Canadians

Praise for
Canadians

“In the quest to define our national identity, the most essential question was asked by the greatest of our literary critics, Northrop Frye: ‘Where is “here”?' Finally we have the answer: In the pages of Roy MacGregor's magnificent new book,
Canadians
.”

—Peter C. Newman

“Longtime readers of Roy MacGregor, or even fortunate newcomers to his graceful unfolding style, may be excused for thinking the writer is actually trained in medicine. So precise is his diagnosis of Canadian-ness, so clear and crisp are his stories, so full of rich, revealing detail, so apt are his anecdotes and adjectives from a lifetime of storytelling that we come to think of him as a well-trained professional who can see inside the unique creature that is the Canadian.

“Canadians will smile and nod and even wince at times as they travel along with him across this broad body of sprawling bright lands and deep dark waters and [meet] open people who have so much chronic difficulty understanding themselves and, thus, being understood by others. We can only hope that, first, Canadians will grasp the elegant lessons of ‘Canada: the line down the middle of the road.' Then, just maybe, if we're lucky, the rest of the world will follow suit. And we'll all have Dr. MacGregor to thank.

“In short, Roy MacGregor's new book is a national treasure.”

—Andrew H. Malcolm, author of
The Canadians

“Writing a book that tries to explain Canada to Canadians is in many ways a gift … MacGregor unfolds a fascinating depiction of Canada …
Canadians
is a sprawling book. But it does capture the essence of our diversity; it does evoke the spirit of this beautiful, undefinable set of contradictions that make up Canada … A couple of the chapters are powerful enough to bring a reader to tears.”

—Aritha Van Herk,
Calgary Herald

“It's hard to think about anyone more qualified than Roy MacGregor to write a book that truly is a portrait of Canada.”

—
The Chronicle-Journal
(Thunder Bay)

“MacGregor cuts to the bone of what it is to be Canadian … MacGregor interprets Canada not only as a country and as a nation, but as an idea, an imaginative construct that often defies reason and logic but one that continues to speak to many who call this insistently unknowable place home.”

—
The Record
(Kitchener-Waterloo)

“
Canadians
stands as a superior example of reportage and a reckoning of a journalistic career of more than three decades … MacGregor has a unique ability to balance objective reportage with a keen, emotional core; he has a good eye for the human interest angle, which intensifies his editorial thrust …
Canadians
is, in the final reckoning, a series of snapshots of our varied and diverse cultures, an insight into worlds and events that may be utterly foreign to some of us, but are, at their heart, fundamentally our own.”

—
Ottawa Citizen

“If passion for our country counts, Roy MacGregor certainly has it. In Canadians he shares that passion with us again, leavened with a generous sprinkling of humour. Perhaps, as he says himself, it is only another exercise in examining our own belly-button lint, but if so, I never imagined lint could be so fascinating.”

—
The Hamilton Spectator

“MacGregor's writing in
Canadians
is clear, crisp, and easy to read—the qualities that have allowed him such a long and successful career…”

—
Quill & Quire

“MacGregor writes about us while at the same time seamlessly identifying himself as one of us. Canadians is a charming book, and MacGregor is a graceful writer.” —
Winnipeg Free Press

“He brings a rare—and trust me, admirable—touch to his work … A worthy and entertaining effort, reminding us of shameful shortcomings and how we can get it so right, even spectacularly so … In many ways, travelling over time, topics, and geography, often courtesy of MacGregor's first-person, on-site observations, by anecdotes and quotations, Canadians the book reflects that. The overall effect after a read offers quiet, clear-eyed reassurance.”

—
Edmonton Journal

“The book's greatest strength is the sense of the country and its people that emerge—personal, impressionistic, improvisatory, transitory, speculative. This is journalism of a high order … MacGregor interprets Canada not only as a country and as a nation, but as an idea, an imaginative construct that often defies reason and logic but one that continues to speak to many who call this place home.”

—
Guelph Mercury

PENGUIN CANADA

CANADIANS

ROY MACGREGOR is the acclaimed and bestelling author of
The Home Team: Fathers, Sons, and Hockey
(shortlisted for the Governor General's Award) and
A Life in the Bush
(winner of the U.S. Rutstrum Award for Best Wilderness Book and the CAA Award for Biography), as well as two novels,
Canoe Lake
and
The Last Season
, and the popular Screech Owls mystery series for young readers. He has twice won the Ottawa-Carleton Book Award.

A regular columnist at
The Globe and Mail
since 2002, MacGregor has written for publications including the
National Post
, the
Ottawa Citizen
,
Maclean's
magazine, and the
Toronto Star
. His journalism has garnered four National Magazine Awards and eight National Newspaper Award nominations.

In 2005, he was made an officer of the Order of Canada. He is described in the citation as one of Canada's “most gifted storytellers.”

Roy MacGregor lives in Kanata, Ontario.

 

 

Also by Roy MacGregor

 

The Dog and I: Confessions of a Best Friend

The Weekender: A Cottage Journal

Escape: In Search of the Natural Soul of Canada

A Loonie for Luck

A Life in the Bush

Canoe Lake

The Last Season

The Home Team

Road Games

Chief: The Fearless Vision of Billy Diamond

Home Game
(with Ken Dryden)

The Screech Owl Mystery Series
(for young readers)

Forever: The Annual Hockey Classic

For Helen and Duncan, mother and father,

who passed on their deep love of the land—and

who always had patience for young explorers

PENGUIN CANADA

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.)

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in a Viking Canada hardcover by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 2007

Published in this edition, 2008

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (WEB)

Copyright © Roy MacGregor, 2007

Epigraph on page viii: “Canadians” by Miriam Waddington. Permission to reprint granted by Jonathan and Marcus Waddington.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Manufactured in Canada.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

MacGregor, Roy, 1948–

Canadians : a portrait of a country and its people / Roy MacGregor.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-14-305308-8

1. National characteristics, Canadian. 2. Canada. I. Title.

FC97.M315 2008    971   C2008-901400-6

ISBN-13: 978-0-14-305308-8

ISBN-10: 0-14-305308-6

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Visit the Penguin Group (Canada) website at
www.penguin.ca

Special and corporate bulk purchase rates available; please see
www.penguin.ca/corporatesales
or call 1-800-810-3104, ext. 477 or 474

Contents

The Hands of Alexandria

1
    The Unknown Country

2
    A Canadian Is …

3
    The Midway Mirror

4
    The Wind That Wants a Flag

5
    Hockey, the National Id

6
    The Canada of the Imagination

7
    The Shrinking of the World

8
    Missing, Minor, Middling, or Moral World Power?

9
    The Invisible Founders

10
    Pier 21 to Pearson

11
    Prairie Ghosts

12
    The New Two Solitudes

13
    The Colony of Dreams

14
    City Elephant, Country Mouse

15
    
Nous Nous Souvenons

16
    North of Summer

 

Roots and Rocks

Acknowledgments

Selected Readings

 

 

… We look

like a geography but

just scratch us

and we bleed

history, are full

of modest misery

are sensitive

to double-talk double-take

(and double-cross)

in a country

too wide

to be single in.

Are we real or

did someone invent

us …?

—Canadians

MIRIAM WADDINGTON, 1968

The Hands of Alexandria

I HAVE NO IDEA who he was.

A Canadian, obviously. And perhaps that's all we need to know about him apart from this:

He stood on the east side of the tracks near Casselman, a small farming community in southeastern Ontario that sits along the rail line between Ottawa and Montreal. He was an older man, wearing rust-coloured coveralls and high green rubber boots, and he stood so dead centre in the field he'd been turning over that it seemed he must have paced it off for effect.

He stood at attention beside his green John Deere tractor. He picked off his cap with his left hand and slowly raised his right over a long weathered face to a forehead white as the day he was born.

And saluted.

One loner to another.

The famous loner—a man who saw himself as a solitary paddler and was seen by others as a stand-alone gunslinger—could not salute back from where he lay on-board VIA Rail train no. 638. He could not toss out one of those easy, sarcastic jibes he periodically threw at farmers—
“Why should I sell your wheat?”
—and he most assuredly could not raise his hand and give the middle finger to those lining the tracks, as he had done years earlier from a train carrying him and his sons through British Columbia. No, Pierre Elliott Trudeau was dead at eighty, the personality who had dominated the first third of this country's second century as surely as Sir John A. Macdonald had dominated the first third of its first century, gone forever and on his way home to Montreal for burial.