Considering Bumper Stickers & Identity

This morning I went running through the icy streets of Montreal. An SUV slowly drove past me pasted with bumper stickers--colleges, politics, candidates, faith, country. The car was a kind of Identity Calling-Card: THIS is who I am. I looked at the license plate; the SUV was up from the States. Somehow I already knew.

You don't see much of that up here. Cars aren't used that often as personal billboards. What's that about? As I ran, I got to thinking--when I wasn't focused on avoiding icy patches that had me cursing the lousy road maintenance--about how Canadians tend to be less forward about their markers of identity. They have them but they're more subdued about it, less fervent. When someone wears a Georgia Bulldogs t-shirt in the States, it means a whole lot more than someone wearing a U of T t-shirt up here. The Bulldogs are a brand; U of T is a University. Learning goes on at the University of Georgia too, but that's not the big sell. The big sell is you're now part of a community, a club, a cult. And that belonging defines you...

And so does that Obama/Biden sticker on the bumper, and the Support Our Troops sticker and the Sierra Club decal. Despite the tarnish of the last eight years on the U.S. image, Americans are essentially proud of who they are, and they proclaim it. An accrual of affilations & associations and beliefs brand me as this, and not that, especially those affiliations that brand me as a winner. I remember how proud I was to be from Massachusetts when Nixon was impeached--the bumper stick everyone stuck on their cars then was a picture of Massachusetts with the words "We Told You So" across it; after all, we were the only State in the Union that hadn't voted for Nixon and we sure as hell wanted the rest of the country to know.

In Canada, something quite different goes on. I confess I don't think I've figured this one out yet. It's not new to say Canadians are not nearly as patriotic as Americans, or should I say not nearly as in your face about their national pride (or their University pride, for that matter). Canadian flags are around, but they don't appear around every street corner, and Canadians rarely inquire about where you went to University as a way to get a handle on who you are. Perhaps in the emerging multi-culturalism of contemporary Canada, having multiple facets to one's identity is a given, so there's no need to state them. There's not a lot of bluster because it's just not a big deal.

A couple of quick hypotheses about the difference:
1) Branding/marketing is more a part of the American fabric than it is in Canada. Branding oneself is a recent phenomenon, created in the States, and Canadians lag behind.
2) University sports are a minor presence in Canada and that opportunity for identity is much less compelling here...might that carry over into other realms of identity as well?
2) The quickie elections of the parliamentary system don't leave much time for the kind of rich creative ads of the political horse races that happen in the States. Canadians seem amateurish in their political marketing skills (and I'm not sure that's a bad thing), so getting caught up in one's political identity isn't nearly as strong...and perhaps, like university identity, that carries over into other realms of identity.
4) Finally, perhaps Canadians wear their identities with less flamboyance because they're conflict-averse. Identity is, as much as anything, about difference. And though Canada has worked admirably hard to celebrate/appreciate difference, there is always a current of danger lying just below the surface of significant difference. (The one place that significance difference is most provocative is, of course, around Quebec identity. It has always struck me that whenever I see the Fleur des Lis being waved at a seperatist/sovereigntist--choose your terminology--event, the energy feels familiar, like good ole American flag-waving.)