I had an interesting conversation with some friends, in which we discussed whether the Canadian identity was primarily based on the ceaseless struggle to NOT be Americans. Even looking back to the revolutionary war, the war of 1812, confederation, and the settling of the west it seems as if Canadians have been obsessed with keeping the USA at bay. Is the Canadian identity nothing more than the never ceasing struggle not to be Americans?
Canadian Identity: un-American
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Superficially it may appear that way, but it's a huge oversimplification. Try John Ralston's Saul's A Fair Country for an interesting take on it. He argues that Canada is really a Metis nation, that our institutions and values have been strongly shaped by the aboriginal presence here. It's pretty heavy going, like most of his stuff, and I haven't finished it yet so my comments may be premature, but anybody who seriously wants an answer to that question would do well to read it.
On thinking it over for a few hours... No. Read our respective constitutional documents. Where the American ones talk about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the Canadian ones talk about peace, order, and good government. That's the key difference. Canada has a much more collectivist orientation than the United States (which John Ralston Saul argues comes from our aboriginal heritage), and it's most obvious in our social safety nets. Universal publicly funded health care, unemployment insurance, Canada Pension Plan... Google "Regina Manifesto" and read what it says there about what should be appropriate public policy and you'll see the difference. That document would have been condemned as communist in the United States, yet it's the basis of our social safety net that every political party in Canada supports. Canadians are very different from Americans.
I read one of Saul's books on this topic, Reflections of a Siamese Twin and I think he overplays the aboriginal presence in Canadian history. There aren't that many Canadians have ancestors who participated in the fur trade. Quick, name the tribe Pocahontas was part of. Quicker, name a famous Canadian Indian. Can you name an Iroquois Indian?
The Cdn elites have to avoid the race card, because so few Canadians have aboriginal ancestry they have to rely on the fur trade and proximity. To me it is like the millions of people who claim ancestry to Pocahontas, yet very very few English, and then Americans ever married Indians. When one compares how quickly Spanish men married Indians after Columbus landed, and produced many mixed race babies, you see a huge difference.
Consider how aboriginals constantly complain of a lack of rights, being herded on reserves and denied rights for so long, I wonder some days if Saul reads Canadian newspapers.
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Pocohontas was American, not Canadian and was Algonkin. Off the top of my head, Big Bear and Jay Silverheels were pretty famous. Are Haudenosaunee un-nameable? Why can't they be named?
huh? Who relies on the fur trade and proximity? And why should they have to?
Ever thought of kids whose parents didn't get married?
Perhaps the Spanish were more religious and actually viewed aboriginals as actual people. It's hard to marry someone when you don't think they are quite human.
Who would that be? And if you can find people like that, do they have the same rights they had before Europeans came along?
It's only been recently that aboriginals have ventured out into the paleface (I still chuckle about that word) world. Give us time. Hopefully when we become more and more "off-res" we will still hang onto our cultures rather than just plain adapt to this watered-down generic "culture" the paleface brought.
Why? I bet most people get news off tv or the net. lol
I suppose there is always a number of wing nuts who think that way, trying to identify with or not identify with certain people. Most confident people just work hard at trying to be themselves and I'm sure there are lots of Americans that way. I've travelled to the U.S. a lot in the past 20 years and in all that time not one person comes to mind that I've found repugnant, sure they may speak a little differently than us and have slightly different interests (I believe in some part of Nevada duck racing is popular) Big Deal.
It is comparable to Quebec not wishing to lose their identity and culture to the ROC - Same - Same - Yet one major difference between Canada and the US is we achieved Independence peacefully - the US did not - also the US went thru a Major civil war partially based upon slavery - other issues were also involved - such as the right to secede from the Union - contries that have had civil wars and or achieve their identity - Independence thru war have felt the repercussions for centuries.
In a sense that is true, we pride ourselves on not being American. However, that by itself means nothing. What does it mean when we say we are not Americans?
The British are not Americans, Russians are not Americans, Saudis are not Americans, North Koreans are not Americans. Yet these communities are totally different from each other.
So not being American is only part of the story. An identity cannot be defined solely in a negative manner. Just saying we are not American by itself is meaningless.
Americans value individual rights above anything else. Perhaps as an antidote to that, a substantial minority (the religious right) does not care for individual rights, they want to enact a sort of Christian Sharia in USA (ban abortion, legalize school prayers, force the teaching of Creationism, limit the availability of contraception, deny equal rights to gays, all these things go against individual rights).
While Canadians remain strongly committed to individual rights, Canadians also emphasize group rights. Also, we look after our poor much better than Americans do, we provide them with generous social assistance (more generous than they provide in USA anyway), free health care etc.
Canadians are also more respectful of the authority than Americans. We don’t mind Queen being the head of state. Respect for authority is one of the reasons why the gay marriage debate in Canada was over in a few years. Once the courts and Parliament had their say, Canadians regarded the matter as closed. In USA they will be fighting this battle for several decades yet.
So in a sense it is true, we pride ourselves on not being Americans. But it is much more than that.
How about the clan system we inherited from the Scots-Irish? Bit of a safety net. For Canadians. In the beginning.
Way back when, we had to stick together; then, we internalized the social safety net. Lately it's becoming a bit unstuck.
A strong collective conscience is usually determined to be of Canadian origin. Once again, becoming a bit unravelled. We probably ain't seen nothing yet.
Is it ok if I comment on our differences from the Yanks without referring to a weighty tome (which I would like to read, but haven't yet)?
Strongly shaped by aboriginal..............mehhhhhhh, whatever. How about two parallel systems, and trains of thought?
Course then, I could be wrong.8O
Something everyone is forgetting, is that if Great Briton had won the American Revolution, Canada and America would most likely have been absorbed into one nation and today there would probably be no Canada. Civil war between the North and South would probably still have happened, but not with slavery as a main issue, but over economics. Native Americans would have been treated much worse than they were in the U.S. in todays world. So many things would be different, you probably would not like what would have happened. The British Empire would probably still be with us though.
Hmmm. A Civil War with Great Briton.
Real odd. Not bashing the post however. If the Colonies lost the Revolution and remained British and eventually the Brits banned slavery I wonder what the southern colonies would have done. There would not be an issue of states right because there would be no states.
As it stood the Brit sympathies were alligned with the South. The Brits had a problem providing real support because of slavery. The Brits weren't allies or even friends with the US Government but they were not so sure that overt support of the South would be in their best interest as they were not convinced the South could win.
The Battle of Gettysburg confirmed that.
Real odd. Not bashing the post however. If the Colonies lost the Revolution and remained British and eventually the Brits banned slavery I wonder what the southern colonies would have done. There would not be an issue of states right because there would be no states.
As it stood the Brit sympathies were alligned with the South. The Brits had a problem providing real support because of slavery. The Brits weren't allies or even friends with the US Government but they were not so sure that overt support of the South would be in their best interest as they were not convinced the South could win.
The Battle of Gettysburg confirmed that.
Yeah, Canadians are bastards alright. Funny. I don't hear a lot of Canadians screaming loudly over the 7 billion dollar plus budget of the Dept of Indian and Northern Affairs. Divide that money amongst all the First Nations people and it works out to about ten thousand dollars a year for each of them or forty thousand for a family of four. I know they don't all get this money but maybe they should have a good talk with their chiefs. Somebody gets it. What other group in Canada is treated like this? None that I can think of. We've been throwing money at the first nations so long it seems natural. Read up on Davis Inlet to show how stupid we are.
The "clan" system was here when the Europeans got here. My Dad's side of the family are a subgroup of the Bear clan of the Anishinaabe.
What I see is an increase in bipartisanship. "You're either for us or agin us" kind of nonsense. People will group up, have no worries about that. And the more localized the group, the stronger the bonds.
Or United States. It would likely be something quite different than either.
Or it might have ended up being mostly an indigenous continent. All that would have taken would have been an assembling of the various nations into one group. There were a couple "chiefs" that attempted that in a more downsized way.
No doubt the US would have looked different but I do not believe the Natives would have had much luck.
I agree, the natives wouldn't have stood a chance no matter who won, they had their chance when we first arrived. We all would just have had to come up with a new country name, states would have become provinces or states. France probably would have lost the Louisiana Purchase thru war, Russia would have remained in Alaska. Whalers would have still taken over Hawaii. Canada was only made up of Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Quebec (Upper and Lower Canada), "Ruperts Land", the rest was unexplored in 1775-1791. Would California have been drawn away from Mexico, would Mexico have broken with Spain? Our whole world would be different. Hard to imagine anything different than what we now have.
I don't think we spend our days trying to be different than Americans, we just are.
We view the world differently. from economics to foreign affairs. In history we as
a nation evolved differently, Canada was not born out of a defiant revolution it was more of a series of discussions of what a country would look like. Thus the peace order and good government angle. The US is more of a melting pot than we
are, instead we celebrate and complain about each others differences.
Sometimes it creates bickering but when trouble strikes Canadians pull together
more across cultural and ethnic lines. Canadians don't see other nations differences as part of a boogie man image, Cuba is a prime example of what I
mean. American rhetoric talks about Cuba as that imprisoned Island etc, where
we tend to deal with reality and not the rhetorical aspect of that country.
Simplified, that is one example of what I mean.
We view the world differently. from economics to foreign affairs. In history we as
a nation evolved differently, Canada was not born out of a defiant revolution it was more of a series of discussions of what a country would look like. Thus the peace order and good government angle. The US is more of a melting pot than we
are, instead we celebrate and complain about each others differences.
Sometimes it creates bickering but when trouble strikes Canadians pull together
more across cultural and ethnic lines. Canadians don't see other nations differences as part of a boogie man image, Cuba is a prime example of what I
mean. American rhetoric talks about Cuba as that imprisoned Island etc, where
we tend to deal with reality and not the rhetorical aspect of that country.
Simplified, that is one example of what I mean.
Pocahontas did not have American, if you mean European parents. she had aboriginal parents. Four centuries later we say she was an American Indian.
But is Big Bear and the others on Canadians's lips? I doubt it. I've asked people what tribe Pocahontas was in, and none knew.
Saul says we ought to remember the fur trade, which in Canada relied on Indians. This was not the case in the US by a long shot. Yet, few of us feel much attachment to the fur trade he feels. The fur trade did make Canada but we have forgotten it. We have a strange history in Canada.
The French and Spanish married Indians, but the English always kept their distance. Metis and mestizo are perfectly acceptable words in French and Spanish, but halfbreed is not. Haflbreed is an English word, but because so few English settlers in North America married Indians, the word is taboo. What occurred on a small physical level with a few people, is not accepted by the wider culture.