The Truth About Ourselves
If you didn’t know that our country is turning 142 years old tomorrow, just look at our national news magazine or our national newspaper, esteemed chroniclers of a people’s progress.
Maclean’s publishes a survey this week telling us how great we are. Last year it compared Canada with the United States and found that we’re superior in almost every way.
This year it surveys the world and, guess what? We’re better than everyone else, too.
We have more televisions than the Japanese, we eat better than the French, we live longer than the Swedes, we have more lovers than the Italians, we are more industrious than the Germans. And, of course, we’re richer and safer than the Americans.
We’re the best place on earth. We have the world’s best banks, we have little corruption, we eschew guns, we live longer than most people, we offer citizenship more than anyone else.
Maclean’s also applauds our sense of humour, which this cover story surely reflects. If it makes us feel good to believe that our food is better, our lovemaking is finer or our work ethic is stronger — all fundamentally immeasurable — that’s funny. Or sad.
On the superiority of our cuisine, the authority is a Canadian lawyer who lived in Paris. On safety, the authority is Joseph Boyden, the luminous writer who lived in New Orleans and feels safer in Canada. A survey in Men’s Health magazine emboldens Maclean’s to declare that Canada is the world’s “second-most relaxed” country.
All this falls somewhere between dubious and hilarious; any city in Canada is safer than New Orleans but then so is every city in the U.S. But hey, we need to say this about ourselves, don’t we?
If Maclean’s is mischievous on this anniversary, The Globe and Mail is serious. In a front-page essay on “the lies our country told us,” it declares that the North “has never been part of the Canadian identity.”
This is presented as news, as if Canadians had laboured under the great delusion that the North genuinely mattered to them. In a country with 80 per cent of its people strung along the American border, the truth is that the North has never been part of our southern consciousness, much less our experience.
As the Globe points out, we have ignored the Arctic — our national anthem and John Diefenbaker’s “Northern Vision” notwithstanding. And that’s why we are rushing to assert sovereignty today with promises of ports and icebreakers.
In the words of Leonard Cohen, the Globe discloses what everybody knows.
In both publications, we see a need to demystify ourselves, even if it confirms the obvious, and the need to celebrate ourselves, even if it is silly. This flows from ignorance and insecurity.
The Globe wouldn’t have to correct “the lies” — surely the words of a breathless editor — if we knew more about our past. Maclean’s would not have to resort to self-congratulation if we had self-confidence.
Why not, on Canada Day — a name of crashing banality — try a little honesty?
We may be more industrious than the Germans, but they have Mercedes and BMW, they support culture, they travel more than any other people. Our auto industry is failing, our cultural spending is miserly and our productivity is falling.
We may be wealthier than the Americans, but they have better universities, museums, libraries, parks and public architecture. In a burst of imagination, they are encouraging renewable energy, re-making health care and revisiting education.
We have more televisions than Japan, but they have better trains. They figured out energy conservation a generation ago. And who but us would boast about having more televisions, anyway? Is this another well-worn conceit of “world class” Canada?
On this birthday, we remain prudent and conservative, which is why our banks are mercifully solvent. Bless our bankers. But we also have few innovative companies because we won’t take risks. As Peter C. Newman said, “we are a nation of life insurers.”
We are tolerant and diverse, yes. It gives us cultural richness and yes, ethnic food. It has also created Hotel Canada, reflected in a weak-kneed, wooly-minded notion of citizenship that considers giving Torontonians the right to vote in civic elections before they become citizens. Only in Canada.
We are soldiers and humanitarians, and our admirable internationalism takes us to Afghanistan. Yet we’ve fallen off the map everywhere else and we’re struggling to win a temporary seat on the UN Security Council.
We are moderate, conciliatory, pragmatic, sensible and historically well-governed. We are blessed, doubly blessed with good fortune. It has made us unconscious, cavalier and complacent.
Ah, Canada. A good nation but not yet a great one.
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