Why Canadians Hate America.
Why is there so much Anti-Americanism in Canada? I’ve been asking myself this question since the 1980s when I visited my mother’s homeland as a teenager and had some interesting experiences?
An uncle of mine, a conservative guy, (a veteran and a member of the Canadian Legion the kind of guy who would have picked up his gun and fought to the death if a single Communist soldier had stepped foot on Canadian soil) passionately defended Fidel Castro to me and even claimed that the Cuban people supported Fidel. He also praised Mikhail Gorbachev and bashed Ronald Reagan. A cousin of mine, a very sensible man bought a piece of junk car built in Russia (the Lada) because he wanted to support Canada’s trade deal with the Soviet Union. My cousin’s Lada wouldn’t run but he was proud of it even as he was begging a ride from his neighbor who had bought a Toyota. I’m sure lots of Russians who will stare at this in disbelief.
Since then I’ve wondered about Canadian anti-Americanism and I think I have an explanation. Canadians have an inferiority complex when it comes to the USA, after all what does Canada have when compared to America? Americans won World War II and the Cold War, landed men on the moon, invented constitutional government, television, light bulbs, electric street cars, the Internet, personal computers, Rock N Roll, Jazz, football (real football the kind we play in the United States and Canada), baseball, pro wrestling, movies, comic books, hamburgers, hot dogs, Coca Cola, air conditioning, the machine gun, the atomic bomb, the helicopter and a zillion other cool things. What do Canadians have to compare to that? The Mounties, Hockey and socialized medicine? Okay Alexander Graham Bell did invent the telephone and he was Canadian but he invented it in Massachusetts. To add insult to injury Canadians are usually mistaken for Americans when traveling outside their country.
If that wasn’t bad enough Canadians have no real history, no great wars were fought there, no Revolutions were held on Canadian soil and no great political ideas came out of Canada. There was no Canadian Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln or Martin Luther King. I can’t think of a single great Canadian general or statesmen, or for that matter even a single great Canadian writer or philosopher. Hemingway wrote a few articles for the Toronto Star but he was from Illinois.
This situation is made worse because until about sixty years ago there was nothing like modern Canada. Canada was simply the British Empire’s outpost in North America, Canadians’ patriotism centered around His Majesty the King. Hundreds of thousands of Canadians fought and died for King and Empire in both world wars. Then one day the empire disappeared and Canadians had nothing but Mounties and Maple leafs (what sort of a nation takes as its symbol a leaf?).
Since then Canadian patriotism has been based on one thing and one thing alone: “we’re not Americans.” It’s been stoked been stoked by slimy politicians in particular Pierre Trudeau (the loathsome Canadian Prime Minister who traded Canadian grain for Soviet built tractors that didn’t run). Trudeau (a great Canadian patriot who grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and a World War II draft dodger) had Fidel Castro as a pallbearer at his funeral.
The situation is made worse by the fact that almost any Canadian who succeeds in his or her field moves to the greener pastures of the USA. William Shatner, almost every NHL player including the Great One Wayne Gretsky himself,, most professional wrestlers, Peter Jennings, Dan Acrkoyd, John and Jim Belushi, Donald and Kieffer Sutherland to name but a few. All made their fame and fortune and chose to live in the USA and so did my mother. Who can blame them?
I grew up listening to my mother telling me how she grew up without electricity and indoor plumbing and ended up picking tobacco to pay for college in civilized Ontario in the 1950s. So I have to wonder what’s so great about Canada and chuckle a lot when I hear some American liberal talking about moving to Vancouver (let them, they’ll be back after seeing their first tax bill).
Still I do feel really sorry for Canadians. What I wonder will happen to them in the year 2030 when China is the world’s most powerful nation? They won’t be able to claim moral superiority for not being Americans and have no glorious history to look back upon. So I suppose they will have nothing while we Americans will be boasting about little things like the Constitution, the Emancipation Proclamation, the A-Bomb and the first Moon Landing? My guess in that year, most Canadians will go around claiming to be Americans in order to give themselves a heritage they never had.
An uncle of mine, a conservative guy, (a veteran and a member of the Canadian Legion the kind of guy who would have picked up his gun and fought to the death if a single Communist soldier had stepped foot on Canadian soil) passionately defended Fidel Castro to me and even claimed that the Cuban people supported Fidel. He also praised Mikhail Gorbachev and bashed Ronald Reagan. A cousin of mine, a very sensible man bought a piece of junk car built in Russia (the Lada) because he wanted to support Canada’s trade deal with the Soviet Union. My cousin’s Lada wouldn’t run but he was proud of it even as he was begging a ride from his neighbor who had bought a Toyota. I’m sure lots of Russians who will stare at this in disbelief.
Since then I’ve wondered about Canadian anti-Americanism and I think I have an explanation. Canadians have an inferiority complex when it comes to the USA, after all what does Canada have when compared to America? Americans won World War II and the Cold War, landed men on the moon, invented constitutional government, television, light bulbs, electric street cars, the Internet, personal computers, Rock N Roll, Jazz, football (real football the kind we play in the United States and Canada), baseball, pro wrestling, movies, comic books, hamburgers, hot dogs, Coca Cola, air conditioning, the machine gun, the atomic bomb, the helicopter and a zillion other cool things. What do Canadians have to compare to that? The Mounties, Hockey and socialized medicine? Okay Alexander Graham Bell did invent the telephone and he was Canadian but he invented it in Massachusetts. To add insult to injury Canadians are usually mistaken for Americans when traveling outside their country.
If that wasn’t bad enough Canadians have no real history, no great wars were fought there, no Revolutions were held on Canadian soil and no great political ideas came out of Canada. There was no Canadian Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln or Martin Luther King. I can’t think of a single great Canadian general or statesmen, or for that matter even a single great Canadian writer or philosopher. Hemingway wrote a few articles for the Toronto Star but he was from Illinois.
This situation is made worse because until about sixty years ago there was nothing like modern Canada. Canada was simply the British Empire’s outpost in North America, Canadians’ patriotism centered around His Majesty the King. Hundreds of thousands of Canadians fought and died for King and Empire in both world wars. Then one day the empire disappeared and Canadians had nothing but Mounties and Maple leafs (what sort of a nation takes as its symbol a leaf?).
Since then Canadian patriotism has been based on one thing and one thing alone: “we’re not Americans.” It’s been stoked been stoked by slimy politicians in particular Pierre Trudeau (the loathsome Canadian Prime Minister who traded Canadian grain for Soviet built tractors that didn’t run). Trudeau (a great Canadian patriot who grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and a World War II draft dodger) had Fidel Castro as a pallbearer at his funeral.
The situation is made worse by the fact that almost any Canadian who succeeds in his or her field moves to the greener pastures of the USA. William Shatner, almost every NHL player including the Great One Wayne Gretsky himself,, most professional wrestlers, Peter Jennings, Dan Acrkoyd, John and Jim Belushi, Donald and Kieffer Sutherland to name but a few. All made their fame and fortune and chose to live in the USA and so did my mother. Who can blame them?
I grew up listening to my mother telling me how she grew up without electricity and indoor plumbing and ended up picking tobacco to pay for college in civilized Ontario in the 1950s. So I have to wonder what’s so great about Canada and chuckle a lot when I hear some American liberal talking about moving to Vancouver (let them, they’ll be back after seeing their first tax bill).
Still I do feel really sorry for Canadians. What I wonder will happen to them in the year 2030 when China is the world’s most powerful nation? They won’t be able to claim moral superiority for not being Americans and have no glorious history to look back upon. So I suppose they will have nothing while we Americans will be boasting about little things like the Constitution, the Emancipation Proclamation, the A-Bomb and the first Moon Landing? My guess in that year, most Canadians will go around claiming to be Americans in order to give themselves a heritage they never had.
posted by great one at 8:33 AM
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