What is Canadian Culture? your input.
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RE: What is Canadian Cult
I sing just a sick goat. Nobody wastes any Memorex tape on me. Actually sometimes they throw it at me for singing.
I sing just a sick goat. Nobody wastes any Memorex tape on me. Actually sometimes they throw it at me for singing.
and by the way I love your signature :lol:
What about "Ranking no. 01 on the Human Development Index of the UN", eh? ... The Netherlands is ranked 05 ... I hate that.
I wish this were true Gonzo but I'm afraid we'd only be fooling ourselve's if we truely believed it now a day's?Gonzo said:
My brother has a new neighbor that defected from communist russia before it was allowing it's population to leave the country legaly. The guy claim's that had he knowen how regimented and choked by law's Canadian's really were he wouldn't have bothered chancing leaving in the first place? Say's Canadian's have less freedom than did the russian people under communist rule, and that it was only proaganda that convinces the west differently. I tend to believe what the guy say's as he's got no reason to lie really and doesn't seem the type beside's?
For much of this century, Canadians have sought to define themselves by what they are not. Though many Canadians might object, all one has to do is ask a Canadian what it means to be a proud Canuck to see the illusion behind contemporary Canadian patriotism. Canadians will instinctively reply that to be Canadian is to be more caring, more multilateral, more socially aware than Americans. In other words, Canadians define themselves both by a negation – we are not Americans – and by an abstraction – we are not nationalistic, but globally, internationally and socially minded.
A bit of history
Canadians aren't Americans. That is the core of “Canadian ness”, and has been for 229 years. When American colonists fought Great Britain in the War of Independence, many of them imagined that Canadians would want to join them in freedom. The Articles of Confederation, the first governing charter of the United States, extended the invitation explicitly: ''Canada ... shall be admitted into, and entitled to all the advantages of, the Union.'' It wasn't to be. Canada became a launching ground for British attacks and a haven for Tory loyalists, 40,000 of whom fled northward.
Whatever Americans were, Canadians decided they were not. If Americans saw themselves as a new nation rooted in the soil of the New World, Canadians insisted they were loyal subjects of the crown. America was born through a noisy, clamorous revolution against Britain, whereas Canadians took pride in being a part of the British Empire. For 150 years, Ottawa sent no ambassador to Washington: Canadians were represented in the United States by the ambassador of Great Britain.
Then came the end of the British Empire, and with it, the collapse of the Canadian ethos. What did it mean to be the British North Americans once the British sun had set? Canadians were left with nothing but their old insistence on not being like Americans. And the more apparent it became that they were, in fact, just like Americans - they talked like Americans, dressed like Americans, saturated themselves with American culture, and overwhelmingly chose to live near the American border - the more frantically they searched for ways to prove their distinctiveness.
Modern Politics
But what else did the collapse of the British Empire bring onto Canada? Canada is an indecisive, quarrelsome country teetering on the brink of disunion. Canadian politics are filled with terms like "regional disparity", and all sorts of regional rivalries.
To French-speaking Canadians ("Canadiens", "Francophones","Quebecois" or "Acadiens"), the present border makes no sense. To them, if there is to be any border at all in North America above the Rio Grande, it should be around Quebec, separating English from French. Quebeckers (québecois) hate English Canada because they think English Canada doesn't understand them.
Western Canada, that region from the western edge of Ontario to the Pacific, has long been tired of domination by "Central Canada" (Ontario and Quebec) and wants more autonomy. Western Canadians hate Ontario because they think Ontario has too much pull, and think Quebec is a province of whiners.
The Atlantic provinces only care about their fishing industry, British Columbia its timber industry, and the northern territories just want the rest of Canada to leave them the hell alone.
Canadian Society
Canadians tend to actively search for any difference they can find between themselves and Americans in order to affirm their own identity. Specific examples often do prove to be true, but because in a general sense Canadians and Americans are indistinguishable, the Canadian is left on a never-ending quest to affirm that there is indeed a difference - something that makes them Canadian. They do this by counting up specific comparisons over a lifetime that prove differences and ignoring ones that show similarities. It's what Freud described as the narcissism of small differences.Canada in general seems to be suffering from a national inferiority complex, where Canadians feel insecure about their country's achievements, and their own strengths and capabilities. For example, as long as your murder rate per capita is less than that of the US, it’s “acceptable”, as long as your foreign aid as a percentage of GDP is greater than that of the US, it’s “acceptable” and pat yourselves on the back on a job well done. The popular song of “Arrogant Worms – War of 1812” pretty much proclaims that Canadians won the war of 1812, which in fact it was the British and for all intensive purposes it was a stalemate in terms of land acquisition. Alexander Graham Bell being hailed as a Canadian, when he requested that citizen of the US be placed on his gravestone, and Canadians didn’t even exist until your Citizenship act of 1947, up until which point you were regarded as British subjects. Canadians so easily get caught up in comparing themselves to each other and their southern neighbors that they can easily lose sight of what is superior about Canada, and I will speak of this at the end of my post.
In addition you also are knee deep in superior morality. Canadians like to think of themselves in laudatory terms. Day by day your media and education system inculcates you with the view that you are a tolerant, peace-loving and generous people. Of course, this is thought to stand in stark contrast to the US, your belligerent neighbor to the south, whose leaders are derided as immoral, arrogant, self centered and whose people are lampooned as halfwits.
Yet the notion that Canada is a world-renowned keeper of the peace is little more than a timeworn myth. Canadians see themselves as global peacekeepers, and this is reinforced in the Canadian press, vividly displayed on your currency, and echoed in conversations on the street. But the reality is different from the perception.
Using United Nations peacekeeping operations statistics, the Canadian contribution to UN missions is rather small. Of countries furnishing forces, Canada ranks 34th, placing it in the middle third of all nations contributing. Even within the Americas, Canada is not the largest contributor. Uruguay, Argentina, and the United States provide more peacekeeping personnel.
Canadians are also amazed that Americans know so little about Canada. In fact the average citizen in the world knows next to nothing about Canada other than it’s the second largest country in the world and that it’s located north of the United States! And when you realize how little in fact the world does know, you laugh about it. Doesn’t that say something to you? Hello? This just furthers my point as Canadians have brought this upon themselves. You lose your identity in the process of self-proclaiming yourselves not-American.
Canadians, proudly polite and intensely politically correct, would be shocked to be described as anti-American. Yet the chill toward Washington has saturated even further into Canadian society with a general derision of Americans.
Rick Mercer (CBC), does a segment on his show (and a whole special one time) called Talking to Americans. In it, he goes down to the states and just asks American people on the street various questions about Canada. It should say something that this is a COMEDY show and yet by a vast number of Canadians it has been taken as documentary evidence of American stupidity, arrogance and ignorance on geography and history. But here’s a thought on my part, have Rick Mercer do the same for Western European countries, would it be popular as it is? Probably not. Because Canadians need to justify their superior morality and by doing so (without realizing), it enhances their inferiority complex towards Americans. Hey, CBC has to make their money somehow.
Accustomed to hearing few complaints from the Oval Office, Canadians seemed somewhat taken aback after US ambassador to Canada Paul Cellucci voiced America’s displeasure with Canada before a Toronto audience. In a rare political move, Cellucci made it known that Americans are beginning to resent Canada for its rampant anti-Americanism and failure to join in the war against terror in Iraq. Americans are particularly upset with Canadians, said Celluci, because the US would immediately come to Canada’s aid if it faced a security threat. "There would be no debate. There would be no hesitation,” said Cellucci, “We would be there for Canada, part of the family.”
Well duh, so much for the elephant theory?
US – Canadian Relations
I’ve spent the past ten years of my life traveling in and out of Canada, and throughout most of it, I'd hear comparisons of Canada against the United States. I'd hear Canadian businesses comparing themselves against American businesses, Canadian professionals comparing themselves against American professionals, and Canadian cities comparing themselves against American cities.
And yet, Canadians by the hundreds of thousands have left Canada for the United States. Over a million Canadians overwinter in the U.S., and never feel that they are surrounded by foreigners. Canadian actors are cast as members of American families, and nobody, in either country, spots them as absurd imposters who stick out like a sore thumb from genuine Americans.
To the extent there ever were significant differences between English Canadians and Americans, in speech, in customs, in mindset, those differences have been eroded by the emergence of a transnational culture powered by a common language and conveyed by film, television, audio and video recordings, magazines, the Internet, and about 100 million of face-to-face personal encounters in travel annually.
Thankfully
"Canadian ness" is now seen by millions of Canadians as patent nonsense foisted upon them by years of nationalist indoctrination in the schools and media brainwashing. Even the young actor who mouthed stirring but essentially empty Canadian-nationalist sentiments in a diatribe for a hugely famous beer commercial, has moved to the United States. With him, before him, and following him are hundreds of thousands of the "best and brightest" of English Canada, who know that Canada is not significantly different from the United States.
And here am I at the end of my post, so after going on and on, what can define a Canadian? Kind, caring, hardworking, hard nosed and skeptical, committed to your environment, polite, tough fighters in war and the best of neighbors in peace.
And Canada? You have to realize that Canada is a new country, for all practical purposes as I mentioned earlier, you were British subjects till 1947. In a span of 58 years you have surpassed countries that have been around for millennia, in terms of economic growth, standard of living, social diversity, an education system equaled if not superior to that of the United States at 25% of the costs, a myriad of inventions, innovations that have contributed to humanity, and the list can go on. A vast and beautiful wilderness almost unparalleled in the Northern Hemisphere.
Isn’t that enough?
A bit of history
Canadians aren't Americans. That is the core of “Canadian ness”, and has been for 229 years. When American colonists fought Great Britain in the War of Independence, many of them imagined that Canadians would want to join them in freedom. The Articles of Confederation, the first governing charter of the United States, extended the invitation explicitly: ''Canada ... shall be admitted into, and entitled to all the advantages of, the Union.'' It wasn't to be. Canada became a launching ground for British attacks and a haven for Tory loyalists, 40,000 of whom fled northward.
Whatever Americans were, Canadians decided they were not. If Americans saw themselves as a new nation rooted in the soil of the New World, Canadians insisted they were loyal subjects of the crown. America was born through a noisy, clamorous revolution against Britain, whereas Canadians took pride in being a part of the British Empire. For 150 years, Ottawa sent no ambassador to Washington: Canadians were represented in the United States by the ambassador of Great Britain.
Then came the end of the British Empire, and with it, the collapse of the Canadian ethos. What did it mean to be the British North Americans once the British sun had set? Canadians were left with nothing but their old insistence on not being like Americans. And the more apparent it became that they were, in fact, just like Americans - they talked like Americans, dressed like Americans, saturated themselves with American culture, and overwhelmingly chose to live near the American border - the more frantically they searched for ways to prove their distinctiveness.
Modern Politics
But what else did the collapse of the British Empire bring onto Canada? Canada is an indecisive, quarrelsome country teetering on the brink of disunion. Canadian politics are filled with terms like "regional disparity", and all sorts of regional rivalries.
To French-speaking Canadians ("Canadiens", "Francophones","Quebecois" or "Acadiens"), the present border makes no sense. To them, if there is to be any border at all in North America above the Rio Grande, it should be around Quebec, separating English from French. Quebeckers (québecois) hate English Canada because they think English Canada doesn't understand them.
Western Canada, that region from the western edge of Ontario to the Pacific, has long been tired of domination by "Central Canada" (Ontario and Quebec) and wants more autonomy. Western Canadians hate Ontario because they think Ontario has too much pull, and think Quebec is a province of whiners.
The Atlantic provinces only care about their fishing industry, British Columbia its timber industry, and the northern territories just want the rest of Canada to leave them the hell alone.
Canadian Society
Canadians tend to actively search for any difference they can find between themselves and Americans in order to affirm their own identity. Specific examples often do prove to be true, but because in a general sense Canadians and Americans are indistinguishable, the Canadian is left on a never-ending quest to affirm that there is indeed a difference - something that makes them Canadian. They do this by counting up specific comparisons over a lifetime that prove differences and ignoring ones that show similarities. It's what Freud described as the narcissism of small differences.Canada in general seems to be suffering from a national inferiority complex, where Canadians feel insecure about their country's achievements, and their own strengths and capabilities. For example, as long as your murder rate per capita is less than that of the US, it’s “acceptable”, as long as your foreign aid as a percentage of GDP is greater than that of the US, it’s “acceptable” and pat yourselves on the back on a job well done. The popular song of “Arrogant Worms – War of 1812” pretty much proclaims that Canadians won the war of 1812, which in fact it was the British and for all intensive purposes it was a stalemate in terms of land acquisition. Alexander Graham Bell being hailed as a Canadian, when he requested that citizen of the US be placed on his gravestone, and Canadians didn’t even exist until your Citizenship act of 1947, up until which point you were regarded as British subjects. Canadians so easily get caught up in comparing themselves to each other and their southern neighbors that they can easily lose sight of what is superior about Canada, and I will speak of this at the end of my post.
In addition you also are knee deep in superior morality. Canadians like to think of themselves in laudatory terms. Day by day your media and education system inculcates you with the view that you are a tolerant, peace-loving and generous people. Of course, this is thought to stand in stark contrast to the US, your belligerent neighbor to the south, whose leaders are derided as immoral, arrogant, self centered and whose people are lampooned as halfwits.
Yet the notion that Canada is a world-renowned keeper of the peace is little more than a timeworn myth. Canadians see themselves as global peacekeepers, and this is reinforced in the Canadian press, vividly displayed on your currency, and echoed in conversations on the street. But the reality is different from the perception.
Using United Nations peacekeeping operations statistics, the Canadian contribution to UN missions is rather small. Of countries furnishing forces, Canada ranks 34th, placing it in the middle third of all nations contributing. Even within the Americas, Canada is not the largest contributor. Uruguay, Argentina, and the United States provide more peacekeeping personnel.
Canadians are also amazed that Americans know so little about Canada. In fact the average citizen in the world knows next to nothing about Canada other than it’s the second largest country in the world and that it’s located north of the United States! And when you realize how little in fact the world does know, you laugh about it. Doesn’t that say something to you? Hello? This just furthers my point as Canadians have brought this upon themselves. You lose your identity in the process of self-proclaiming yourselves not-American.
Canadians, proudly polite and intensely politically correct, would be shocked to be described as anti-American. Yet the chill toward Washington has saturated even further into Canadian society with a general derision of Americans.
Rick Mercer (CBC), does a segment on his show (and a whole special one time) called Talking to Americans. In it, he goes down to the states and just asks American people on the street various questions about Canada. It should say something that this is a COMEDY show and yet by a vast number of Canadians it has been taken as documentary evidence of American stupidity, arrogance and ignorance on geography and history. But here’s a thought on my part, have Rick Mercer do the same for Western European countries, would it be popular as it is? Probably not. Because Canadians need to justify their superior morality and by doing so (without realizing), it enhances their inferiority complex towards Americans. Hey, CBC has to make their money somehow.
Accustomed to hearing few complaints from the Oval Office, Canadians seemed somewhat taken aback after US ambassador to Canada Paul Cellucci voiced America’s displeasure with Canada before a Toronto audience. In a rare political move, Cellucci made it known that Americans are beginning to resent Canada for its rampant anti-Americanism and failure to join in the war against terror in Iraq. Americans are particularly upset with Canadians, said Celluci, because the US would immediately come to Canada’s aid if it faced a security threat. "There would be no debate. There would be no hesitation,” said Cellucci, “We would be there for Canada, part of the family.”
Well duh, so much for the elephant theory?
US – Canadian Relations
I’ve spent the past ten years of my life traveling in and out of Canada, and throughout most of it, I'd hear comparisons of Canada against the United States. I'd hear Canadian businesses comparing themselves against American businesses, Canadian professionals comparing themselves against American professionals, and Canadian cities comparing themselves against American cities.
And yet, Canadians by the hundreds of thousands have left Canada for the United States. Over a million Canadians overwinter in the U.S., and never feel that they are surrounded by foreigners. Canadian actors are cast as members of American families, and nobody, in either country, spots them as absurd imposters who stick out like a sore thumb from genuine Americans.
To the extent there ever were significant differences between English Canadians and Americans, in speech, in customs, in mindset, those differences have been eroded by the emergence of a transnational culture powered by a common language and conveyed by film, television, audio and video recordings, magazines, the Internet, and about 100 million of face-to-face personal encounters in travel annually.
Thankfully
"Canadian ness" is now seen by millions of Canadians as patent nonsense foisted upon them by years of nationalist indoctrination in the schools and media brainwashing. Even the young actor who mouthed stirring but essentially empty Canadian-nationalist sentiments in a diatribe for a hugely famous beer commercial, has moved to the United States. With him, before him, and following him are hundreds of thousands of the "best and brightest" of English Canada, who know that Canada is not significantly different from the United States.
And here am I at the end of my post, so after going on and on, what can define a Canadian? Kind, caring, hardworking, hard nosed and skeptical, committed to your environment, polite, tough fighters in war and the best of neighbors in peace.
And Canada? You have to realize that Canada is a new country, for all practical purposes as I mentioned earlier, you were British subjects till 1947. In a span of 58 years you have surpassed countries that have been around for millennia, in terms of economic growth, standard of living, social diversity, an education system equaled if not superior to that of the United States at 25% of the costs, a myriad of inventions, innovations that have contributed to humanity, and the list can go on. A vast and beautiful wilderness almost unparalleled in the Northern Hemisphere.
Isn’t that enough?
We love to fight with each other about almost everything, but let some outsider pick on even those we are fighting with and we come to their defence.
Somehow Canadians all feel like family, even those they don't like, yes we put up with each other because, hell, we all family. The second biggest thing that keeps us together is that we are not Americans.
Somehow Canadians all feel like family, even those they don't like, yes we put up with each other because, hell, we all family. The second biggest thing that keeps us together is that we are not Americans.
Thats true..I cannot stand most of my friends, but let somebody else pick on them and watch out :twisted: this also applies to nasty brothers :wink:
Re: RE: What is Canadian Culture? your input.
That's true, I see it on message boards more than anything.
damngrumpy said:
That's true, I see it on message boards more than anything.
I think not said:
A few things to correct, first of all. ''Canada'' I shall Québec for this period. We we're Canada. Only francophones, a few anglophones. 1 000 000 British fled. Over 200 000 settles in any of the 4 british Colonies of the time. 40 000 of them in what was part of Québec (Now Ontario).
We didnt join in your revolution because you failed to communicate to the French population what exactly it is you we're doing. To my ancesters, replacing one english ruler by another was all the same. The british conquest broke us, we we're a demoralised people. With no hope.
Now your logic behind settleling near the American border is ridiculous. Its just logical that we did. the means of transportation at the time we're boats, and that only. We settles near the Saint-Lawrence. And that stayed. Its also warmer, to the south then it is in the northern lands. I can atest to that. I moved from Montreal to the Saguenay area, and its quite colder. Though no humidity. Also ''Les basses Terres du Saint-Laurent'' are flat lands, and fertile. For a culture of farmers, its perfect. Where as, Starting just a few kilometers north of Québec city, its moutain ranges all along. Farming at the time was impossible in this type of terrain, though now alot of farms do exist. Its only a recent event.
But for the rest, I do agree. Though I don't really feel any connection between my culture and that of the canadians, they do identity themselves as none Americans. I, and my culture, do not need to do that. Our difference is clearly lined. We have our own Artists, actors, directors, TV shows, award shows, celebrations, dances. Fast food is the only thing we share with Americans and Canadians. Besides that, we have a more European style of eating. Whine, pain baguette, love for cheese. Gormet foods. If you consider us Canadians, then Canadians truly are different then Americans.