Elder Advice – Thinking Inside the Box- Week 14
I have been offering help to my many American friends for the past three years - that if they decide its current occupant is intolerable, Canadians stand ready to come and burn the White House down … again … like we did in 1814. Because what else are friends for? And this time, it wouldn’t be so much an invasion, as an intervention.
Week 14. The constant turmoil south of the 49th parallel these past weeks has motivated me to catalogue the vast differences between us and our American neighbours. Because it is clear to me that Canada is decidedly not like the United States, however much protesters protest that it is. Admittedly, there are similarities. It is true that the colour of the President is exactly the same as Canadian Kraft Dinner.
Otherwise, the US is not us. And what separates us from US is more than the price of softwood lumber, universal health care, waterproof money, ketchup chips and the refusal to accept responsibility for Justin Beiber … and Nickleback. Although all of those are important. It is more than the fact that we are sexually dominant – being much bigger than the US - and on top. Or the fact that American beer is consumed in America by adults while in Canada, as you know, it is reserved for children and the elderly. It is more than the fact that the feces of the gentle American black bear are small and filled with mostly vegetable matter, while in Canada (where we arm ourselves with pepper spray and bear bells before venturing into the woods) the feces of the ferocious Canadian grizzly are enormous, smell like pepper and are filled with bells.
It is more than all these things.
In a time of anxiety, contradiction and economic uncertainty, it is all too easy to subscribe to the view that unlike the US, Canada is a country without a sense of shared destiny, and that the only things that have kept us together are fear and inertia. That is untrue. In 1839, rebellion sparked the burning of Parliament in Lower Canada. Violence was rampant. But Canadians decided to focus on loyalty to Parliament, to the notion of collective responsibilities, the protection of important minority rights and last – and absolutely least- individual rights and liberty. The reverse of American priorities. They chose a system of three rigid branches of government, continually at odds with one another. Tension and confrontation. Winners and losers. We chose a civil society characterized by few entrenched powers, compromise and reconciliation. The Canadian Way.
That is the historical foundation of our difference … and one more reason Magnetic North is more attracted to us.
Elder Advice? We need not light the torches and head for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue again. Sadly, our neighbours seem both bent on self-immolation, and up to the job. Our task is local – because there has been regrettable tinkering with The Canadian Way in the 175 years since the election of LaFontaine and Baldwin and the birth of Responsible Government. Misguided authorities and political incompetents have imported bad ideas and worse policies from south of the 49th parallel. Identity politics, cancel culture, ideological orthodoxy, charters of rights that ignore obligations – the list of things we should have no use for is long.
We need to pay attention, now more than ever, and ensure we stray no further from the path that has made Canada work. The ability: to erect “big tents”; to engage in discussion without fear of real or manufactured outrage; to ignore both the malignant zealots and the pearl-clutchers; to not stand around all day either complaining or acknowledging pain but rather, to find a way forward as a community, through calm, common sense consensus. And to do it with a large dose of self-deprecating humour. The way Canadians have traditionally got things done.
Canadians find common ground not battleground.
Let’s start with something we can all agree on: that the only Black Lives that don’t matter are Conrad and Barbara.