When I read Nyvin's post, I nearly dropped my crepes into my blood pudding (having only french and english culture, here, we rarely eat anything else!). I was just so shocked at the incredible aptitude with which Nyvin was able to describe the canadian condition, I felt the need to write in and applaud him. Let's take a an unbiased perouse of the current state of Canada, shall we?
...Canada is basically looked at as a supplier of raw material for the most part, something that could be done by any group of bozo's that went in there, or some other country that decided to invade, course that won't happen thanks to Britain in the past and US nowadays.
How absolutely true! Our trillion dollar beaver pelt, lobster and lodgepole pine industries are the only real thing that keeps this country afloat. Our bozo ancestors certainly were lucky to fall onto this landmass while looking for the great US of A. If only we had a large manufacturing and telecomunications industries and financial services industries! Why then we'd have one of the most complex and successful economies in the world..oh well, a canuck can dream! And we can always take comfort in the fact that if the great white north were ever attacked, our american neighbours would be here lickity-split to defend us, seeing as the vast majority of americans know exactly where Canada is on the globe
And they don't have any unique culture, it's like an expansion of Brittish (and French) culture with some American influence. If a country expands and it's people generally move into some other area most likely they'll retain their national identity and culture, this is what happened in Canada, note the faces on your coins...
How true! It's an odd peculiarity that in the 138 years tha Canada has existed as a country (and the 400 years since the first colonization) Canada has received
absolutely no immigrants from countries other than France and England. It's good thing too, because welcoming large amounts of people from eastern europe, africa, asia, india and the middle east might add thier own flavour to this country, perhaps even creating a unique culture not based on race or ethnicity. As Nyvin pointed out, the Queen is still on our coins, which still remains a symbol of our close-minded, xenophobic culture based on british colonial power.
The USA is different in that it actually did go through different national identity developments to make it into a culture of it's own, wars, the wild west, the civil war, and patriotage.
It's true! Canada has developed nothing since 1867! This made possible by a few simple facts:
(1)We have participated in
no wars since our independence (and certainly none before! I heard a rumour once about Canadians capturing Washington and burning the whitehouse down, but that notion is just plain ridiculous!). We certainly didn't participate in any world wars, develop a national identity from them, and create an army of peacekeepers known the world 'round. No, we canucks prefer to stick our fingers in our ears, and wait until the fighting calms down...
(2)
We still haven't spread across the west! Yep, nothing but prairie between Toronto and Vancouver. Boy, if we had, we'd have had to have built one of the largest railways of all time, found cities, and create a whole new Canadian way of life! We're simply not up to that...Oh well, at least we have a place to put all those resources!
(3) We have had
no social movements of our own! No suffrage, no repatriation of our constiution, no human rights code, no creation of social programs! Yep, not much at all has changed since we got off the boat...
America hardly has anything in common with brittish culture other then both speak english, a very large gap has developed between the two. The US also has so many different ethnic groups that it's impossible to say just one is the 'core' of the culture.
Like I said before, we keep it pretty caucasian up here...matches the snow and all, eh? And it's pretty obvious by now that the US and Britain have nothing in common. I mean, it's not like you're a part of some coalition together or something! Canadians have much more in common with Britain. I mean, there's that chick on our money, right? Oh, and all those extra u's we put in all those words where they don't belong! Silly Canadians!
Nyvin, seeing as you live so close to our poor, backwards country, I mean colony, I was wondering if you could do us a favour: please prepare us a care package of american culture so we can finally
live with a culture vastly superior to our own! Please include cans of Coke, Britney Spears CD's, cartons of Lucky Strikes and tapes of Rush Limbaugh. With those in our hands, hopefully we can start to develop something of a culture of our own.
Since we don't have any postal system, you may have to drive it up to us! Just cross Lake Michigan, and head north. We're not too hard to find. If you do happen to cross into a country with a vibrant diverse and unique culture, with a successful economy, world-class social system, and enviable living standards, just keep going....that isn't Canada.
