1. The Canadian Condition
Calgary, Alberta, just after dusk in the tempered
summer heat. The West of Canada, three days before the fourth of July. An
explosion cracks, shattering the peace and filling the air, reverberating off
my own apartment block and the one across the street. As I leave my desk and go
out to my twentieth floor balcony to investigate, more explosions crackle and
fizz, and bright flashes of light reflect then disappear from the windows of
the building opposite. It’s a fireworks display, thunderous and boastful, put
on to mark the anniversary of Canada’s birth on 1st July 1867. Within
minutes the performance has reached an extraordinary level of intensity, with
no gap whatever between the individual detonations; no respite provided from
the whine, the roar and the brilliance of the rockets.
The display itself is just out of sight,
being held I presume on the Stampede Grounds just to the South-East of my own building,
beyond the visual range of my own North-facing apartment. I have instead a
close and impressive view of Calgary’s ever expanding downtown skyline,
dominated by the Bow building and the old Calgary Tower – a communications tower
and viewing platform on top of which the famous Calgary flame (symbolizing the
city’s link to the oil industry) has been lit for the evening. As the explosions
roar on just behind me, they create a wall of smoke that drifts around and in
front of my building, then gradually becomes vast enough to shroud the downtown
skyscrapers and muffle the noise of the town. This cloud reflects in its turn
the bright lights of the fireworks, and seems for a while to turn the entire
city into a sort of giant, thumping discotheque with incessant beats and
flashing strobes.
And yet it’s such a strangely Canadian
scene, in many ways strange because
it’s Canadian, and one of several that sum up the endless, lethargic national drift
that, it seems to me, defines and almost is
this giant and empty country. Far below me on street level Calgary carries on
as usual, in a bizarre way almost oblivious to the huge celebration up above. The
mini-market on the next block is wide open, public holiday or not, and
Canadians drift lazily in and out for a few day’s supply of groceries. The
traffic down on MacLeod Trail is no heavier or lighter than I would expect for
this time of the evening. At the gas station over on 1st Street, the
police have pulled over a speeding driver. The homeless nearby are still there,
still homeless, forever homeless – that clutch of unfortunates who huddle permanently
on 12th Avenue near the car park in one of the world’s wealthiest and
most comfortable cities. In the far distance I can hear one or two car-horns honking
festively in obedient acknowledgement of the occasion, but those drivers are of
the minority who care – or, more likely, who’ve been drinking. It’s the Sunday evening
of a long weekend and everyone’s content – content, that is: not happy, not
ecstatic, just content – and content only because there’s no work tomorrow. As
for the actual reason for the holiday? Of this a large section of the
population is barely cognizant. By now I know enough of Canada to know that similar
scenes of shoulder-shrugging disinterest are also being played out in Vancouver,
Toronto, and everywhere in between.
In the skies over Calgary it is as though
the fireworks have actually sensed the scarcity and dullness of the spectators
below. They screech and roar on even louder, reaching near deafening levels of
anger and defiance, imploring, demanding
that everyone stop, look up and watch. It’s your national party they scream, your
once-in-a-year turn to celebrate in patriotism. Why aren’t you paying attention and revelling? You live in the
self-proclaimed best country in the world! Aren’t you happy? Aren’t you
grateful? Aren’t you dancing?
The fireworks get no answer. Eventually,
as they must, they fizzle out. The final, coup
de grace display lights up the city, then fades to black as silence finally
returns. The ocean of smoke created starts drifting off West towards the
Rockies. Normality resumes. Calgary is once more Calgary: Canada in microcosm; a
peaceful, prosperous cul-de-sac; a cemetery with lights. It’s Canada’s birthday,
and Canada’s bored.
Ottawa, Ontario, exactly six years
earlier. By the river of the same name, the national capital at night, the end
of a maple-syrup day. We’ve gathered, hundreds of us, and we’ve gathered
dutifully: it’s the national holiday of course, we’re in front of a stage at
Parliament Hill, seat of the national government, site of the Peace Tower clock
tower, Canada’s own Big Ben. We stand not quite to attention, beholding the
fire in the sky. Green and blue and bright blinding yellow; patterns vertical
and horizontal and vibrant and sober; the pyrotechnics amuse and divert and
interest for a time. They aim to remind us why we’re here. For the more
impressive rounds, there emanates from the crowd a gentle Canadian ooh. Then an
understated Canadian aah. And then – once – a sigh of Canadian whoa for the
nationalist-themed lights: fireworks red, then white, then red, then white; for
a brief three seconds the colours of the nation suspended from the heavens,
then swallowed by the night.
Here, ostensible
patriotism reigns supreme. Here, the geographical noose around loyal, English-speaking
Canada brings out a certain forced pride, if somewhat reluctantly – as
toothpaste squeezed from a tube: French-speaking Gatineau is just over the
river; New York State is an hour to the South. Trapped, in a way: by non-Canadian
Canadians on the one hand; by dreaded Americans on the domineering other. The
latter commit by far the worse of the slights: they don’t even know this party
is happening; they’re barely even aware this country exists. The former are more
complicated – as a group internally divided. Some would join the festivity, others
would protest outside: from before its own birth this has been a deeply divided
country; indeed the English-French divide is so central to Canada that the
identity of Canadians is in large part actually dependent on it. Disunity is
the tie that binds this country together.
In this the
little sliver that is South-East Ontario, the idea of Canada could thus be
called under siege. But then, you pause for a thought: what is under siege? What nation, what people, what founding
ideology or underlying culture? Briefly you frown and strain for an answer, but
then the fireworks end: a momentary silence to shatter your thoughts. Up on the
stage, a band begins to play. The crowd starts to roar, animated at last; they
jump in time with the music and shriek their admiration for the singer. The truth
be told, this is the only reason they came.
Parry Sound by the lake, my
first year in the country. In a large archive of Canadian memories, one of the
earlier entries. The belting July sun, again the very same date, this time the
middle of the day. Georgian Bay, Lake Huron; a rail bridge high to my left. The
nondescript township behind me, a tarmac and gravel-buried beach before me. Rotting
boat-sheds here, weather-murdered outhouses there. Canadian ramshackle in
Canadian celebration; from a temporary, covered podium, the Member of Parliament
speaks, the small gathering listens. He thanks us all for coming, then glances
at his script.
“Well, of
course we know why we’re here” – he coughs – “we’re here to, ah, celebrate
Canada Day and, uh, to celebrate the fact...” he pauses, somewhat painfully –
Canadians aren’t given to grandiose statements, and he’s rather embarrassed to
say it: “... to, ah, celebrate the fact that this is without doubt the greatest
country in the world.”
He finishes with
relative confidence, nodding his head briefly, militaristically. The half-interested
crowd politely applauds. But a local man beside me, towering and corpulent, feels
more emphasis is required:
“In the
WORLD!” he roars, as the applause dies down, “IN. DA. WORLD!”
His fellow ultra-patriots
look mildly away. There’s a madman in their midst, spewing forth pride and
passion and something called emotion. Nobody knows what to do. Wary glances are
exchanged. Some mutter, some whisper. They start to drift surreptitiously away.
In any event
there’s a bigger crowd by the food stalls. The hot-dogs are much the more
important occasion.
The Danforth in Toronto, and
an old man sees his chance. One year down the line, a breeze to mitigate the
heat. A pleasant residential side-street, he’s out with his broom and he’s
sweeping by the kerb. His movements are pottering and constrained; he must be over
eighty. He squints in my direction, and speaks when I come in range.
“What d’you
think a’ those leaves, eh? It’s the beginning of July and I’m still here
cleaning ‘em.”
He indicates
with his stick, down to some dried, dead foliage. He speaks with disgruntlement,
but he’s happy to have a role.
“Yes,” I
agree, “They fell in the Autumn, froze over winter, and they’re still here now.”
“The city
should fix it, and all these cars too, and the loud music...” the scorn of the
aged for modern society; his mind many places at once.
“Yes, I suppose
they should...”
“I look out
for things around here,” he nods grimly. “Never married or nothin’, so I keeps
an eye out. Especially on the holidays y’know, when nobody’s payin’ attention.”
But I’ve got
somewhere – anywhere – to be. I shift my posture and he notices immediately.
“Well...
happy Canada Day ta ya!” he chirps, pre-empting my apologies and fake lame
excuses.
“Yes, and to
you too.” I smile and proceed and a few seconds later glance back. Isolated and
alone; there’s some barbeques in the neighbourhood but he hasn’t been asked. He
won’t be. But he continues on sweeping, smiling happily now. He’s had his bit
of company for today.
An elderly
bachelor in Toronto. Perhaps the loneliest demographic on Earth.
Montreal: the East Island. The
province of Quebec, and its French-speaking majority. The first of July, and nobody
cares. That’s somebody else’s holiday: here, they’re still recovering from the
province’s fête nationale of one week
ago. Today they’re preoccupied: through a bizarre convention-come-policy that
slaps the face of logic and balks at explanation, this is none other than “moving
day” – the day when for some reason or other a very large proportion of Quebec’s
apartment leases terminate. Got to vacate the premises by noon, got to get the
sofa down the fire escape, got to load it onto a precious rental van booked, by
necessity, six months ago. Got to get to the new place by three. A day off
work, and nothing but stress, and nothing but work: because moving is hell and
hell is moving. Everyone is busy, everyone is involved, no time to rest.
In any case, what
to celebrate? They may be Canadian nationals, but Canada’s not their nation.
Out of the way in the darker
forests, far from the pampered suburbs: the indigenous reserves. Rampant squalor,
too much deprivation, the Third World in the First. An astronomical suicide
rate; little reason for cheer. Nobody knows, nobody thinks to know, nobody knows to know.
Finally, to
the far North, the subarctic. Somewhere, an Inuit elder keeps hunting
traditions alive as his youth succumb to the Internet. But his landscape doesn’t
yield: permafrost and tundra, lunar and godless, mankind’s harshest
environment. In every way, iconically Canadian: out of Canadian sight, out of Canadian
mind, it’s Canada’s national day.
Any serious, commemorative
celebration requires two things. Self-evidently it demands the solid basis of authentic
rationale. More especially it requires that the reasons underpinning the
occasion be understood and fully appreciated by the celebrants. In the absence
of either, the occasion is nothing but spectacle; celebration for the sake of
recreation. It acquires after a time the lethargy and disinterest inherent to
its own pointlessness, while remaining pleasant, agreeable and even enjoyable all
the same. It becomes, perhaps, and for our purposes, as a metaphor for Canada
itself.
If the annual
non-event that is “Canada Day” demonstrates anything, it is that patriotism –
deeply felt love and concern for one’s own country – is as a set of emotions
far beyond the ability of a modern, democratically accountable bureaucracy to
inspire or control. Indeed the mere fact of a national celebration being left
to the suits and ties of government departments tells you something significant
about the nature of the society in question. As each July 1st celebration approaches
the nation’s public broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, goes
into overdrive as it implores Canadians to tune in, stand up and take note of
the official celebrations being televised live from Ottawa. That one year I was
in attendance for the festivities in that city I couldn’t help noticing that
the concerts, gatherings and numerous festivities were bedecked with the imprimatur
of the Federal Government – the word “Canada” printed in distinctive type with a
small Maple Leaf flag sitting squarely over the trailing ‘a’. The city was
awash with the national flag to an extent which bordered on organised frenzy –
in addition to flying from more lampposts than not, the bulk of the revellers and
visitors wore Maple Leaf T-Shirts or had the national colours draped over their
shoulders, or painted onto their faces. Symbolism as a substitute for
substance, a red and white cloth banner as an end to a means – as a
near-embodiment of the nation itself. The whole occasion had the unmistakable
air of being none too subtly over-cooked. The fact of government rather than
civic society being the driving force behind the party struck me as mildly
troubling – as being the kind of trumpeted, quick-marching jingoism more usually
seen in uncouth despotisms and failing states.
Year upon
year the whole charade stands in marked contrast to the Independence Day celebration
just over the border, only sixty hours later, where communities and families unite
with warmth and pride while the bureaucrats retire and the government sleeps. But
then this is Canada, and Canada is different – and it is different in none of
the ways Canadians themselves imagine. Canada is distinguished, in the end, by
the supreme indifference it inspires among its own people. It is distinguished by
the yawning dearth of national kinship that directly results. It is distinguished
by the paucity of intellectual vitality that explains both of the above, and
that pervades the nation, and that was made of the characterless milieu into
which the country was born. A vague disdain for America, a tenuous (to the
point of being invisible) link to Britain, a currency, a Queen, a coat of arms,
a national anthem and lines on the map: beyond the administrative trappings of
nationhood and simple human parochialism it is impossible to detect a Canadian
purpose. It is impossible to find a national ideal, a shared vision or a
collective concern. In Canada knowledge of the past in absent, and so concern
for the nation’s future is nonexistent; in direct consequence patriotism, outside
of Quebec, is unknown; and in the absence of patriotism a country as an
abstract concept, as a unifying emotional force, cannot be said to truly exist.
Rootless and
uncertain in a world still stubbornly, proudly nationalist, the great Canadian
quandary is exacerbated – tremendously – by the fact of its not being recognised,
by Canadians, as a quandary. The
impact of Canada is tremendous: this is a geopolitical construct that while overwhelmingly
artificial nonetheless exerts an extraordinary degree of influence over the
population it owns. It governs their personal and interpersonal behaviour; it
shapes their worldview (or, to be more precise, lack thereof); it makes career-choices,
it controls thought-processes, it shapes destinies, it leads lives. But then – you
may say – don’t all countries? Are not we all moulded and formed by the
societies in which we are raised? The answer is to a large extent yes – but for
the point that in the presence of heritage and sharp cultural distinction, this
is explicable and even desirable; in their absence, as in Canada, it is merely grotesque.
Italian culture and the Italian language form the Italian character, which
feeds into the Italian personality, which in turn reinforces the culture – and
with it the vitality of the Italian nation as a distinct, intellectually
thriving geopolitical entity. As with China, as with Spain, as indeed with most
of the nations of the world. Canada, by contrast, is baseless and groundless –
in contrast to America it even lacks a founding ideology.
And yet Canada prevails. For
all the disunities there is a nation,
a single state from the Atlantic to the Pacific to the very high Arctic. By any
measure one of the most successful ever built. One of the wealthiest, with a
per capita income which ranks as among the very highest on Earth and which,
allied to the relatively low cost of land, creates one of the highest standards
of living and qualities of life known to man.
One of the
safest, with levels of crime and violence that in large swathes of the country
are, by any reasonable international standard, almost non-existent. One of the
most welcoming, with hundreds of thousands of immigrants from all corners of
the globe admitted into the country, in an orderly fashion, each year. One of
the most enduring. A century and a half with stable, secure and even expanding
borders despite several differing reasons, both obvious and not so obvious, for
civil strife to have erupted on a large scale, indeed for a Canadian Civil War
to have raged, for the country to have been ripped into pieces and swallowed
out of existence.
On the 1st
of July each year this, without argument, truly is something to celebrate.
My aim in this book is to
examine this, the Canadian contradiction – the Canadian condition – in some detail. It is to point to its main causes, and to
remark upon its many effects: its impact on the Canadian psyche, its effect on
Canadian lives, its oppression of the Canadian people, in some detail. We will
examine its economic effects, its cultural effects, its spiritual effects, its
political effects. We will visit the Canadas that, being markedly unCanadian,
are distinct – though necessarily as asides: no examination of the country
could ignore Quebec and the Quebecois people (the French-speaking majority in
that province), and it would make for an incomplete survey were we to forget
the culturally-separate Maritime region. But it is the Canadian Canada that must
be the focus, the English-speaking majority atop a WASP foundation, in sparse occupation
of a tremendous swathe of the Earth from Lake Ontario to the Pacific Ocean –
the Canada of the world’s well-meaning if undernourished imagination.
The long shadow
of America is cast throughout. How could it not be? Ten times the people, ten
times the economy, ten times the money, a thousand times the power. The great
republican maelstrom to the South, which Canada exists both because of and in
spite of, in loathing of and in admiration of, forever fighting a rear-guard action
against the force of its pull – against its unknown, unarticulated, unexplained
terrors. But even the United States must bow before a greater force, one
revolutionizing the structure and organisation of humanity even as we speak,
though slowly enough that many have yet to grasp its immense implications:
globalization, the steady advance of entirely unfettered free-trade; and the
barrier-less, division-less, borderless, ultimately nation-less and
country-less world it must, in the very end, bring about. The advance of global
economic and thus societal cohesion – most in evidence through the movement’s
vanguard, the European Union – will be a major background theme of this work.
We query the preparedness of the Canadian people for this unfolding future.
Line Forty Nine does
not – nor does it remotely seek to – present a balanced overview of Canadian
society. It is a polemic. it is a critique driven largely on the perception that
the outside world’s view of Canada – where such a view exists – is blinkered,
gushing and sentimental, significantly departed from reality and in any event
sanctimoniously anti-American in motivation and delivery. The nation’s good
points are all there, perfectly obvious, not least to the hundreds of thousands
of immigrants who flood in annually from Asia, Africa and elsewhere: the high standard
of living delivered by abundant natural resources and arrived at with
comparatively little effort; the remarkable degree of social stability and inter-racial,
inter-faith co-existence; the gentle manners and in certain corners, the striking
scenery. Peace, order and reasonably good government – sustained and delivered
for a century and a half in an unstable world. What not to like, what not to
admire? And indeed – not least through living in the shadow of a richer, meaner
sibling – this is a country and a people almost entirely unaccustomed to outside
criticism. Perhaps, with the forces of ideological globalism massing at the
door, the time for a ruthless cross-examination is ripe.
In Canada I remain
an outsider. I am a Canadian in law, a naturalised citizen, but one who is not
– nor could ever truly be – “of” this country in the way a born-and-raised Canadian
is. I hail from Ireland, the edge of Europe, a society torn forever between the
lure of America and the pull of Europe; like Canada, a state dominated from conception
by a perfidious and powerful relative.
I arrived in
Toronto on a crisp January evening in 2002, residency visa in hand, then a 24
year-old computer programmer who had never previously set foot in Canada. What
would I observe in the years that would follow? What view of the nation would I
come to hold? How would I come to describe the country when asked or challenged
to do so by curious outsiders – not least those back in Europe – who like all
others tend to view Canada through the narrow preconception of a smaller
America: colder in climate, milder in culture and disposition. But this book
emphatically does not constitute a memoir. The events and settings I personally
encountered, was personally involved in or was present at are presented
entirely non-chronologically. I have lived in Canada on three occasions, on and off and on again, in different
cities of different provinces at different times, and since the material is
presented by subject matter alone, the reader is asked to tolerate a geographical
flightiness – a necessary hopping from one location to the next with little to
no warning. Personal experience and observation, anecdote blended
with analysis of historical event by way of illustration and illumination. This
will be my method. Canada in the early part of the twenty-first century, viewed
by urgent necessity through a critical eye. But before we begin, the Canadian
condition calls for a brutal diagnosis.
Canada is America’s suburb, as such a place utterly
removed from the horror and greatness of the city. It is demure in manner and
offers a blanket of stability; superficially at least it feels deeply secure. It
is the place where the summer barbeque is the talk of the week, lasting three
hours and planned weeks in advance. Like all suburbs, this is where careers go
to die, a death both comfortable and complacent: Canada is a country populated
by the moderately successful and determinedly unambitious. Canada is a New
World nation, yet uniquely among countries of this type the cliquishness and nepotism
of old Europe persist – albeit in a milder form – as Original Sin identified
and charmlessly propagated. Canada is a country that arouses strong emotions
among only its detractors and enemies, all of them domestic: it is both a
cliché and a truism to say that Canada is the only country stubbornly defined
by what it is not rather than by what
it actually is.
For the native European as was I, migrant
from the old country, the sheer physical enormity of Canada inspires at first a
feeling of awe. But soon after, once you have started to settle in, you are
struck by a creeping sense of general mediocrity. Then there builds over time a
slowly expanding pressure cooker of frustration, ending finally in a deep sense
of conflicted, guilt-addled contempt. Canada has done tremendous things for me,
yet I am not the tiniest bit grateful, yet I carry her passport with pride.
Canada drifts, Canada fails. It fails, not
so much in an economic sense – and certainly not through corruption or moral
decay – but through a pervasive and very strange passivity of the intellect, an
inertia of the mind enforcing conformity of personal behaviour and restricting
the concepts of idea and inspiration to tightly constrained corners. Canadians,
in all senses and in all facets of life, do not think outside the box. They
live in a state of near terror at the concept of ideology – using the word ideology
in the broadest and most general sense. A Canadian is very unlikely to have a
worldview. Indeed viewpoint as something publicly expressed moves a clear
majority of Canadians to palpable sensations of fear. Canadian society has steadily
morphed into a permanent state of mind-numbed, quasi-authoritarianism. This, in
turn, is covered for and excused by the particularly weak alibi of “good
manners”, the entirely self-serving notion that a well-behaved people simply
avoids the socially-discomforting evils of opinion and observation and – by direct
implication – depth of thought. The whole charade could be summed up as
follows: the cowardice of perpetual compromise masked as the strength and force
of tradition. The arched eyebrow and the furrowed frown are relatively unknown
in this country – I speak in literal terms – a physiological hallmark of a people
that have learned to balk at concentration and analysis on anything other than
the mundane tasks and pleasures of day to day life.
We come back at passivity. The bland,
disinterested face of Canada, complacent in the assumed wealth – the money
growing on trees – of oil and gas and timber and wheat; thus deprived of
ambition, drive and intent. The angst of overwhelming Canadian banality is
irritated still further by the appallingly idealized view of the country held in
unanimity by so much of the outside world. But the world doesn’t know Canada, doesn’t
know her on own terms because Canada, by choice, is anonymous. As I write these
words I sit once again in Canada, after a second interlude in Europe from which
I swore never to return, all the while baffled and maddened but utterly fascinated by the country I have made my home over the
better part of a decade.
As any map of the country must by definition be small
scale, what is by far the nation’s most important geographical feature is almost
invariably hidden from the view of the casual observer. It is a river, and it
is not the mighty Saint Lawrence which flows mile-wide in parts from Lake
Ontario, near Toronto, up around the island of Montreal and out on to an
enormous estuary easily visible from space. Unquestionably the most
economically significant river in modern Canada, the Saint Lawrence is in fact
an international waterway and for a stretch between Kingston and Cornwall in
Ontario actually forms part of the U.S.-Canadian border. The Saint Lawrence is
not as quintessentially Canadian as is sometimes suggested or implied. Rather,
it is the Ottawa which rips through the heart of this country, rising in the
Laurentian range of Quebec before scything a trail in a South-Easterly facing
arc down to eventually meet its sibling the Saint Lawrence at Montreal. To the North
and East of the main flow of the Ottawa river lies one Canada, in many ways the
first Canada, dominated by the
French-speaking province of Quebec, but also – for the purpose of our narrative
– including the four so-called “Maritime” provinces on or near the Atlantic
coast: New Brunswick (one-third French speaking), Prince Edward Island, Nova
Scotia and at the Eastern extremity of North America, Newfoundland. This is the
Canada that can claim to be culturally distinct. While most in the outside
world have some vague notion of Canada’s English-French ethnic and linguistic divide,
far fewer will appreciate the extent to which English-speaking Canada is itself
loosely bound and disparate, though not usually disunited. Certainly the
peoples of the four Atlantic provinces propagate a quasi-Celtic culture heavily
influenced by intensive earlier migrations from Scotland and Ireland and which
in terms of mindset, mannerism and general behaviour sharply distinguishes them
from their compatriots further to the West.
South and West of the Ottawa’s midriff is
another Canada, unquestionably the second and younger, but overwhelmingly the
dominant one with over seventy percent of the population and an even greater
proportion of the nation’s economic output. This is English Canada, perhaps more
accurately termed “Anglo-Canada” in acknowledgement of its colonial British,
American-Loyalist and sternly Protestant roots. Geographically it forms the
bulk of the whole country, stretching thousands of kilometres from the city of
Ottawa over to Vancouver, in between swathing over the unending wheat-fields
and prairies of Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Southern Alberta. It includes the
Rocky Mountains, the tar-sands oil fields and, further to the North, a near terra incognita of boreal forest and
tundra – a land of unimaginable size between Alaska and Nunavut that is crowned
just South of the Pole by Alert, a weather station on Ellesmere Island and humankind’s
northernmost permanent settlement. When the world speaks of “Canada”, it is this
latter Canada to which they refer – the ethnic French are tacked on as an
afterthought if they are ever considered at all. The heart of this Anglo-Canada
is Southern Ontario, the economic engine of the country, a belt of cities, towns
and suburbs that for the most part stretches in a line of narrowing gaps from
Toronto down to the border at Detroit. This is where Anglo-Canada was born and
raised, on the prime farmland off the shores of Lake Ontario upon which this
industrial and post-industrial belt now lies. It was from this heart that
Canada grew and developed, from here that the territorial expansion West all
the way to Vancouver and Victoria was managed and overseen.
This, then, is the Canada of the world’s imagination:
of severe winters, gentle politeness, no crime, an easy life and English with a
quiet American accent. “America with all the negatives taken out” being the most
oft heard summary of preconceived notions. It is this second Canada – the
province of Ontario, the province of British Columbia and the provinces
in-between – to which now we turn our gaze. For convenience I will from this
point on simply use “Canada”, “Canadian” and “Canadians” when referring to Anglo-Canada
and its people; Quebec and the Atlantic provinces shall be referred to, later,
in distinct terms.
Perception is governed by perspective. Just as the
appearance and form of an object may appear to alter depending on the angle
from which it is viewed, a given human experience will be shaped and felt
according to the conditions under which it takes place. The experience of
visiting a country is a world apart from that of living in it.
What is the world’s perception of Canada, and
how accurate is it? How does one explain Canada to an outsider – including
those who have merely visited? And to expand that last point a bit further,
consider that when we discuss any society from an objective standpoint, there
are actually four viewpoints to consider. There is that of one who has never
set foot in Canada before; there is that of a short-term visitor for business
or tourism; that of a newcomer – an (adult) immigrant who has settled in Canada
from another country; and finally, of course, that of the Canadian-born,
Canadian-raised local who has never lived abroad. For practical purposes this
last category must include those who migrated into Canada as small children;
but it is really to the first and second categories that we owe a deeper description,
even more so to the second – those who have visited the country briefly to ski,
hike in the Rockies or experience French culture in Quebec Province. They think
they have seen Canada, in point of fact they have seen Canada, but they could not possibly have experienced
Canadian life. Yet they come away with the impression of having done just that.
A weekend frolicking by the Trevi Fountain, marvelling at the Coliseum and sipping
and supping in the pavement cafes of Rome tells you nothing about residential
life in Italy – that is, about Italy as a place to live, breathe and exist in
on a day to day, year by year basis. It tells you nothing about the
availability of good employment, the ease or otherwise of finding housing; dealings
with the state, officialdom and the petit-bureaucracy;
getting a mortgage, insuring a car, getting a driver’s license; the banking and
finance laws and systems and so on and so forth – the simple and not-so simple
mechanics of daily existence. But above all it tells you nothing about the wider
society as is it constructed, and as it behaves and mutually-interacts when the
tourists aren’t standing around watching. The visitors’ perspective, being dazzled
by the wrapping-paper superficiality of their experience, will in some respects
be actually less accurate than the
vague impressions of those who have never seen the country.
So, how do we introduce Canadian society to an outsider? How can I paint a
picture of the Canadian experience? What is it to live and swim in the Canadian
milieu, the atmosphere that pervades above and around you as you breathe and exist,
permanently in residence, in this huge and unusual country? Well, facile as it may
initially sound, it has always struck me that the atmosphere of Canada is as that
of a vast, modern airport complex. As a metaphor for the country it works as
well as any other, I suppose. It is not without its faults; both Francophone
Quebec and to a much lesser extent the Atlantic regions have a culture of their
own, separate from the Canadian mainstream – though even there the soul-free
staid of Canada’s waspish heart blankets and pervades. That caveat aside, I
would go so far as to say that a week spent confined among the gates, departure
lounges, chain cafes and travel shops of Toronto Pearson International Airport
will give you a near complete idea of the atmosphere
of Canada without you ever having to leave the building. If you have never seen
Pearson Airport, rest assured that it is indistinguishable from most of its
sister facilities worldwide. Indeed it is superior to most comparable places:
while the infrastructure is dated and even crumbling in some corners, the
complex is largely shiny, clean and new. Those areas in need of refurbishment
will get it soon enough, or at least eventually; this is a prosperous,
economically advanced environment so general improvement is only a matter of time
and ponderous Canadian planning. Every need and convenience is catered for: the
bathrooms are spacious and usually clean, there are excellent emergency medical
facilities should you suddenly require them, there is an emergency dentist; there
are barber shops and beauty salons for in-journey grooming and beautification; there
are chapels, mosques, synagogues and interfaith places of worship for those in
need of celestial nourishment. For the secular (and religiously-flexible) there
is a well stocked Irish Pub. There are airport hotels, some technically located
just off the premises, others integral to the complex. While you cannot see the
Rocky Mountains, Lake Louise or the walled city of Quebec from your present
location, huge murals depicting such iconic sights decorate the terminal at
intervals – typically along those endless corridors between gates that one
travels through on moving walkways. While these visions have been beautifully
painted or photographed, the experience of beholding them is not remotely, of
course, a substitute for the real thing. Indeed as you spend your week exploring
this pristine and sterilised place, it takes you only a matter of hours to
appreciate that here, superficiality reigns. The ultimate triumph is of all
that is plastic, vacuous and fraudulent.
It is a very polite, very shallow
environment. And not necessarily by choice, either: woe betide anyone who so
much as dreams of straying from the expected social and cognitive (spoken) norms.
Behavioural superficiality of this kind – that is to say deliberate, organized
insincerity – makes for a rigorously enforced dogma, never more so when married
to the modern mandates of safety and security: then its enforcement can be not far
short of totalitarian. And throughout the facility security is indeed tight, and
gradually getting tighter. This however does not preclude the possibility of
danger: the greater the perceived danger, the tighter the security measures;
though in a mysterious way it seems the tighter the security measures the
greater the danger. Here, it is striking that “security” enjoys an especially
broad definition. It is not merely a question of sniffer-dog patrols and checkpoint
searches for ammunition or explosives. It extends far beyond physical safety,
reaching deep into the arena of social harmony. Anything which ripples the smooth
surface of this skin-deep society has come to be seen as a form of threat
almost indistinguishable from threats of the physical kind. It is striking, in
such a place, just how easily people are disconcerted – and once disconcerted
they demand (and almost invariably get) immediate relief in the form of quasi-official
intervention. In this multi-national, multi-faith, multi-ethnic polyglot
environment the deepest fear is that of causing offence and thereby discord; in
direct consequence opinion (and therefore by extension thought) on matters
beyond the entirely trivial are unwelcome and not always safe, unless muttered
and whispered in the quietest corners.
The airport complex is furnished
throughout with telescreens silently tuned to rolling news networks. With their
incessant reporting on unending foreign conflicts and the latest criminal outrages,
they serve to remind just how savage the outside world is; conversely the
sensationalized, childishly exaggerated quality of the coverage helps keep the
intellectual tenor of our own environs at a suitably austere level. Interestingly,
the news screens are muted – or at least are set to a very low volume. This
keeps the flow of information inoffensively subdued: here, if bad news must be
seen it should at least not be heard; if it could be heard we would all be
forced to pay close attention to it. This is an environment where ignorance is almost
a virtue; and where ignorance is absent then feigned ignorance is highly
recommended. Whatever thoughts you may have on those news items, you are
strongly advised to keep them to yourself; this is an environment that demands
conformity at a high cost: conformity of idea, conformity of expression, conformity
of thought. Again, there is no escaping the whiff of totalitarianism that hangs
in the air. It is usually in the background, it is not even particularly
threatening – most of the time – but unquestionably
it is there. The introductory section
of the airport’s website (for which read the guide-books to Canada) neglected
to mention it.
This is certainly a very sterile place.
Interspersed murals aside, the walls, pillars, floors and ceilings are
undecorated and seem to have the same bland shades of pale officious grey or tired
soulless beige throughout. This is a very large complex – huge, in point of
fact – yet from one end to the other, French quarter excluded, neither its
appearance nor its ambiance change by much, if at all. Where expression is
discouraged, culture will be blunted if not eliminated. (What can culture be without expression?) So there is no culture in the broad sense of a
united, communal identity – no real means for this collection of humans to distinguish
themselves from any other. For all the inter-ethnic coexistence one of the main
things to strike you, as the hours and days pass, is just how socially
disjointed this place is. The “multiculturalism” of this place is much vaunted,
and certainly as you look around you are struck anew at the multitude of races,
nationalities and other visible minorities present. In front of you there are peoples
who back in their native or ancestral homelands have been warring and feuding for
centuries, yet here they sit alongside each other peaceably and even amicably. Those
in authority trumpet this lack of internecine blood-letting as a remarkable
achievement, as though it were a policy-decision actively planned for and
deliberately implemented. Objectively, one can agree that this harmonious scene
is highly laudable. But is habitual lack of wanton mass-murder sufficient as a
hallmark of enlightened civilization? By prevailing international standards it may
well be, I suppose. But what is almost never remarked upon about our
metaphorical flight terminal (Canada) is the sheer lack of social cohesion, of social
unity – of inter-racial interaction as
a positive force, of collective goal-setting
and nation-building; indeed almost, you could say, of “society” itself as an
abstract concept. There may be no hate, but there is a very marked absence of
love. The disparate groups sit side by side at the gates in a mutual politeness
every bit as cold and sterile as the passionless, antiseptic wilderness that is
the airport complex itself. This is a community united by little except the overwhelming
disinterest the various insular groups have for each other. And that by itself
poses a significant question: what is the point
of this community even existing as a distinct geopolitical entity?
In a commercial sense the facility is
heavily globalised; the shopping areas are dominated by the major international
brands and trademarks. There is little if anything to distinguish the locality;
the bland of the brand permeates the atmosphere, suffocates inspiration and contributes
to the dearth of creativity. A visitor from the opposite side of the planet,
beamed here directly, would be unable to state what society he or she is even
in. It would take several minutes (at least) of overt enquiry or investigation
to determine that. Then again, in a prospectively borderless world, what does it
matter?
The wider setting of this place is outer-suburban.
Exurban, perhaps. We are far from the noise of the city. The surroundings immediately
beyond the perimeter are similar to those within: staid, quiet, largely
crime-free. Here, just as out there, life revolves around existing. Keeping
things going; working, operating, buying, selling, consuming, sleeping, waking,
leaving, arriving. Existing for the sake of persisting. Providing a roof: protection
and shelter from the storms that rage beyond. This place is little except
functional.
And so an extended tour of this facility –
this international warehouse for transitory humans – will bestow strong and
accurate sensations of what it is to actually live in Canada – certainly, at least, in mainstream
English-speaking (or “Anglo-”) Canada. Part run-down, part pristine; utilitarian,
mediocre. Safe, secure and intellectually dreadfully, dreadfully stifling. Everybody
is thinking, everybody is feeling, but nobody speaks, nobody vents – nobody
dares. And so hypocrisy reigns supreme. Humbug is practically a vernacular;
comfortable lies have the currency of truth. Passion and zest are unusual and seen by
many as positively threatening. Conditional on being bland, all is
tolerated, including – perversely – intolerance. Unquestionably, as a place to live, to
exist permanently in, Canada can be appallingly dull for the spirited and
intelligent. But how it came to be in such a state is in itself
absolutely fascinating, as are the effects of the Canadian condition on the
citizens and recent migrants who dwell within.
And yet, for
all that, it succeeds. It succeeds economically, it succeeds socially. It is
very stable and somewhat rich. While the outside world boils and toils with conflict,
hunger and day to day subsistence, the terminal remains the terminal, Canada
persists in being Canada. Change is gradual. Upheaval is subtle. War is foreign.
Even when it’s Canadian.
How should we regard such a
place? Should we be enthralled or should we be appalled? For this, like it or
not, is what most of the World aspires to. It is for this that billions of our
fellow human beings, worldwide, would quite cheerfully sacrifice their left
arms for: prosperity and a quiet life for the price of mandatory
stultification, the triumph of bland and the repression of the soul. Should we
embrace it? Should we rejoice in the serenity or deplore the sterility? Enjoy
the security or despise the amorality?
But before
attempting to answer these questions, it is important to reiterate what is
meant by ‘globalization’ in the context with which the term is being used
throughout this work. And that is: a position being reached, perhaps a century
or more (or less) hence, whereby the nation-state – the “country” as we understand
the concept today has for all practical
purposes ceased to exist. National borders, if the maps are still portraying
them, will serve no purpose beyond the requirements of regional government and
nostalgia for the elderly. Across these lines the flow of humanity, goods,
services and capital will be unfettered and, by right, absolute. A single
economic system will prevail on the planet Earth, with all of the immense social,
political, governmental and cultural consequences implied. It is a long-term
view, admittedly – though in truth there is no other view worth considering in
the grand scheme of things.
This is an
end-state that I describe – a global destination if you will – the nature of
which needs to be borne in mind as we sit back in Canada. Ostensibly, from
here, the choice would appear to be a stark one between the savage world outside
and the cultureless, concrete-and-steel inside. But can it be as
straightforward a choice as that in reality? Because in Canada we have in
microcosm what could be said to be the globalist ideal, a sort of roped-off exhibition piece depicting a
post-national multicultural world which lounges in cushioned prosperity and is secure
in the absence of war. But within a fully realised vision of orthodox
globalism, could such prosperity and the peace, order and good government which
depend on it truly be counted on? Because like that of just about every other advanced
nation, Canada’s standard of living now relies greatly on the produce, goods
and (increasingly) services provided for it by the cheaper labour in impoverished
and developing nations. Consider that the cost of virtually all of our clothing
and footwear, to start with, is kept startlingly low by a great ubiquity of
sweatshop labourers – little more than latter day chattel slaves – in some of
the hungriest, most backward and corrupt corners of the Earth. Similarly with
foodstuffs: most fruits, many vegetables, plant and crop-based necessities such
as sugar, cocoa, tea, coffee – among them some of the most basic necessities of
our existence – are picked and harvested by millions of people worldwide who
are far too poor to consider such work beneath them. Much of the computer
software we use, knowingly and unknowingly, critical to the functioning of our modern
civilization, costs a small fraction of what it otherwise would were it not
coded by legions of low cost programmers in places like India. The electronics
we count as indispensable, handheld and otherwise, would be far less attainable
to many, many more of our people were not the production lines which bear them
manned by vast low-paid armies in China and elsewhere. No doubt the list could
go on. The point is that in a truly
globalised world the cost of such necessities must steadily and in the end greatly increase as the hitherto decrepit
producing nations grow wealthier. And grow wealthier they must: as in the total
absence of trade-barriers huge swathes of industrial and non-industrial plant
and infrastructure will relocate to these cost-effective bases. Wages there
will rise, eventually levelling out with those of the West – and as they do the
cost of the produced goods and services must follow. Canada and other
Westernised nations must suffer a relative
economic decline, and perhaps even a decline in real terms. Prosperity is
intrinsically relative: by definition you cannot be well off unless there are
plenty of serfs, servants, coffee-servers, beggars and burger-flippers in the
vicinity. In order for a nation to be rich it must have poorer countries to
compare itself to. All this considered, simple common sense dictates that the
maintenance of the self-declared Canadian paradise as it stands today would demand a new policy, nothing less than a halt to Canadian participation in further
global economic liberalisation – for the nation to bank the gains and
conservatively invest the capital, as it were. Objectively speaking, for an
advanced Western country, there is precisely no national interest in the
pursuit of globalization. There are corporate interests, there are international interests, but no national interest. With patriotism as a
metric globalism scores low for the Western nations, but given what patriotism
has done to the human race over the millennia, is this a measure we should be assigning
even the slightest value to?
But in any
event would such a policy – such a halt – be even possible in economic terms,
or in terms of international relations? The answer is no, of course not. And so
the question becomes: to what extent can Canadian society (if such a thing
there be) succeed and even survive once the gloves come off; once globalization
in its pure and untrammelled form – the end of the geopolitical nation state –
arrives to toss all of those complacent Canadian certainties into the raging
fires of unhindered international competition?
In this first part of the
twenty-first century Canadians have dug out a very comfortable social and
economic hiding place through their hitherto partial, cautious and selective
adoption of free-trade, capital movements and even immigration. The national
border remains. Patrolled and controlled, over which goods, money and humans
may penetrate only at the whim of the state, and at a speed and to an extent
which does not threaten the fundamentals of the Canadian utopia. As we move
slowly but inexorably towards the post-national, post-country experience, how prepared are the Canadian people for all
its many and great implications? Can those born of a thought-shirking
non-culture of perpetual obfuscation and unending, sanctimonious compromise be
expected to survive in that place out there, that real world with its ruthless drives and ambitions, scruple-free
power plays and brutish, lawless governance? Its staggering catastrophes and occasional
glories? Its great and bottomless compassion and ruthless, blood-soaked disdain?
Its immense risks, ever-present dangers, shorter lives and diseased
surroundings? That place that virtually to a man and virtually to a woman the
Canadian-born, Canadian-raised people have not the slightest experience, nor
idea, nor conception, nor thought of?
I spoke of
Canada as being, in terms of the globalist ideal, a sort of roped-off
exhibition for the less fortunate. As we bring along our children to point and
marvel at the piece, we are forced to ask ourselves: does this exhibition, this
Canada, convey a deeper message? One positing that economic success cannot and should not buy off the disgrace, the
ghastly inhuman sterility, of a cultural and spiritual graveyard? Does the
World need more Canada – as the nation’s beer-swilling armchair patriots keep
telling us – or does Canada need more world? Whether it will persevere in one
form or another, or whether it will not: does this Canada, this impersonal
shopping mall among the nations of the World – does it deserve to survive in a recognisable form?