{"id":753,"date":"2008-05-20T22:08:05","date_gmt":"2008-05-21T06:08:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2008\/05\/20\/on-things-canuck-like\/"},"modified":"2008-05-20T22:08:05","modified_gmt":"2008-05-21T06:08:05","slug":"on-things-canuck-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2008\/05\/20\/on-things-canuck-like\/","title":{"rendered":"on things canuck-like"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I made a comment about how we Canadians identify ourselves. Typically a lot of our self-definition is in terms of how we are not like Americans. A certain distressing (to me, at least) smugness lies in the Canadian sense of superiority over Americans.<\/p>\n

It is to be expected that smaller, less powerful neighbours will be somewhat jealous of the more powerful next door. I think this is true to America’s south as well as to the north. But for us on the north there is an added sense of competition from sharing the same language, heritage and culture, but not sharing similar positions or power in the world.<\/p>\n

Yesterday was Victoria Day in Canada, one of our statutory holidays in honour of Queen Victoria’s birthday. The holiday is set to occur on the first Monday before May 25, even though Victoria’s birthday was May 21. This day is one of our uniquely Canadian cultural events. It is always celebrated with a grand parade in our city, complete with American<\/em> high school bands from Washington state. (I love to hear them when I get a chance to go down to the parade.) This year, our civic pride was boosted by a band from one of our local high schools winning the band competition.<\/p>\n

One of our nation’s senators wrote an article<\/a> in a Toronto paper yesterday on the occasion of Victoria Day. He made an interesting comment that highlights some essential differences between Canada and America.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Here is his comment:<\/p>\n

\n

The role of the Crown in the maintenance of who we are and our own brand of national identity remains a compelling force. Our head of state is not elected. Prime ministers and premiers are elected under the rules of responsible governments reporting to democratically chosen legislatures and parliaments. But the continuity of the state, our underlying values and principles, equality before the law, habeas corpus and the presumption of innocence are carried forward by the institution of the Crown. <\/p>\n

It reminds all our elected leaders, the civil servants and political staffers who serve in the cause of government or party that there is a higher authority that can and would respond to any effort to violate the Constitution or the core conventions of our democracy and society where the rule of law is supreme. It reminds Canadians that in the kind of democracy we have built, “peace, order and good government” actually reflect a different value set than “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The author of this piece is right about a profoundly different value set between America and Canada. If we as Canadians attempt to define ourselves positively, it is in the notion of “peace, order and good government” … but there we go again, we have<\/em> to make it clear that that is not the same<\/em> as “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”<\/p>\n

I don’t share his Loyalist optimism in the role of the Crown (largely merely symbolic) in keeping or empowering the continuity of our state or the rights of men under the law. Our legislative leaders quite regularly infringe on these freedoms with all kinds of justifications. The Crown is powerless to do anything about it, nor is the Crown really interested in doing anything about it – she doesn’t even know what is going on in her dominion. In Canada, the crown (though embodied in Elizabeth) is nothing more than an idea enshrined in our documents but gradually being eroded by our politicians.<\/p>\n

In any case, I offer these thoughts and a link to this article to help my American friends understand something of the Canadian part of my makeup – though I do not share all the ideas of my nation, I am nevertheless shaped in my prejudices by some of these forces. One’s national myths are not entirely escapable.<\/p>\n

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Yesterday I made a comment about how we Canadians identify ourselves. Typically a lot of our self-definition is in terms of how we are not like Americans. A certain distressing (to me, at least) smugness lies in the Canadian sense of superiority over Americans. It is to be expected that smaller, less powerful neighbours will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[6,72],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2fYWj-c9","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}