52 Countries in 52 Weeks, Part 28: How Canada Looks After A Year Away
In Which I Think About Nationalism, Culture, And What Happens When You Go To Dozens Of Museums Around The World That Talk About National Sovereignty
“Canadians are seen as very, what’s the word…”
The half-French, half Tahitian man next to me in the Balinese restaurant was struggling to find the right word to finish that sentence, as our tour group sat down for lunch and got to know each other a bit better this afternoon.
A country is a lot more than one word. Stereotypes are fraught. History is literally changing this weekend.
But I knew what word he was searching for.
“Nice?”
“Yes!”
I chuckled, and tried to explain that it was sort of right, but also a sort of international construct, manufactured from a lot of things.
I said that in Canada, being friendly and polite are generally seen as important virtues, and niceness was sort of a combination of that.
I said that our history as peacekeepers got ingrained into stories we told the world, even though it hadn’t been relevant for a while.
I said that because we tended to avoid international controversies, it was easy for us to fly under the radar.
And to laughs, I said “plus, Americans have lots of positive attributes, but ‘nice’ probably wouldn’t be one of them, so we look nicer in comparison.”
Which was all true.
But it might be the last time for a long while that I use that adjective.
Over the past 11 months, I’ve travelled to 50 different countries, going 125,830 kilometres by train and plane and boat and bus (yes i have a problem quantifying all aspects of my life) to see all the places I’ve ever dreamed of going.
But when you journey to learn more about the world, you also learn something about the only country you’ve ever lived in.
Part of this comes from folks asking where you’re from, and having a couple of things to say when you tell them you’re Canadian.
After hundreds of these interactions, this is probably my ranking of the most common replies:
“It’s cold!”
“Ah, very friendly people.”
“It’s big!”
“Your country is taking in lots of immigrants!”
“Why is Justin Trudeau is no longer popular?”
It was an amusing grab bag of statements to respond to. I would correct them a bit on the cold by saying I lived in the one place where it barely snowed, smile agreeably about being friendly and big, while number 4 was dependent on reading the other person’s vibe, particularly if they mentioned Chinese or Indian immigrants in a disparaging tone.
As for Trudeau no longer being popular — I found it interesting how the wording reinforced the buzzy reputation he had at one point, but how it had suffered so much that even cab drivers in Argentina and golfers in Scotland were aware of the end of Sunny Ways — I’d mention a combination of things, like how most governments in Canada tend to get hated after a decade in office, or how home prices had exploded.
I’d also say that it was part of a trend across the western world of centre-left governments on the wane in favour of conservative parties. And all that seemed to make sense to people, regardless of where their politics seemed to land.
And for most of my trip, that was the extent of the Canada conversations.
——
Another thing you notice when you travel the world for a year: most countries were threatened or fully taken over at one point, and they don’t look back at that time too fondly.
I like going to museums for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that it’s a tidy way to learn a lot about national culture and myths when you’re only there for a week.
The way countries gain independence and/or democracy looms large in national museums — but so does the way they lose it.
It’s either a neighbouring country, or in the case of South America and Asian colonialism, a more powerful one. Sometimes it’s a full blown invasion, but often (particularly in Asia), the museum tells a story of the greater power imposing restrictions for economic reasons, followed by face-saving treaties that give up a little bit of sovereignty, followed by more treaties that give up a lot of sovereignty, followed by not really being a free country anymore.
Then there’s a section about occupations, of free speech curtailed, of protesters being jailed or worse, of culture being restricted. Sometimes they make a special note of journalists disappearing, which is always fun.
Sometimes the occupation lasts years, sometimes it lasts decades, but I’ve found when the country looks back at it in their museums, they’re never like “actually Britain’s trade justifications made total sense” or “Japan was pleasantly nice to us” or “the people in our own country who embraced the hostile power had a point”, presumably because museums decided those details mattered a heck of a lot less in the grand story of their country’s people.
What tends to matter is who did the attacking, and how many people suffered.
——
Another thing you notice when you travel to 50 countries in a year?
How many of them celebrate their culture and heritage on a visible and regular basis.
In some countries, there’s an emphasis on home grown music or food. In other countries, cultural museums and heritage buildings are made a focal point of a city’s downtown core. And in some of them, you can find everyone from children to senior citizens dressing in traditional wear as they enter temples or historic gardens.
(True, some of them are 20something influencers doing vain photo shoots, but i respect the effort)
Because of our size, Canada doesn’t really have a national cuisine. Because of our proximity to the US, we don’t really have national music (with apologies to the Tragically Hip) or pop culture (with apologies to Letterkenney). Because of our relative youngness as a country, we don’t really have a lot of heritage buildings or historic gardens. Because of our lack of religious devotion, we don’t really care too much about our places of worship.
And even on things like “waving flags and singing the anthem”, it’s interesting to see how prevalent it is in the rest of the world compared to Canada.
All of those things have long been debated by pundits when discussing our national identity, or what makes us unique.
But I think there’s a connection between needing to fight for one’s sovereignty, and having an overt national identity.
Other countries have myths and battles and defining stories. We have a nice story about about upper class Scottish immigrants compromising with sixth generation French settlers to ask the British really nicely for our independence on domestic issues, along with a fun story about how they burned down the White House as a footnote in the Napoleonic Wars.
Other countries shed blood on their soil. We were the 4th most important country in fighting the Nazis (come at me France), and I don’t make light of that, and went to Juno Beach this summer because honouring those sacrifices mattered greatly to me.
But it adds up to a comparatively thin strand to weave a national tapestry.
Maybe I just went to one too many museums, or wandered by too many temples, or happened to be in too many places where there were Euro soccer tournaments or independence anniversaries.
Or maybe there are very elemental reasons why other countries seem to be more extroverted in their displays of culture and sovereignty.
These thoughts were bouncing around my head for much of the last year, and I thought they would make for a fun if less essential chapter in my book.
Then events started happening, and it felt more important to put those thoughts to paper, in case they matter very little 12 months from now.
The other day, a friend said “it’s this weird suspension of free fall where intellectually I know things are very very bad, but everything still feels normal today [and] it still feels like a future too untethered to believe.”
If you’re going about a regular life back home, that’s probably true.
But I don’t have a regular life to tether myself too right now. I have newspaper articles I read, worried conversations in group chats, and periodic musings from the most powerful person on earth about how Canada doesn’t really exist and how an economic takeover is coming.
Given the things I’ve seen this year, I can’t help but having a little existential dread.
From 13,000 kilometres away from home though, as we plunge into a trade war with an uncertain outcome, there are two things I remind myself of.
The first is that museums and parades and national cultures don’t highlight the times where something really bad *could* have happened but didn’t. We live in the present with a million timelines in front of us, and our destiny is always something to be discussed and negotiated and even fought for.
And the second is the overwhelming reaction of Canadians, in a way that I’ve never seen as an adult. After 11 months away, it’s a reminder that cultural pride is more than the sum of the flags you wave or national dishes you eat.
It may not be a nice thing to think about.
But we’re a lot more than that.
This is where I think Truth and Reconciliation's end game can lead us to: a reconnecting with the traditions and cultures that existed on this land prior to 400 years ago. Build out a Canadian identity around getting all Canadians, Indigenous or non-Indigenous, to celebrate and participate in the original ways of being in this country while taking the country away from its gross colonial foundation.
I think at least one reason for the thin tapestry of nationalism in Canada is the perspective — you're comparing to countries that have documented their resistance against or experience against colonialism and imperialism, that have defining stories and strong cultural histories. But on these lands, those are largely First Nations — Canada is still a fairly recent imposition on top of hundreds of distinct nations, which have the kind of unified and powerful expressions of sovereignty and shared culture that you're looking for. Canada's main distinguishing feature is not that it's *not* the US; it's that it's a colonial project that is still trying to justify its occupation.
None of that really negates your points about the tidal wave of fascism roaring towards Canada from south of the 49th parallel — I just think it's good context for our national identity crisis.