Forty-Eight hours from now I will be in Toronto and I will be eating me some Tim Horton. I assume that this was once a posessive...Tim Horton's but posessives don't exist in French...you say the doughnut of Tim Horton rather than Tim Horton's doughnut and, because of the whole Quebecois separatist business, it's easier for companies doing business in Canada to call the whole thing off (or Did Somebody Say McDonald?)
I'm fascinated by the whole Quebecois thing...partially because it's hard for me to imagine that french speakers could be lower class, ever. And partially because Canada has dealt with Quebec much differently than, well, we would have. It's as if we sat down in the early 70's and said, "Okay Arizona! New Mexico! California! We totally stole you from Mexico...that's our bad. And we are going to keep you as part of the U.S.A. but we want you to be yourselves! Totally Mex-out, okay?" And these states put all of their signage in Spanish and got kind of cranky if anyone dared to speak English.
On one hand, there is a lot to be said for encouraging multiculturism. Canada is good at this, much better than, I think, the US is. We still think melting pot whereas Canada is much better at the gorgeous mosaic, the salad bowl model. Here's the thing about a salad bowl though...sometimes you end up with a big-ass piece of cucumber and that isn't what you had in mind. Part of the gorgeous mosaic is a willingness to be inconvenienced sometimes. The Chinatowns I've been to in Canada are China Towns with no English signage to help you along. Those subway announcements in Montreal? French only. Multi-culturalism is so much easier to embrace when it's effortless...when the world is one big sea of tasty food and interesting music.
Does multiculturalism mean that I don't get to be verbal...my strong suit? Does it mean-horrors-that I, as a white male might not WIN? Well, then that's a different story.
As an American I get it both ways...I can talk the talk of loving multiculturalism while knowing that there is no danger that I will call a customer service number and the default language is Vietnamese, press 4 for English.
There is a charming website called An American's Guide to Canada where the author describes what Americans expect because they're Americans:
Life
Liberty
The Pursuit of Happiness
here is what she describes Canadians expecting because they are Canadian:
Peace
Order
Good Government
They make an interesting line by line comparison
Liberty : Order
The Pursuit of Happiness : Good Government.
?
As a baby journalist, I wish I knew more about the American Expats who fled to Canada during the Vietnam war. What did it mean to Canadians to have such a group in-migrating to your nation? Did the American draft resisters stay and put down roots like those fleeing Hong Kong before it returned to Chinese rule? No guidebooks point me to Americatown. And how would I know Americatown when I found it? And what are the numbers...after there was amnesty for those who fled the draft, how many Americans returned home and how many stayed put?
I've visited Vancouver and Montreal and always imagined Canada to be America Lite. Like us, just less so. I visited Madison, Wisconsin a few years ago and read a profile of a local band in an alternative newsweekly and the band described themselves and their scene as being in complete and total opposition to the bullshit that was going on in Chicago.
Which I thought was so cute. Because Chicago doesn't spend a second of time thinking about Madison, at all.
On the other hand, Chicago spends TONS of time worrying about how we compare with New York and Los Angeles and repeatedly reassuring ourselves that we are actually superior to them. But I don't think the residents of New York ask themselves "okay, how are we stacking up against Minneapolis?"
Canada seems to, in large part, define themselves by being Not American. And, while you can see their point, I don't know that this is enough.
