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Thomas Lifson - Contributor
Thomas
Lifson is a management consultant in Berkeley,
California, specializing in US-Japanese management
issues. A self-styled recovering academic, he
graduated from Kenyon College with a degree in
political science, and received a masters degree
in East Asian studies from Harvard, an M.B.A.
from Harvard Business School, where he was a
Baker Scholar, and a doctorate in sociology from
Harvard. He subsequently taught all three fields
on the faculty at Harvard, and also taught economics
at Columbia University’s Graduate School
of International Affairs. He is a partner in
the award-winning winery Sunset Cellars, in Alameda,
California. Mr. Lifson is proprietor of the website American
Thinker. [go to Lifson index]
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 O
Canada
Reconciling differences...
[Thomas Lifson] 12/3/04
All
my life I have been an American friend of Canada. As a child,
I knew that one branch of my family had fled European tyranny
and persecution and found shelter north of the border, where
they had prospered and enjoyed the blessings of liberty, tolerance,
and a free economy. Visiting relatives confirmed that Canada
was a good country, full of mostly good and kind people. Our
cousins of the flesh were surrounded by a people who were our
cousins of the spirit.
Family
trips to Canada confirmed that it was indeed almost indistinguishable
from home. The coins were made of sterling silver, the Sunday
paper was published on Saturday (because everything closed
down on Sunday), and they had a lot of trolley busses. But
aside from the mental gymnastics of converting an “Imperial
gallon” into an American gallon, and then calculating the price
of gasoline into American dollars (worth less than Canadian
dollars back in the 1950s), life for us foreigners was pretty
uncomplicated. In Ontario, where we visited, the signs were
all in English, and French Canada was remote and given little
thought.
Canada’s
national identity has always been based on the fact of their
being not American. This is an inevitable outcome
of living next door to a behemoth with ten times the population
and little concern for foreign countries, even (or especially)
the ones right next door, whose differences with us are popularly
regarded as retrograde imperfections. It is also a product
of the fundamental fracture in Canada, between French and English
Canadians, who have not embraced the concept of a melting pot,
and who therefore do not have that much in common, other than
being non-Yankees.
The
Americans who have decamped for Canada have tended historically
to be our dissidents, the dissatisfied, and historic losers starting
with the Tories who opposed the American Revolution, and reinforced
by the contingent of draft dodgers during the Vietnam War.
They looked back with anger and contempt at their less enlightened
former countrymen. In contrast, the Canadians who moved in
the opposite direction tended to be the ambitious strivers,
like James J. Hill (the “Empire Builder” railroad magnate)
or the current raft of entertainers like Jim Carrey and Martin
Short. The exchange generally has not favored the Canadians.
While American business and culture are studded with outstanding
achievers of Canadian origin, the Americans fleeing to
Canada collectively do not occupy a prominent place in the
ranks of the accomplished.
Before
the independence movement for Quebec became a dominant concern
of English Canada, their relative Britishness gave Anglophone
Canadians something positive to embrace, as a mark of their
difference from Americans. They were a Dominion of the Queen,
after all, not just a country. But when the Quebecois assaulted
the rest of Canada with an outbreak of terror and assassination
in the late 1960s and early 70s, followed by a serious popular
electoral movement aimed at independence, the Union Jack had
to disappear from the flag, and appeasement of the angry Francophones
became priority number one for those who wished to save Canada
as a viable nation.
Think
of the emotional impact. That very Britishness, which had been
embraced as a proud heritage and special difference from the
Americans, now became a mark of inhuman domination. Quebec
regarded The Union Jack and all that went with it as the lingering
wound of an historic oppression with its ancient origin on
the Plains of Abraham. This sudden need to discard a former
source of pride was a traumatic loss for English Canadians,
who take justifiable satisfaction in their inherent niceness.
People who live through life-threatening winter weather every
year tend to take seriously the obligation to help one another
out, provide mutual aid and comfort, and offer a warm smile
as the default setting when dealing with each other.
Now
shorn of the positive symbols of English Canadian distinctiveness,
always fearful of absorption into the overwhelming colossus
to the south, and in desperate need of a way to reassure themselves
that they were good people (in the face of many years of angry
recriminations from the Francophones), Canada had no alternative
but to embrace the newly-merging multicultural orthodoxy. This
bizarre, murky, and constantly-evolving doctrine has no substance,
other than decreeing that virtue is a function of oppression,
or if no oppression happens to be available, a pale and lifeless
virtue can be salvaged by deference to those who claim oppression.
If
virtue requires oppression, then an oppressor becomes a necessity
for feeling good about oneself, individually and collectively.
As has always been the case, Canada needed to look no further
than just south of its border to find a friend ready to supply
the essentials which were urgently required, but unavailable
at home. America the demon-figure filled a yawning gap in the
collective Canadian self-regard.
Europe,
with its own historic and multi-cultural issues to absorb,
shared common cause with Canada in identifying the United States
as a malign entity. Though British influences are regarded
as oppressive to Quebec, European influences are another thing
entirely. The nonspecific European sense of identity currently
under construction, visible in the slightly disconcerting vague
symbolism found on Euro notes, is tailor-made for a Canada
which must be both French and English. So Canada began
to move itself metaphorically to the European continent, yet
another way to be different from and better than the Yankees,
spiritually trapped in North America.
President
Bush has just concluded a fence-mending mission
to Canada, a necessary move to keep relations acceptably close,
mark the replacement of the disastrous PM Chretien with the
more reasonable PM Martin, and encourage the underlying historic
warmth between our two peoples. The relatively small size of
the protest demonstrations in Ottawa is certainly an encouraging
sign.
In
the long run, there is some reason to be encouraged about the
possibility of reconciliation, mostly because of the continuing
rise of Western Canada. The centrality of a clash between Anglophones
and Francophones seems almost absurd to a visitor to Vancouver,
where Cantonese is far more widely spoken than French. If Eastern
Canada is metaphorically drifting eastward in the Atlantic,
then coastal British Columbia is drifting westward in the Pacific.
Europeanness has little allure in a glittering metropolis like
Vancouver, moving in the direction of a majority Asian-heritage
population.
The
economic powerhouse of Canada is now Alberta, whose subsidies
to the rest of the country provide the means to finance public
works projects and welfare payments keeping Quebec attached
to federal Canada, and keeping the Atlantic Provinces alive.
Alberta's energy wealth is Canada's greatest source of foreign
exchange and economic growth. The optimistic can-do spirit
of Albertans is a tonic to the ennui of the easterners.
Albertans
are the most pro-American of Canadians, perhaps because so
many Americans work in their oil and gas industry, or perhaps
because they have more in common with the frontier cultures
of Montana (and Texas) than with Montreal and Toronto Europhiles.
Nobody bothers to make much of an explicit point about it,
but if Quebec pushes too hard for its independence, and Canada
begins to fragment, there would be little reason for Alberta
to continue making a gift to Eastern Canada amounting to thousands
of dollars a year per Albertan household. America, with its
far lower taxes, would eagerly welcome Alberta (and the rest
of Western Canada, too), and add as many stars to our flag
as necessary. In a heartbeat.
Precisely
because it could happen, it is likely that compromises,
mental and emotional adjustments, and reconciliation will be
embraced by Canadians. There will be no need for a national
fragmentation. At least I hope so.
For
no matter how difficult relations may be at any given moment,
we all benefit from a certain diversity on the North American
continent. There are some things that Canada simply does better,
from which we Americans can learn. Canada’s cities are not
just a delight to visit, they have created solutions to problems
from which we still suffer. It is always helpful to study different
approaches to common problems.
So
I look forward to many more years of sincere friendship with
Canada. We have a good thing going. tOR
copyright
2004 Thomas Lifson
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