trebek, Lorne Michaels.
But now with peace, pot and same-sex people saying "I do," something weird is happening. Could it be Canada is getting an identity? Even weirder, is it possible that Canada is becoming more American, and America is becoming more Canadian? A new nonfiction bestseller in Canada is called "Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values." It's based on surveys of Canadians and Americans about their values as sampled in 1992, 1996 and 2000.
"What emerges," writes Toronto-based author and pollster Michael Adams, "is a portrait of two nations evolving in unexpected directions: The once shy and deferential Canadians, who used to wait to be told by their betters what to do and how to think, have become more skeptical of traditional authority and more confident about their own personal decisions and informal arrangements. Americans, by contrast, seeking a little of the 'peace and order' that Canadians hoped 'good government' would provide, seem inclined to latch on to traditional institutional practices, beliefs, and norms as anchors in a national environment that is more intensely competitive, chaotic and even violent."
Adams found that Americans were adopting more conservative stances while showing more pessimism about the world. Canadians were moving in the opposite direction. Adams considers attitudes about "patriarchy" to be particularly revealing. He asked Americans and Canadians their view of the statement: "The father of the family must be the master in his own house." In 1992, 42 percent of Americans agreed strongly or somewhat, and 26 percent of Canadians did. By 2000, 49 percent of Americans agreed, 18 percent of Canadians.
Adams and other scholars point to the varying influence of religion in the two societies. Two-thirds of Americans think religion is important, while a third of Canadians do, according to polls. Nearly half of Americans say they attend church weekly, compared with one in five Canadians.
"We don't have Pat Buchanans and we don't have powerful religious movements shaping social policy the way you do," says Neil Nevitte, professor of political science at the University of Toronto, who also has measured national values.
continued.....
Low-key Canada lets its hair down, making America look fussy by comparison.
By David Montgomery
THE WASHINGTON POST; Washington Post staff researcher Margaret Smith contributed to this report.
July 14, 2003
Peaceniks, pot and people of the same sex exchanging wedding vows: It's a trinity from the church of high liberalism, or a right-wing trifecta of decline and doom.
Either way, it's a perfect storm of cultural weather patterns that you'd expect to be brewed only in, say, the East Village, Dupont Circle or the intersection of Haight and Ashbury.
But no! Can you say Saskatoon? Banff? Nunavut? Just when you had all but forgotten that carbon-based life exists above the 49th parallel, those sly Canadians have redefined their entire nation as Berkeley North.
"It's like we woke up and suddenly we're a European country," says Canadian television satirist Rick Mercer.
"We're supposedly the reactionary society," says Rudyard Griffiths, director of the Toronto-based Dominion Institute, which promotes Canadian citizenship and history. "We didn't have the revolution. You'd think we would be an inherently conservative society. There's the irony."
In March, Canada decided it was unwilling to join the "coalition of the willing" for the attack on Iraq. Unlike French wine and toast, Canadian bacon avoided boycott because somehow Canada's defection escaped notice.
In May, Canada proposed to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana and refocus law enforcement on traffickers. An herbal blend out of British Columbia known as "B.C. Bud" is attaining a reputation reminiscent of the old Panama Red and Maui Wowie.
In June, Canada decided to allow same-sex marriages. In comparison, the U.S. Supreme Court's striking down of the Texas sodomy law last week seems tame. Since the Canadian marriage right is construed as inalienable and open to all - sound familiar? - hundreds of gay Americans are streaming north to get married. Their nuptials will not be recognized at home, where a 1996 federal law decreed that marriage is strictly a man-woman thing. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), appearing July 6 on ABC's "This Week," called for amending the Constitution to ban gay marriages.
The news from Canada is just a little disorienting - no, shocking - for Americans. Depending on your view, isn't America supposed to be the cradle of the coolest, most cutting- edge culture? Didn't we invent civil rights? Alternatively, if such so-called cool culture is corrupt and these "rights" wrong, at least by golly we're supposed to get to Hell first.
Now Canada is leading the way.
And America is looking fussy, Victorian and imperial.
What happened to that clean, cold land of Mounties, Dudley Do-Right, loons on lakes, loons on coins, cheese on French fries? What of the goofy, front-teeth-missing, bad-haircut, lovable beer-and-doughnut civilization of hosers like Bob and Doug McKenzie, the characters created by Canadian comedians Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas? Eh? Bob would ponder conundrums like: "What is a six-pack equal to in metric conversion?" That's a Canada we recognize, where everyone speaks in a crisp nasal deadpan, even the French. It is the home of a self-deprecating and polite-to-the- point-of-invisible people. In Michael Moore's 1995 satirical film "Canadian Bacon," the Canadians say "pardon me," "excuse me" as the Americans club them like baby seals during an invasion to keep the military in business after the Soviets caved.
Toronto, observes one of the invaders, "is like Albany, only cleaner." In more noble moments, we admire the benefits that seem to come with a passive, upstanding, low-key, noncontroversial existence.
Moore's new film, "Bowling for Columbine," hails Canada as an unarmed, low-crime utopia Where Front Doors Are Unlocked.
But Canada is also like the well-behaved child who is fun to pound on the playground. "Blame Canada," goes the song in the 1999 "South Park" movie, which depicts another invasion scenario. (Why is the idea of going to war with Canada such an easy laugh?) "It seems like everything went wrong since Canada came along."
"We tend to think of them as the quiet, good people to the north," says David Biette, director of the Canada Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington.
Canadians are surprised by the stunned reaction to current events of their friends to the south. Is America's image racier than the reality? "I find it interesting that a country like the United States ... isn't at the same level on these issues as we are," says Amanda Hachey, a university student from New Brunswick, in Washington for an internship with an international consulting firm. "For example, you only have to go as far as watching 'That '70s Show,' where they're smoking marijuana on that show. It's an American show. You'd be thinking American culture would be accepting of those things." Or: "You watch 'Will & Grace.' There's two gay men on that show. It seems to present that it's totally accepted."
"Certainly we are ahead - if you want to call it that - on those two issues," says Lorna Hundt, manager of Great Canadian Holidays in Kitchener, Ontario. "As a Canadian, I'm proud." Majorities of Canadians support their government on the war, marijuana and same-sex marriage. The most negative reaction, at least to gay marriage, is coming from Alberta, which Canadians call their most "American" province: cowboys, oil men.
Maybe it's time to overhaul some old assumptions about national character.
At one time, all you needed to know was that America was created through revolution, under the slogan "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Canada was born of evolution and compromise under the slogan "peace, order and good government." America invented itself; Canada sort of happened.
The English settlers of what would become the United States were driven by religious freedom, as well as economic opportunity. The land of woods and lakes to the north attracted Frenchmen and Englishmen in pursuit of fur and a passage to Asia.
In America, groups besides white males acquired rights, immigrants came, industry was built, wars were won, music was made - and, in the process, the nation forged an identity.
Similar things happened in Canada, except the identity part. The nation has struggled to figure out who it was.
The winner of a radio contest some years ago to define the Canadian identity in one sentence was: "As Canadian as possible under the circumstance."
"In Canada, we're a nation of institutions, we're not a nation based on an idea or a set of founding documents," says Griffiths of the Dominion Institute. "There's no bedrock, there's not a terra firma to Canadian identity. It's something we make up very much on the fly." Plenty of Canadians have made their mark, but somehow that hasn't really helped define their homeland.
"People look at Celine Dion and say she's Canadian," says Biette.
But "is what she does Canadian?" And what about: Margaret Atwood, Douglas Coupland, Geddy Lee, Bruce Cockburn, Peter Jennings, Margaret Trudeau, Mike Myers, William Shatner, Keanu Reeves, Dan Aykroyd, Jim Carrey, Michael J. Fox, Margot Kidder, Pamela Anderson, Carrie- Anne Moss, k.d. lang, Neil Young, Alanis Morissette, Robbie Robertson, Paul Shaffer, Paul Anka, Shania Twain, Alex Trebek, Lorne Michaels.
But now with peace, pot and same-sex people saying "I do," something weird is happening. Could it be Canada is getting an identity? Even weirder, is it possible that Canada is becoming more American, and America is becoming more Canadian? A new nonfiction bestseller in Canada is called "Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values." It's based on surveys of Canadians and Americans about their values as sampled in 1992, 1996 and 2000.
"What emerges," writes Toronto-based author and pollster Michael Adams, "is a portrait of two nations evolving in unexpected directions: The once shy and deferential Canadians, who used to wait to be told by their betters what to do and how to think, have become more skeptical of traditional authority and more confident about their own personal decisions and informal arrangements. Americans, by contrast, seeking a little of the 'peace and order' that Canadians hoped 'good government' would provide, seem inclined to latch on to traditional institutional practices, beliefs, and norms as anchors in a national environment that is more intensely competitive, chaotic and even violent."
Adams found that Americans were adopting more conservative stances while showing more pessimism about the world. Canadians were moving in the opposite direction. Adams considers attitudes about "patriarchy" to be particularly revealing. He asked Americans and Canadians their view of the statement: "The father of the family must be the master in his own house." In 1992, 42 percent of Americans agreed strongly or somewhat, and 26 percent of Canadians did. By 2000, 49 percent of Americans agreed, 18 percent of Canadians.
Adams and other scholars point to the varying influence of religion in the two societies. Two-thirds of Americans think religion is important, while a third of Canadians do, according to polls. Nearly half of Americans say they attend church weekly, compared with one in five Canadians.
"We don't have Pat Buchanans and we don't have powerful religious movements shaping social policy the way you do," says Neil Nevitte, professor of political science at the University of Toronto, who also has measured national values.
continued.....