Canadians (24 page)

Perhaps it's only fitting for a country with water on three sides that things tend to come in waves in Canada. Meech and Charlottetown had pounded the shore and the 1995 Quebec referendum had threatened to turn into a tidal wave, but then relative calm, albeit with the usual ripples, had followed. That Meech had led to the rise of the Bloc in Quebec and reinforced the rise of Reform in the West only underlined the old theory, first voiced by Trudeau cabinet minister Jean Marchand, that Canada is more like five countries than one. Its face automatically includes at least one nose out of joint.

And yet, in surprising ways this increased regionalization turned to an advantage. Jean Chrétien came to office in 1993 with a clear majority and an opposition so regionalized and marginalized that he was able to return to a style of prime ministership not seen since the days of Mackenzie King, running the country more as a part-time hobby than anything else. As F.R. Scott wrote of King in his marvellous poem “W.L.M.K.,” the secret of Canada's longest-sitting prime minister had been to “Do nothing by halves / Which can be done by quarters.”

Chrétien wasn't Mackenzie King, but he did vow not to resurrect the issue of the Constitution. His government concentrated on jobs and the economy, as promised during the election campaign. And despite that one chilling scare in the fall of 1995, when Premier Jacques Parizeau and Lucien Bouchard came within a whisker of winning the Quebec sovereignty referendum, the country largely went back to sleep on those matters that turn the bumblebee on its back.

Canada, however, woke up that bright Tuesday morning in September 2001 to a world that had changed. The country quickly joined the NATO-led deployment against the Taliban forces in Afghanistan, but when talk of invading Saddam Hussein's Iraq followed, Canada balked. It
became popular for politicians and Canadians to take the moral high ground, but closer to the truth was that Canada couldn't afford it. The military, once so proud, had been allowed to decline over the years of constitutional warring to a point where barely enough “might” was on hand to get to Afghanistan.

The Chrétien government had its UN ambassador, Paul Heinbecker, work hard behind the scenes to bring about a Security Council resolution that would have given UN weapons inspectors more time to determine whether Iraq really did possess the weapons of mass destruction that Powell had so convincingly argued it had. Five years later Heinbecker would tell me he was being quietly encouraged by both American and British UN officials who saw the planned invasion as “a catastrophe unfolding.” As he so wistfully put it, “what we might have avoided.”

Powell might not have won the day with the Security Council, but he certainly did with the American people and, backed up by Tony Blair, a U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq. No weapons were found, of course, and the quick, definitive victory began turning into what, by the winter of 2006–07, was being regularly compared to the American fiasco in Vietnam a generation earlier. But early on in the military action no American sympathy was to be had for doubters either inside or outside its borders.

When Canada, like Germany, like France, raised initial questions about the advisability of the military action, what little glow was left on its friendship in the hours and days following the 9/11 attacks quickly dissipated. First there was the prime minister's communications adviser calling Bush a “moron” for his decision to take his “War on Terrorism” into Iraq when no clear link had been established between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden and no firm evidence of Powell's feared weapons of mass destruction. A member of the Liberal caucus, Toronto MP Carolyn Parrish, was caught saying “Damn Americans—I hate those bastards!” and months later exacerbated the situation by gleefully stomping a George W. Bush doll on CBC's satirical show
This Hour Has 22 Minutes
.

Then it got nasty.

By the time President Bush came to Canada on an official state visit eleven days after the Parrish stomp, the media on both sides of the border were in full sniper mode. When Parrish—who'd been immediately booted out of the Liberal caucus and forced to sit as an Independent—appeared on CNN's
Wolf Blitzer Reports, Crossfire
's rather precious bow tie, Tucker Carlson, suggested that “without the U.S., Canada is essentially Honduras—colder and a lot less interesting.” Not particularly witty, but more than enough to get well under Canadians' thin skin.

The American media piled on. The country was ridiculed by Pat Buchanan as “Canuckistan.” It was mocked as “limpid, flaccid” and as “third-rate,” “a made-in-Taiwan version of the United States.” The Fox Network's acerbic Bill O'Reilly was particularly vituperative, with a ridiculous disregard of reality—at one point characterizing
The Globe and Mail
as “a far-left newspaper.” It had become the bilateral equivalent of “Your mother wears army boots.”

The Canadian government even hired a polling firm, Millward Brown Goldfarb, to conduct a quick survey on what Americans were thinking of Canadians in the early months of the conflict. Not much, it turned out. They dismissed Canada's offer of $220 million toward the rebuilding of Iraq once victory was assured as “unimpressive.”

There was also a growing American apprehension about Canada's stance on social issues. “Directions to Canada,” said the headline over one
New York Times
feature, “Head North and Turn Left.” The paper even quoted Canadian comedian Rick Mercer connecting the U.S. concern over Canada to the American attempt to find Saddam and his henchmen: “Between the pot smoking and the gay marriage, quite frankly it's a wonder there's not a giant deck of cards out there with all our faces on it.”

No politician was as dramatically anti-American policy as Carolyn Parrish, but the Liberal government under both Chrétien and his brief successor, Paul Martin, grew increasingly testy. At one point Canada's ambassador to Washington, Frank McKenna, a former Liberal premier of New Brunswick, called the American government “dysfunctional.”

On January 23, 2006, Canadians elected Stephen Harper prime minister with a minority government. Harper, a deeply conservative Westerner,
immediately launched a strategic effort to repair diplomatic relations— including McKenna's swift replacement by former Conservative finance minister Michael Wilson. Harper and Bush got along so famously that Bush took to calling the rather stiff and formal Harper “Steve,” much to the delight of the Canadian media. U.S. secretary of state Condoleeza Rice and new Canadian secretary of state for foreign affairs Peter MacKay struck up such a quick friendship that the media filled with gossip about possible romance.

What mattered much more was that the new Harper government set out to rebuild the armed forces that had fallen into such sorry disrepair, committing an additional $11 billion to new equipment and recruitment. It also significantly increased Canada's Afghanistan commitment by establishing a base in Kandahar and taking over leadership of the International Security Assistance Force. With casualties rising rapidly—more than forty Canadian soldiers had been killed by the beginning of the year—the notion that “flaccid” “Canuckistan” wasn't pulling its weight was a sad one to embrace.

And yet it still held water in whatever parts of America were paying attention.

“CANADA FILM starting now.”

Beside the Epcot Center's Future World is Disney's World Showplace, constructed back in 1982. Nine nations were involved in the original launch—the United States, Canada, Mexico, France, Germany, Italy, China, Japan, and the United Kingdom—with Morocco and Norway added later. Some, like Mexico, had since updated their pavilions, but, for reasons unknown, Canada had remained frozen in 1982.

The 1982 film
O Canada
still being shown at the Canadian pavilion was technologically impressive—shot in 360-degree “Circle Vision” and spread out over nine screens—but was sadly out of date with reality. The faces no longer represented the near-cosmic shift in demographics that had occurred since the year the Constitution was repatriated. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police musical ride was featured, as were Niagara Falls and the Rockies—both timeless—but the one brief shot of the country's
largest city, Toronto, didn't even include the SkyDome. Given that the World Series champions would be playing in the Dome a decade after the film was shot, even American viewers must have been struck by the omission.

O Canada
depicts a country of the postcards, not of the history books. Geese take off, deer leap, caribou race, salmon run, skiers ski, hockey players knock pucks around until one scores. It seems a country where hardly anyone lives, where the vistas go on forever and the seasons come and go. The voiceover uses “eh?” more than once too often.

Had any Americans been searching the film for support in the upcoming invasion of Iraq, they would have found only military bands both smaller and less well outfitted than most American high school marching bands and a circle of period-costumed soldiers firing … muskets.

If this was Canada as Americans see their neighbour, heaven help Canadians. The pavilion itself has as its centrepiece a miniature CN hotel that looks to be a combined Château Frontenac, Château Laurier, and Banff Springs Hotel—all since 1982 bought out by the American-based Fairmont Hotels chain. Alongside the hotel are a miniature “Victoria Gardens” and a pile of false rocks intended to be the Rockies though they look rather more like Arizona or New Mexico. The young workers at the pavilion wear black-and-red lumberjack shirts reminiscent of the Canadian yokel parodies of Bob and Doug McKenzie familiar to American fans of
Second City TV
. The souvenir booth sells, as expected, hockey pucks, but also Davy Crockett coonskin caps—perhaps to remind Americans that Canada is still a place where we trap our own clothes.

You wouldn't expect American ignorance of all things Canada to surprise the young people who work there, but even they sometimes get caught off guard. “I know this is going to sound stupid to you,” one American man asked in the days before I happened to drop in, “but
where's
Canada?” They thought at first he was joking. He wasn't.

“You know where the continental United States sits?” one of the lumberjack-shirted workers asked him.

“Yes.”

“You know where Alaska is?”

“Yes.”

“Well, all that green in between—that's Canada.”

Green … pink on the old school maps in the days of the British Empire, white on the weather maps, the country no more considered than a hallway whose occasional new paint job goes unnoticed. No wonder that when Toronto won that 1992 World Series—played in the SkyDome that doesn't exist at the Epcot Center—U.S. Marines headed out into Fulton County Stadium in Atlanta in a dignified procession featuring the Stars and Stripes held high on one pole, Canada's red maple leaf on the other—upside down.

Canadians, of course, were outraged.

And yet, characteristically, they were also delighted—as if knowing “right side up” on one's own flag translates into some greater worldliness, some undeniable superiority. Ridicule of America is a northern necessity of life, as Canadian as blueberry pie.

The modern master of the art is Newfoundland comedian Rick Mercer. Beginning with
This Hour Has 22 Minutes
and moving on to his own
Rick Mercer Report,
Mercer applied to America a variation of the old Newfie joke he himself would have been acutely familiar with. He would head down to the States posing as a journalist, complete with microphone and camera crew, and ask famous and not-at-all-famous Americans about matters Canadian.

The Canadian audience howled at the always-friendly, eager-to-please Americans earnestly responding to queries about Prime Minister Jean “Poutine,” the hockey puck on the Canadian flag, Saskatchewan seal hunts, dogs finally being allowed as house pets, rhinoceros roaming the northern hinterland, and Canada finally catching up to the rest of the world by dumping its traditional twenty-hour clock in favour of the more universal twenty-four-hour version.

The show's producer told
The Christian Science Monitor
that the brilliance of the scheme lay in the fact that it “taps into an age-old inferiority complex.” But surely it draws equally upon the superiority complex to which Canadians so readily and happily revert in the face of American ignorance. To
think
that a Columbia University professor would sign a
petition demanding an end to the Canadian tradition of sending the elderly out onto ice floes to perish!

Doubtless it's funny. And yet an American network could just as plausibly have a reporter hit the streets of Canada asking people to name the capital of Wyoming or explain the electoral college. The only difference would lie in the audience numbers—Americans, lacking that deep-seated need to ridicule those ignorant of all things America, wouldn't bother tuning in.

Besides, they don't know how the electoral college works either.

PROXIMITY AND RELATIVE SIZE would argue that Canada has every right to be on permanent watch against its neighbour, but some Canadians might be surprised to know how deep that impulse runs. We were on guard, it might be said, from the moment Canada came into existence.

In the fall of 2006, when a letter written by Sir John A. Macdonald in the year of Confederation was auctioned off, its contents demonstrated that even the first prime minister had his concerns. “I sail in four days for Canada with the act uniting all British North America in my pocket,” Macdonald wrote on April 9, 1867, to Henry Sumner Maine, an English legal expert. “A brilliant future would certainly await us were it not for those wretched Yankees who hunger & thirst for Naboth's field.”

The reference was biblical, suggesting stolen birthright.

In 2004 Amy Von Heyking, who teaches education at the University of Alberta, produced a study of how America was perceived in seventy-five Canadian textbooks published throughout the twentieth century. From one end of the century to the other—with a brief reprieve in the lead-up to and duration of the Second World War—Von Heyking found an undeniable “sense of moral superiority,” at first from the conservative elite and finally from the left education establishment.