Posted on: Sunday, September 12, 2004
COMMENTARY
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By John Griffin
On the sixth day, God turned to Archangel Gabriel and said: "Today I am going to create a land called Canada. It will be a land of outstanding natural beauty. It shall have tall majestic mountains, goats and eagles, beautiful sparkling lakes bountiful with bass and trout, forests full of elk and moose, high cliffs overlooking sandy beaches with an abundance of sea life, and rivers stocked with salmon."
God continued: "I shall make the land rich in oil, so as to make the inhabitants prosper. I shall call these inhabitants Canadians, and they shall be known as the most friendly people on Earth."
"But Lord," asked Gabriel, "don't you think you are being too generous to these Canadians?"
"Not really," replied God. "Just wait and see the neighbors I am going to give them."
— From a Web site about Canadian jokes
Our trip to Canada this time took us around an inland mountain loop in southern British Columbia, the "lower mainland" as it is called in that western province which also includes islands stretching down to Washington state.
But a subtext for me was looking at my roots as the son of a French Canadian mother. I spent most of my first six years living in eastern Ontario province and was razzed about my Canadian accent (aboot instead of about, etc.) when I moved back to New York.
For the tourism record, Vancouver, British Columbia, now a direct flight on Aloha Airlines, is even more international with its continuing influx of immigrants, not just Chinese but also Indians, some Latinos, Iranians, Africans and Eastern Europeans. As in San Francisco, one also finds great contemporary cuisine, smashing scenery, young panhandlers and some drug problems.
Then there's the Canadian Rockies scenery that unfolds new snow-tipped drama every few miles, nice little towns (including Greenwood, where Canadian Japanese were interned during World War II), and even a booming wine country rising above long Lake Okanagan.
Many Canadians might not like the suggestion that British Columbia is sort of their nation's Northern California, but B.C. often does have that same liberal, hip, environmentalist, organic feel, even as it booms with tourism, industry and international trade. In contrast, neighboring, straight-shooting Alberta province struggles to update its Texas-like cowboy image.
But this is not a travel column so much as thoughts about how Canadians see themselves and Americans — a source of some unfair generalizations and many jokes with a rough edge of truth.
To that end, I even bought a humor book in inland Kamloops, a kind of B.C. Kansas City, Mo. The title: "How to Be a Canadian (even if you already are one)."
First, let's say our four-member group from the Aloha State agreed with the frequently stated view that Canadians are among the nicest people you'll ever meet — polite, civilized, curious and understated. Even a stinging comment often comes as a polite question with the inevitable ending "eh." As in: "You Americans aren't serious about re-electing Bush, are you, eh?"
So there's this undercurrent of comment and criticism that you don't get much as a tourist but see and hear in the Canadian media.
Take beer, for example. That's a subject on which Canadians consider their own product far ahead of ours. One humor Web site offers the "Top 10 Reasons for Being American," among them: "You can call Budweiser beer."
That book I bought suggests that Canadian beer, with its British-ale roots, may be overrated but is essential to the rugged national image. It adds: "Canada is a hopelessly middle-class, suburban nation whose average citizens couldn't pick a moose out of a police lineup. If Canadian society were an actor, it would be described as having 'bland good looks.' The Kevin Costner of nations, that's us."
Still stretching to make a valid point, author-brothers Will and Ian Ferguson have this to say about vital national relationships:
"The ongoing, long-simmering, deep-running rage that most Canadians direct against Americans is based upon the shocking fact that Americans — brace yourself — don't know very much about Canada. It's horrible. But true. ...
"Just as Canadians are obsessed with the Americans, looking down on them while still feeling threatened (a charming blend of insecurity and arrogance), so, too, do Quebecois nationalists look down on the rest of Canada, with the same blend of threatened insecurity and glib arrogance."
No doubt you can get lots of argument over points like that, but one thing that comes across to me is that Americans on many levels don't take Canada and its 31 million people seriously enough.
At best, we assume and sometimes talk about some special relationship and closeness. We may also recognize that many Canadians distinguish themselves in American society — from media stars to serious artists to scientists to business leaders.
President Bush once called Canadians "our most important neighbors to the north" as if we had many others up there. Yet his administration has insulted and alienated these good friends who have most often supported us pre-Iraq and don't want to be either ignored or taken for granted.
Too many Americans just see Canada as some kind of frost-bitten satellite of the United States. Yet I was surprised at how often Canada rates among the top 10 nations in The Economist magazine's annual book on world economic figures, including in business creativity and research.
Like most advanced countries, the government there provides everyone with health insurance. Yes, there are shortcomings and complaints, including about long waits for some services. But most Canadians still feel their "socialized medicine" system is better than the one in the United States that costs more and leaves out increasing numbers of working people who can't get or afford private insurance.
On another level, don't forget Canada is the world's second-largest nation in area, after Russia and close ahead of China and the United States.
Hawai'i, of course, has its own ties to Canada. That's most obvious in tourism, where visitors from Canada topped 200,000 last year. Yet Canadians are also here in the professions, arts and business, including ownership of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and Midweek publications.
Two of the more outgoing women I know in Hawai'i are Canadians. One of them notes that "Canadians often seem to come here and hide," which means they blend in and don't push their Canadianness.
What did I conclude as a sort of hapa Canadian long removed?
It's an easy place for Americans to feel comfortable because Canadians, if not cousins, are some of the best and closest friends we can have.
And yet Canada also has that edge of wanting to be recognized as proud and separate, not neglected or viewed as some secret candidate for American statehood.
Consider this: One of those Canadian humor-site "Top 10 Reasons for being Americans" is: "You can think you're the greatest nation on Earth even when you're not at all."
Canada, then, to me is another sobering reminder that the United States, for all its fine attributes, should not be considered the center of the universe or the savior of the world. It's a lesson we should be learning in Iraq and elsewhere.
Other views and more humility are important.
As my forebears might have said: "Vive la difference" — or however they spelled it.
John Griffin is a former editor of The Advertiser's editorial pages and a frequent contributor.
