Canadians (28 page)

“Does this weakness serve Canada's national interest?” he asks. “Do we even know what these interests are? Or, is Canada such a do-gooder that its interests are irrelevant and the projection abroad of its values—multiculturalism, good governance, respect for human rights and so on—are all that matters?”

Instead, Granatstein says, Canada should pursue its own vigorous policy based on the country's own security and independence, and then, with a rebuilt military, work when required with allies on the more global issues. “Keeping the Yanks happy, or at least not angry,” he concludes, “must be a national interest.”

ONE FRESH VOICE heard in recent years has been that of Jennifer Welsh, a professor of international relations at Oxford University. She's also a Canadian of Métis heritage who left Saskatchewan with a Rhodes Scholarship and has since become a recognized expert in world affairs.

Welsh has decidedly different views on Canada. She has suggested, for example, that the country could do without provinces—something federal politicians and big-city mayors might rejoice over. But it's in her writings on Canada's place in the world that she's generated the most interest. Her 2004 book,
At Home in the World: Canada's Global Vision for the 21st Century,
is a slim, readable study of where Canada has been and where it should be going. She's been accused of being anti-American in pushing Canada to go its own way, but she counters that “Canadians are, by and large, confident about the unique experiment they have built north of the 49th parallel, and that they no longer have to be anti-American to be Canadian.”

For Welsh there is much to admire in United States society, much to be wary of. The message of her book, she has said, “is that we should get to know the U.S. more, not less.” More know thy friend than know thine enemy.

Welsh contends that Canada needs to expand its view of North America to include Mexico, and not only the fact of the country itself but the increasing electoral power and influence of Hispanics in the United States. In the name of simple realism she rejects the old canard that America is Canada's best friend. Friendship must be a two-way street, she says, not just one road heading south. She quotes an official in the Clinton administration who dismissed Canada as “the boy who gets all spiffed up to win the heart of his dreamboat, while she doesn't even know he exists.”

Given such an attitude, it's hardly surprising that a game show on the MTV network features a category called “Dead or Canadian?” A name is given out and contestants try to guess which description fits. And when
South Park
became a movie in 1999 it featured a song that went on to garner an Oscar nomination. The song? “Blame Canada”:

It seems like everything went wrong

Since Canada came along.

Yet in some ways Welsh is much like Pierre Trudeau, who was often perceived as anti-American—his relationships with Nixon and Reagan were not good—but who knew there were times when the mouse had to get into bed with the elephant. She is, for example, in favour of Canada joining the United States in continental space defence. “It is hardly fair to rely on the Americans to protect the West,” Trudeau said in an open letter to Canadians near the end of his long run as prime minister, “but refuse to lend them a hand when the going gets rough. In that sense, the anti-Americanism of some Canadians verges on hypocrisy. They're eager to take refuge under the American umbrella, but don't want to help hold it.” Welsh would certainly agree.

Her provocative work did not pass unnoticed in Canadian government circles. Paul Martin, having promised a full review of defence and foreign
policy, brought her in as a consultant on that review process before his government fell. Welsh herself was once a Young Liberal but has had no involvement with the party or Canadian politics over the last twenty years. Whether her thinking influences current or future Canadian governments is uncertain.

Yet it should not be lost. The Canada Jennifer Welsh sees is a newly confident, multicultural country that could have a significant effect on the world merely by serving as its “model citizen.” Not quite a “moral superpower,” but something perhaps within the realm of possibility. When he was prime minister, Paul Martin said several times that Canada should “set the standards by which other nations judge themselves.” A pretty high order—likely beyond the reach of even the purest—but something to shoot for.

Canada, Welsh believes, could demonstrate tolerance to the world; it could show how a pluralistic society not only gets along but cares for those citizens having trouble coming along. Such values, she feels, would create a “magnetic effect,” inducing other countries to draw closer to the Canadian model—and closer, by definition, to Canada itself. Canada would gain influence far beyond its economic or military clout.

In other words, as the large signs inside the bookstores read: “The World Needs More Canada.”

Welsh counters those who would dismiss her thinking as naive, her hopes more aligned with Pollyanna than reality. “Model citizens,” she says, “pull their weight.” Model citizens can use sanctions and even force when necessary. Even, if absolutely necessary, without the approval of the United Nations. She wants Canada to have “the best small army in the world,” even if it never fights or wins a battle on its own. “This,” she told the
Ottawa Citizen,
“is where I think there's a relationship between soft and hard power. Hard power isn't just military. But hard power gets at the idea that you can only achieve what you want to achieve through a bit of stick.”

It's an interesting point. General Roméo Dallaire served as commander of the United Nations Military Assistance in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide that saw as many as 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus
massacred. He was there as witness, serving as dutiful conscience to the world, but he had no power to intervene or prevent. He had no stick to stop what was happening before his own eyes.

Welsh's vision for the country of her birth comes from a deep sense of what has worked in Canada and continues to work as the New Canada evolves. “Canadians, it has been said, take other countries as they find them, rather than seeking to transform them,” she writes. “Nor are we confident in our ability to transform other societies overnight. Perhaps this derives from our own very gradual experiences of building Canada— a process that we see as ongoing. Part of the magic of being Canadian is the recognition that our country is still a work in progress.”

A work in progress. A work that needs work, both inside and out. Canada needs to think about its relations with those who live outside its borders as well as those who live within—in particular the Aboriginal situation that prevents Canada from being considered the tolerant, fair country it so desires to be on the world stage.

Tommy Douglas said that “a country's greatness can be measured by what it does for its unfortunates” and that “by that criterion Canada certainly does not stand in the forefront of the nations of the world, although there are signs that we are becoming conscious of our deficiencies and are determined to atone for lost time.” He was speaking in 1946. That's sixty more years of “lost time.”

Nothing underlines this better than a cartoon that appeared in the October 16, 2006, issue of
The New Yorker
. A man and a woman are picking through the morning paper. The woman, coffee cup in hand, turns to the man buried in the front page and says it all: “You can't spend your political life hiding behind being Canadian.”

Nine

The Invisible Founders

SO, THIS IS what it feels like to die.

I was not alone in thinking this. Later, days after I had used up several of the extra lives that are handed out to stray cats and stupid journalists, I would learn that the three others lost with me that week on James Bay felt exactly the same. We did not, any of us, think we'd make it.

It was late June 1986. I had come to Waskaganish on the Quebec shore of James Bay for the launch of Billy Diamond's new boat. The Grand Chief of the James Bay Cree of northern Quebec had already built a successful regional airline and was now moving into a rather different form of transportation. He'd gone to Japan to meet with the giant manufacturer Yamaha, and by combining traditional Cree knowledge and Yamaha technology they had completely redesigned the famous Hudson's Bay canoe—the accepted, albeit dangerous, method of transportation for the northern Cree for generations. Far too many lives had been lost to freak storms and overloaded boats and hidden rocks. Billy Diamond wanted a new boat.

He'd capitalized on the Japanese fascination with North American Aboriginals by striking an early meeting with Yamaha executives in Toronto. Then he'd gone to Tokyo for deeper discussions, and now, two years later, the first Cree–Yamaha boats—wide, handsome fibreglass craft—were rolling off a brand-new assembly line in the old fur-trading village of Fort Rupert, now reverted to its Native name, Waskaganish. The
boat was about to be launched from the docks along the shore of the Rupert River where the freshwater flush from Quebec's Ungava Peninsula empties out into the saltwater flats of James Bay.

Billy Diamond and I had known each other for several years—more on that later—and he'd invited me to witness the launch and perhaps even do a story for the
Ottawa Citizen
. I thought it would be a business story, not a survival tale.

With an Ottawa friend, Doug Sprott, I'd driven the better part of a day up through Maniwaki and La Vérendrye Park to Val d'Or and then caught the regular Air Creebec flight north. Nearly two hours later we bounced down onto the gravel runway and hitched a pickup ride into a village where the residents were so excited they could barely contain themselves. A feast was already in progress—beaver and moose nostrils, spring goose, bannock and smoked whitefish, huge pots of dark tea—and word was that the Japanese were coming by executive jet from Tokyo.

Peter Gzowski would also be calling in the morning. Chief Billy Diamond would go live on
Morningside
for the launch of the most unusual joint venture in Canadian corporate history.

A shipment of advertising posters had arrived on the same plane that brought us in. No boat appeared on the poster, but instead an effective message—“The waters of James Bay are not always friendly”—under a rising, threatening swell of churning water. Already that spring five Crees had drowned on the unpredictable waters of James Bay. This boat, the Crees believed, would put an end to such tragedies.

“You're going out for the test drive,” Billy laughed when he met us.

“What?”

“It's all set up,” he said. “Lawrence and Charlie are going to take you up the coast a bit for some fish.”

This trip was meant for work, not sport, and yet what could make a better storyline than to actually head out into the water? Lawrence Katapatuk was Billy's lifelong pal, a nonpolitical Cree who kept to the bush as a trapper and hunter. Billy's older brother, Charlie, was even more old world, a strong, silent man who spoke no English and who lived year round along his traplines and in the family's coastal goose camps.

We set out Monday around noon, the Japanese not due until Tuesday morning when Peter Gzowski would be calling and the boat safely back. Billy thought I could go on the radio with him to back up his claims about the boat's seaworthiness.

Doug and I threw our packs into the vast bow—a propitious move, it would turn out—and Lawrence, also fortuitously, tossed a tarpaulin over the packs and supplies. With Charlie standing Cree-style in front of the forty-horsepower Mercury—straight up, left hand holding the upturned throttle handle as if it were the hand of a child, wind straight into his face—we set out in calm waters under sunny skies into the mouth of the Rupert and then north into the gentle chop of James Bay proper.

“Look at that!” Doug shouted.

I turned from my seat on the backpacks and followed his finger. He'd sighted a most unusual rock formation, a small granite island that popped out of the water like some great prehistoric creature rising to challenge.

I nodded. Charlie shook his head at Lawrence, but neither said a thing. Only later would we be told that the Crees considered it bad luck to point to or even to glance at this dramatic rock at the confluence of the Rupert River and James Bay, that to acknowledge the thing was to invite the wrath of
chuentenshu,
the mighty north wind. Charlie and Lawrence were much too polite to say any of this.

The Cree–Yamaha freighter canoe rode beautifully, sliding over the light chop with grace and speed and an awesome sense of power and indestructibility. We could tell from how often the two Cree hunters changed positions—first one steering, then the other—that they, too, were marvelling at it.

The boat was twenty-seven feet long and deliberately wide for James Bay, where the north wind is almost always blowing and the shallow water can be so easily whipped into a frenzy. Since waves tend to be narrow and tight in such shallows, the boat was constructed so that it would crest three or four at once, virtually
surfing,
the ride as smooth as a limousine on a newly paved city street.

Doug and I lay back, turning our faces to the sun and preparing to let the gentle roll of the ride and hypnotic drone of the Mercury outboard put us to sleep.

Two hours out of Waskaganish our little world did a complete flip.

The wind hadn't built slowly, as it does in the south, but instead suddenly crashed down from Hudson Bay farther to the north. The boat began to slam against the instant whitecaps.

And then, even though we'd set out with light jackets and our faces turned to the warmth of the late June sun, it began to
snow
.

Snow. At first large, rolling flakes like small birds riding above the waves, then icy pellets that stabbed like needles into our faces. We pulled our caps and collars tight and hunkered down.