What it means to be Canadian

Doug Saunders spends a little too much time dwelling on the North in this interesting op ed piece that explores what parts of the Canadian identity myth are due for a re-evaluation. Otherwise it's a fascinating read.

The fact that I am uninterested in the north brings my vision of Canada a bit more in alignment with the historial reality. Apparently the myth that Canada is a country pre-occupied by 'northernity'? is only true insofar as we have a lot of land up there. Development-wise the whole landmass could sink into the ocean north of North Bay and not that many people would truly be the wiser. ;) I'd notice one of my besties live in Whitehorse, but compared to the amount of growth and effort that goes into supporting our version of the sunbelt. It's almost as if the North is only needed as a source of myth.

Also interesting is that fact that as a third generation (on one side) Canadian, who's ancestors arrived from Eastern Europe, my family did more to develop the nascent idea of a Canadian identity during the depression and into the 50's then the multi-culti Trudeau generation.

Weirdly the immigrants who arrived prior, during and after the Second World War developed a sort of faux "Canadian/British" identity by stockpiling small collections of leftover home-culture icons and starting dialect newspapers, (up until recently my Bubi had some old Yiddish ones floating around her perfectly appointed condominium in North York) while at the same time, learning to dress, talk and in all other ways assimilate to the ideal of the middle class non-ethnic Canadian way of life. It created a sort of capsule identity - here are the best parts of the home culture-carefully preserved in amber. I am assuming it was a way of making the best of it, keeping a time and place for homesickness, while continuing to make a life for your children and your children's children. There was a lot more racism then, I imagine, or if not more it was more permissable. So I imagine negotiating an ethnic identity became a question of what to share with whom, and importantly how much of an identity that made you 'other' to burden your children with. This is especially true for those of us whose ethnic origin is only visible in minor ways, the shape of our eyes and our noses, the kind of hairs that grow on the upper lips of dark-lidded women.

So in a multi-ethnic nation tension arrives in the form of a history of second-generation colonialism. I remember before Gorbachev ended the cold war, we had a group of the children of Russian/Jewish defectors? (I don't know my language is all wrong here) come to visit us at my religious school, (like Sunday school for Jews). We, the Reform, assimilated children of the children of Russian, Ukrainian and Polish immigrants stared in amazement at our first generation counterparts. We couldn't speak their language, hated the food they brought with them for the picnic, couldn't see ourselves in their skin-tone or their cheekbones. Yet, to all intents and purposes we were them, only "Canadianized" by our grandparents and parents.

I was at Ikea yesterday so maybe this is just a lament for the fact that I came home with 200 dollars worth of knick-knackery and space saving devices that only serve to furnish an "identity" as a young Canadian consumer of trendy and apparently "sustainably forested" blond wood kitchen implements. I am a demographic who can be understood more by my purchasing habits than any other kind of history.