A Brief History of Canada (Roger Riendeau)
January 5th, 2010My roommate on the Bolivia trip was Canadian, so it was somewhere in the depths of South America that it occurred to me that I knew NOTHING about Canada. Wasn’t it just a kind of United States North?
So that’s why I started this book. And running out of renewals helped inspire me to finish it (due tomorrow!). Did you know Diana Krall is Canadian? (We’re listening to her on youtube right now.) Anyway, I’m really, really glad that I read it.
I’m sort of thinking of Canadian history as being like a Star Trekkian parallel universe (oh well, William Shatner is Canadian, too), where everything is the same, but with major plot twists. On the other hand, Canada’s history highlights the fact that history doesn’t respect arbitrary borders, not even the 49th parallel. The “Dust Bowl” of the praries was a North American problem, not just American. French fur traders based in Canada explored the Mississippi and the Cajuns are descended from the Acadians. British loyalists made their home in Canada after the Revolutionary War.
Canada’s story may not be quite as flashy - er, violent -as ours. The land wasn’t considered quite as desirable to the French as the 13 colonies were to the British- they didn’t seem to mind its loss too terribly much. No Revolution, no War of 1812, no Civil War. That’s not to say that everything was all peace and happiness. Canada, like the rest of the “New World” is still dealing with the consequences of living on property wrested from its indigenous peoples. Funny how that kind of thing never, ever really goes away. And that’s not to say there aren’t problems with people not liking people who are different. French Canadians are passionately opposed to anything that seems to threaten their identity. Quebec has referendums on Quebec sovereignty every so often.
The bearing on American politics was interesting. Canada has had health care for awhile…so maybe we’ll survive if it passes here. There was a mild fuss during the last election about Obama and NAFTA…I can see why Canadians might feel differently about it.
America and Americans really do have dominant personalities- I guess that makes it easy for us to ignore the opinions of the rest of the Americas, and that’s not even deliberate; it’s like it doesn’t occur to us that there are other opinions. I don’t like feeling like I do that.
Daniel told me today how odd it seemed to have the Pope doling out pieces of S. America to stop Spain and Portugal from fighting over it (in 1494) when the land was already occupied by natives. And, after the Aztecs and Incans were conquered (and, even then, treated cruelly by the Spanish) “the Spanish tried to make all the Indians become Christians”.
Anyway, I think Canada is on my top five list for places to move with family, perhaps because it seems a more peaceful, unspoiled version of what we have here. Possibly really because I daren’t take my children too far away from familiar territory, though, the level of civilization we [at least claim to] possess - and that health care system, such as it is.