hi all

this column,
written from a Canadian (eh?) point of view,
from us nearly 30 million Canucks to them nearly 300 millions Yanks,
speaks clear as a bell to me

janet

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Grieving with our American cousins

Ottawa: 15 Sep 2001: In Canada, it has long been a fine, upstanding thing
to be anti-American. Not wildly anti-American, or rabidly anti-American, or
anti-American in any way that might jeopardize winter escapes to sunshine
coasts, leisure cultural pursuits or the million daily comforts we take for
granted. No, not that kind.

Respectable anti-Americanism in Canada has always been fairly low-key, a
simple collective assumption rooted in the received wisdom that They are
just the overbearing neighbours We are forced to live beside.

They're loud, messy, have obstreperous kids. Know-it-alls, even when
they're wrong. In-your-face, rude, ignorant, a nation of childish
chest-thumpers.

For anyone to the left of Attila the Hun, they're fanatically right-wing.
They live in a world that they 'just don't get' - and don't seem to care
that they 'just don't get it'.

Oh sure, the Yanks - our generic (if historically inaccurate) term for the
whole massive lot of them, north and south - can be big lovable hunks
sometimes. We know that their hearts are in the right place. We know that
they are possessed of a generosity and greatness of spirit unprecedented in
the history of our civilization. But, as neighbours go, they are just so
damned annoying.

And always have been. Ask Canadian Second World War vets to describe the
cockiness of the Yanks - everything from the comic-book flash of their
uniforms to the way they waltzed in, two years late, and took all the
credit for the Allied victory. The First World War generation, in the
trenches for four years, had to deal with Yankee claims of single-handed
victory after a one-year effort.

Another thing. Americans know nothing about us - us, their closest allies
and Grade-A trading partners. Worse, that seems to bother them not a whit.

In "Talking to Americans", Rick Mercer has covered most of this territory,
but, like everyone else here, he has a rich history to draw from. Remember
the Atlanta flag fiasco when the Marine colour guard carried the maple leaf
stem-side up?

Remember the Las Vegas lounge lizard's rendition of "O Canada" before a
football game some years back? (Not knowing the tune, or many of the words,
Dennis Park just made it up as he went along.)
Remember the last time you went to the States and tried telling someone -
it could have been anywhere from Vermont to California - that you were from
Ottawa? Remember the response? (Huh?)

Here is the answer to that classic medieval brain-teaser about what can fit
on the head of a pin; the knowledge of Canada stored in the brains of 272
million Americans.

And how about that imperialism, eh? Margaret Atwood had that nailed as long
ago as 1968 (at the height of the Vietnam War) when she wrote "Backdrop
Addresses Cowboy", a poem that appeared in an anthology edited by Al Purdy
called "The New Romans: Candid Canadian Opinions of the U.S."

"Star-spangled cowboy," Atwood wrote, "I am the space you desecrate as you
pass through."

Anti-Americanism - always quiet, always assumed, always just a little smug
- has been with most of us since the days we digested it with our Pablum.

Nor is it even necessarily a bad thing, given that it's rarely venomous,
rarely focused on individuals (some of our best friends ... ) and never
anything but a modest distinct-identity boost for little-brother nations
like Canada.

Pierre Trudeau had it exactly right when he spoke of the challenges of
sleeping with the U.S. elephant. Our benign anti-Americanism is just a
response to the inevitable twitches and grunts.

But this week, in New York and Washington and on a field in western
Pennsylvania, that proudly Canadian anti-Americanism crumbled - fading, by
Friday, into that extraordinary "Star-Spangled Banner" on Parliament Hill.

In one quick murderous swoop Tuesday, our time-honoured anti-Americanism
became the most irrelevant fixture on the whole Canadian emotional
landscape, an instant relic. In minutes, a whole national psyche's worth of
genteel disapproval simply evaporated.

Unobscured by the defensive condescension that is a Canadian's second
nature, one truth became achingly apparent to us: in ways that are profound
and meaningful, we and our American neighbours are the same. No quibbling.

We disagree deeply about some of the modalities, but we live the same way.
Our ancestors and roots are the same. Our cities and towns and countrysides
have the same multi-hued look. We are both a rainbow of diversity, and
proud of it.

We sing and dance the same way, eat the same way, swear and err and repent
and grieve the same way. We give a lot to each other, take a lot from each
other. Our quotidian patterns resonate to the same rhythms.

That may be why, Tuesday night, so many of us amazed ourselves with our
teary response to the spontaneous singing in the House of Representatives
of "God Bless America", which, for the first time in our listening memory,
sounded like a prayer rather than jingoism.

The feeling of being deeply moved by the unlikely moment amazed us because,
in part, it came just three days after we sneered at the televised excesses
of Diana Ross singing the same song before the start of U.S. Open Women's
Final.

As the Williams sisters flashed their engaging smiles, and checked out,
yes, the dazzlingly patriotic fireworks overhead, Canadians thought, in
unison, "How American!"

By which we meant: how tacky and excessive (never for a second seeing
remotely similar in our own July 1 flag-waving, when we don our maple-leaf
party hats and carry on as if the word "excess" had simply been rubbed out
of the dictionary).

That sudden rush of uncluttered fellow-feeling may be why some of us,
throughout the day Tuesday, found ourselves phoning or emailing American
friends, expressing awkward sympathy. In helplessness, even small gestures
feel better than no gesture at all.

Not that we didn't bristle when, on Wednesday, we had to endure a
barely-veiled rebuke from Colin Powell, who is understandably pulsing with
a politician's natural enthusiasm to point fingers outside the area of his
own government's authority.

Gen. Powell might remind himself that not all the alleged perpetrators
crossed borders from Canada - and that four separate hi-jackings were
executed out of three different airports on U.S. soil.

But the Secretary of State's inopportune posturing does nothing to lessen
the solidarity of our sadness. It cannot sap our empathy, which sees people
trumping politics.

In each story of individual loss, each hopeful heartbreaking photo
tremblingly displayed, we are reminded of our common humanity. There will
be time later for differences of political opinion.

Fifteen years ago, Vancouver director Sandy Wilson made a film called "My
American Cousin". The visiting cousin in question, as seen by a small-town
Canadian girl with big-city yearnings, was sexy, rebellious, in-your-face
(and probably a terrible neighbour) - an unconfined streak of fiery red on
a small, grey canvas.

In young Sandra's immature eyes, Butch was magnificence itself, even if he
barely acknowledged her existence.

Wilson no doubt intended her film to be a heartwarming character study, but
it served just as well as a fine metaphor for our continental relationship.

Mordecai Richler's 1968 contribution to "The New Romans" included this
reflection: "It's time we recognized that the best, as well as the worst,
influences in the world reach us from the United States, and furthermore,
it is most likely that we will always be an American satellite."

Some of us prefer to think similar thoughts in more human terms. As
Canadians, for better and for worse, we will always have our American
cousins. And even when they find themselves estranged from time to time,
cousins remain family. No one here needs NATO's Article 5 to understand
that an attack against them also wounds us.

Right now, the family is grieving. Together.


By Janice Kennedy
The Ottawa Citizen
2001/09/15

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janet paterson: an akinetic rigid subtype, albeit perky, parky .
pd: 54/41/37 cd: 54/44/43 tel: 613 256 8340 email: [log in to unmask] .
smail: 375 Country Street, Apt 301, Almonte, Ontario, Canada, K0A 1A0 .
a new voice: the nnnewsletter: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/janet313/ .
a new voice: the wwweb site: http://www.geocities.com/janet313/ .

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