A Continental Culture

Maybe we’re not that different after all

Kyle Lamothe Staff

The quest to determine whether or not there is such a thing as a distinctly “Canadian” person is tired and never-ending. After forming the Dominion of Canada, we struggled to distinguish ourselves from our colonial roots in England and France. After developing our culture and identity far beyond from the mother countries, Canada began to flail wildly at the concept that our culture is not only separate from the rest of the world, but could stand alone on the North American continent.

So, after decades of CBC specials, countless high school essays on “Canadian identity” and disturbingly important rants made to sell beer, what have we come up with? A quote by an American journalist, Richard Starnes, in Gerald Clark’s 1965 book Canada: The Uneasy Neighbour sums it all up pretty well:

“Canadians are generally indistinguishable from the Americans, and the surest way of telling the two apart is to make the observation to a Canadian.”

Try to actually sit down and think about what Canadian culture is, and it is tough to come up with a way to express how we feel without in some way emphasizing our distance from what we deem to be American. In fact, what may express our culture more than anything is the constant assurance that we are different than Americans. Let’s look at one of the themes pounded deep into our heads through grade-school geography textbooks.

Canada is considered by Canadians and our government to be a cultural mosaic, while America is seen as a melting pot. The theory goes that Canada is more accepting of differing ways of life and that immigrants and Aboriginal people need not give up their traditional ways of life in order to be accepted in this country. The government of Canada, through our relatively liberal immigration policy and departments such as Canadian Heritage, officially promotes this theory of multiculturalism and mosaic.

When we talk about the American melting pot, there is an undeniably negative undertone associated with the entire idea of assimilation into a more focused identity, because as Canadians we should take the moral high ground for letting immigrant and Aboriginal cultures remain.

What seems to be ignored in this mosaic/melting pot debate is that both countries are compromises between the two. America has just as many cultures present in their mix as Canada does, both countries are proud of their Indigenous and immigrant roots, yet both claim that when put together, a distinct national identity exists that unites their respective populations.

We can see this angle in Canada through the different policies of various government departments. While Canadian Heritage promotes diversity, other institutions, such as the CRTC, enforce the inclusion of Canadian content to protect the domestic culture from outside (obviously American) influence. It might be safe at this point to say that Canada melts cultures together just enough to make it worth protecting from “American culture.”

But what do we mean by American culture? Is it reality television? Action movies? Low-brow comedies? Before answering this, we have to look at what an American is. They can be of German, Afghani, English, Japanese, Aboriginal, Mexican, or even Canadian descent, among others. This means that even though we see ourselves as a small animal sleeping next to an elephant of a culture, we have influence on what is exported from the U.S. as American culture.

Comedians producing television and film in the U.S. include a lot of Canadians among their ranks, such as Jim Carrey, Mike Myers, Martin Short, Tom Green and Leslie Nielsen. The amount of Canadian blood involved is no different in other genres of film, TV and music. With all these Canucks working in Hollywood, and the amount of films and TV shows produced and/or filmed on Canadian soil, it isn’t a stretch to say that a lot of what we deem to be American content may be more accurately described as a collaboration between the border-sharing buddies.

Maybe we shouldn’t be bickering about the divide between what is American content and culture and what is uniquely Canadian. Maybe we should look at the idea of a North American culture and give up the thinking that an imaginary iron curtain runs down the 49th parallel, shaving off a distinct niche for Canadian culture.

Maybe we are just not that different from Americans.

Kyle Lamothe is Features Editor of the Manitoban.