Mon Apr 25/05
Relapsed Canadian

Wow. So I took a playful swipe at Kathy Shaidle, and she e-mailed back in the same spirit. Then I accused her of sorta hating Canada, which was slightly less playful, but she has basically conceded the point. "Chris… expressed his… belief that Canada is an inherently noble nation," she began, "marred by the temporary existence of certain bad politicians." Well, not marred just by the politicians — there are lots of things in Canada that piss me off — but yeah, look at us. Gleaming skyscrapers, fertile plains, soaring peaks and tranquil valleys, from sea to shining sea. Great quality of life, a free press, more rights and freedoms than we know what to do with... stop me if I'm wrong.

Indeed, "inherently noble" seems to me both inescapably true and an understatement. Not so to Kathy:

I have no such mystical beliefs in Canada's cosmic wonderfulness, although I once did, as I think most Canadians do. For the first thirty-five years of my life, my mind was pleasantly stuffed with great Canadian poetry and Gordon Lightfoot tunes and the Hockey Night in Canada themesong (which still brings a tear to my eye) and NFB documentaries and Terry Fox and Hinterland Who's Who and whatever.

Right — pleasantly stuffed with being Canadian. I don't think I'm imagining the vaguely pejorative tone there, the very Canadian tendency to regard the artifacts of our nationhood as flimsy, if not counterfeit. Canadian poetry? Wankers! Gordon Lightfoot? The punchline to a joke about Celine Dion, Nickelback and Anne Murray. NFB documentaries? Hinterland Who's Who? State-funded propaganda. Terry Fox? Man, that was 30 years ago.

We feel much freer than Americans, I think, in criticizing our country, and in general that's a good thing. For better or for worse (and quite possibly because it's the opposite of being American), the Canadian ego is largely impervious to pledges of allegiance and the waving of flags and the like. On the other hand, I think you have to do a lot better than Kathy does if you're going to ignore all the empirical evidence and declare Canada an ignoble undertaking (Kathy's emphasis):

But: who elected those bad politicians? Surely there is something wrong with the people who live here, now. Maybe there always has been and I'd just been caught up in the hype.

Again, it's not hype! That warm bed I sleep in, that pension that's waiting for me, that freedom to call Paul Martin as many names as I want without fear of reprisal — they're all real. To suggest that Canadians have some sort of chromosomal defect because they kept voting for Sad Sack, and then for Son of Sad Sack, is just weak. Would everything have been fine if we'd all been on board for one of Stockwell Burt Day, Joe Clark, Jean Charest, Preston Manning or Kim Campbell? Come on, Kathy — it's been hold your nose or stay home since I've been of voting age. If this is how you're judging your country, at least give the voters a chance to send the bad guys packing with Adscam laid bare. 

As for the whole "poor people" issue, all I can say is that the latter half of Kathy's post is a pretty gripping read (Kathy's emphasis again):

You don't have to become a pro hockey player or marry a rich guy or invent something incredible or win the damn lottery [to not be poor]. You just have to NOT be a stupid lazy slut. I listened to the nuns, the other kids didn't. I'm entitled to gloat once in a brief while.

By all means. My little zinger wasn't meant to imply that Kathy was wrong about poor people "only car[ing] about beer, donuts and lottery tickets," but rather to suggest something humorous that would fit in with the swirling vortex of negative comic energy that was her original post. Based on her experiences, Kathy is certainly qualified to comment (and I, a (once) rich Torontonian, am certainly not). I think she takes some liberties with her sketch of the middle class, though, and I'm not sure how any of it is an indictment of my beloved Bananada. Poverty and its attendant misery and teenage pregnancies and donut-eating are not uniquely Canadian phenomena any more than affluent urban liberal smugness. It's spring and we're not from Turkmenistan. I'm counting my blessings and Kathy's invited.