Oh Ca-nadaaa, our home and tra-la-la...

I write on the eve of Canada Day. Earlier in the day a call from a colleague in the States confirmed that Americans don’t know a thing about Canada Day (okay, it's a small sample…but she has lots of friends!). Our informal poll concluded that, while probably 95% of Canadians know about July 4th, maybe 2% of Americans know about Canada Day. That’s so typical of Americans, my friend said, if it’s not about us, we’re not interested. Yes, that might sound like a serious indictment of her fellow citizens, but which is worse: not being interested in other countries or not being interested in your own?

A poll just released about how much Canadians know about Canada reveals we don’t know much. Only 31% of Canadians could name the previous Prime Minister—yikes, that’s not much of a short term memory; only 16% knew the country’s longest river (I assume more Americans would be able to name the Mississippi), and answers varied widely as to when Newfoundland joined confederation. The poll apparently didn't ask what percentage know the words to the National Anthem. While everyone knows Canadians love not-being-American, I’m not sure how wild they are about being Canadian. This isn’t new news, but there’s something a wee bit disheartening to have it reconfirmed so close to Canada Day...

Wait! Hold it, stop the presses--I'm guilty of seeing Canada through my American eyes. Canadians are wild about being Canadian. It's just that they're Canadian, so it doesn't look particularly wild. Now we're on to something! Tomorrow I'll go down to the celebrations on Parliament Hill and, watching the mild-mannered festivities, I'll remind myself this is wild patriotism, Canada-style.

National Canoe Day

National Canoe Day

Tomorrow is National Canoe Day in Canada. That’s right. National Canoe Day. It would be the equivalent, I suppose, of a National Auto Day in the States if there were such a thing, a day for celebrating that mode of transportation most defining one’s national sensibility and aesthetic.

Canada is in some respects a child of the canoe, which opened up its interior long before a rail ever crossed it. Rivers and lakes were the canoe’s highways, and though there may have been no tolls, there were hellacious bugs, bears, weather worth swearing at. The fishing was free, the maps were marginal, solace was an evening fire and some tobacco. It is tempting to wax romantic over that bygone era but then I stop and realize the era may be gone but, for the most part, the rivers and lakes remain.

Those rivers and lakes are, in fact, the reason I first began coming to Canada. No kidding. I’d guided canoe trips in Maine and in northern Minnesota and heard there was a vaster and more remote wilderness north of Thunder Bay, Ontario. Sure enough, I heard the call of that wild and went; it was rugged and empty and gorgeous. Because I wanted to paddle in places not many had paddled before, I’m now a citizen in a country that celebrates the canoe.

It is a quintessential Canadian day. It may seem a bit quirky, a bit quaint, but it is more than just nostalgia. It is a small way to recognize not only those voyageurs and aboriginals of old, but also those young Canadians who are getting ready, even as I write, to head out to summer canoe camps to learn the way of the canoe.

Perhaps they will master the artistry of paddling on a calm lake so it looks elegant and effortless, subtle, if not sublime. Perhaps they’ll learn how to draw the bow into an eddy, fry up some trout or, best of all, sit in absolute silence as the sun sets over the rocky point where they’ve made camp. And then they’ll hear the cry of a loon. And another loon will answer…the sky will darken, revealing its cathedral of stars. As the campfire crackles behind them, they’ll realize there is no place on earth they would rather be. And sitting there, they are brethren to all who’ve gone before.

Balsillie versus Bettman

Up here this is BIG news. Canada’s RIM billionaire, Jim Balsillie, wants to buy the failed Phoenix Coyotes hockey team and move them to southern Ontario. Gary Bettman, NHL Commissioner, is against it.

Let’s get back to basics. Phoenix is in a desert. It is, as I’ve said before (Dec. 21, 08 entry), the hottest city in the world with a population of a million or more. Hockey, last I looked, is played on ice. I, for one, want hockey to fail in Phoenix for the same reason I’d want beach volleyball to fail on Baffin Island: some things just don’t belong together.

Gary Bettman, American businessman raised under the tutelage of David Stern in the NBA, is simply, as most Canadians will tell you, the wrong man for the job. He gets hockey even less than me, who at least grew up in Boston when Bobby Orr was working his magic. Gary Bettman sees markets and tv contracts and dollars in places where there are lots of people but, alas, no hockey fans. It doesn’t take an MBA to know the NBA is no model for expansion.

Listen Gary, you want your dreams of NHL expansion to work? Then look to water when it freezes—that’s expansion. And it happens every winter all across Canada, on ponds and backyards, on the canal running through the nation’s capital. You want real expansion? Bring back the Winnipeg Jets! Bring back the Quebec Nordiques!...Then you'll have fans who actually know the difference between icing and a cake.

USA Today

Whenever I travel through an airport in North America, I purchase the one essential, required reading material needed to understand the States: USA Today. I turn to the section called Across The USA—News from Every State. In its brief news items, one can trace the great themes and issues of the country.

In the most recent issue I read from May 26th, the following appears:
--in Indianapolis, the state supreme court awarded compensation to two black women fired from their jobs because of race;
--in Louisiana, an eighth grader shot himself after shooting at his teacher;
--in Mississippi, Madison county is spending money to clean up its voter registration rolls;
--in Oregon, a recently released inmate is filing a federal lawsuit claiming his civil rights were violated because he was forced to attend daily religious services.

It’s all right there: race, guns, money in politics, religion and the law. Ah yes, what a country, what a paper!

I admit, without reservation or hesitation, Canadian news is boring in comparison. In choosing between two countries with a free press, which do you choose? News junkies ought to head south, but if you believe no news is good news, Canada calls.

On Cemeteries...and hockey trophies

Slightly more than a week ago it was Memorial Day in the States, and American remembrance focused on Arlington National Cemetery. Where, you may ask, is Canada’s National Cemetery? There isn’t one, is there? Canadian soldiers have long been buried where they fell or back in their home towns. A National Cemetery for Canadian soldiers? Well, I just learned there is one. It’s recent, contains a whopping five acres and it took some local Ottawa citizens to create it. It’s the five acres I love—may there never be cause for it to expand.

Thinking about Memorial Day brings me to mention The Memorial Cup. I’ve been hearing about it on the radio so much I decided to learn what it is. It’s the Junior Ice Hockey trophy awarded to the Canadian Hockey League Champion, and was given to honour the dead of WWI (which is, I suppose, a way of saying that a hockey cup to honour the fallen is the Canadian equivalent of a National Cemetery). The scores of the tournament are announced on Canadian radio well before the NBA playoff results get mentioned, if they get mentioned. So move over Dwight Howard and your Magic; step aside Kobe Bryant and the Lakers; it’s time to hear about the Halifax Mooseheads, Medicine Hat Tigers and—my favorite—the St. John’s Fog Devils (who sadly moved to less foggy Montreal).

Doctors Who Offer Abortions

When I uploaded my previous entry about Obama speaking at Notre Dame, I had not yet learned of the murder of Dr. George Tiller, the abortion doctor from Kansas. The term “abortion doctor” is unsettling. When you listen to people who knew George Tiller, it becomes clear he was first and foremost a doctor—in the best sense of the word. Is there any other doctor we refer to by their procedure? The “bypass doctor,” the “hip replacement doctor”? George Tiller was a doctor; regardless of the reservations one might have about late-term abortions, one cannot listen to those worked with him without sensing that Dr. Tiller saw his duty as providing care to the women who came to see him. His murder supports Obama’s request at Notre Dame and highlights that strand in the American tapestry of solving problems through violence, real or metaphorical (see my entry for March 16th).

Canada has had its own George Tiller, a Dr. Henry Morgentaler. The abortion debate does not, so far as I can tell, shift much in tone or content from north to south. While it is somewhat of a less strident exchange here simply as a reflection of Canadian conversation, Dr. Morgentaler has had his clinic bombed and he’s been attacked by a man wielding garden shears. The difference that I am aware of north to south is that Canada has the ability to publicly recognize pro-abortion activists. The country recently awarded Dr. Morgentaler its highest order: investiture into the Order of Canada, which is as significant as receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the U.S.. The choice to give the Order of Canada to Dr. Morgentaler was not without controversy: some members of the Order chose to resign their membership in protest. In any case, such a significant recognition south of the border for somebody like Morgentaler is difficult to imagine.

Civil Discourse

Though much of the emphasis regarding Obama’s recent speech at Notre Dame was focused on the controversy surrounding the invitation extended to a pro-choice President by the Catholic university, what most stood out for me was Obama’s exhortation/argument/request for Americans to engage in civil discourse on contentious issues. His moral authority was not focused on the abortion debate per se, but rather on the nature of the discourse in which the debate takes place.

In the States, we now have a President who seeks to educate citizens on how to be civil; in Canada, it’s the reverse. The lowest level of discourse in Canada happens between politicians, as citizens despair at the juvenile exchanges of their elected officials. A definition of “lacking credibility”—picture the current Prime Minister asking Canadians to be more civil.