The Foreign Service Journal, October 2007

O C T O B E R 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 77 A Brace of Canadians The Unfinished Canadian: The People We Are Andrew Cohen, McClelland & Stewart Ltd, Toronto, 2007, $22.95, hardcover, 270 pages. Canadians: A Portrait of a Country and Its People Roy MacGregor, Viking, 2007, $35.00, hardcover, 344 pages. R EVIEWED BY D AVID T. J ONES Perhaps mindful of the quip that the classic definition of a boring head- line is “Worthy Canadian Initiative,” many Americans are willing to do any- thing for Canada except learn about it. Fortunately, The Unfinished Canadi- an: The People We Are and Cana- dians: A Portrait of a Country and Its People are both distinctly readable volumes, possibly reflecting the fact that the authors are journalists rather than academics, with the reporter’s eye for detail. Both are primarily designed as vehicles for Canadians to talk about themselves, but they offer us an opportunity to “listen in” to what is driving (and bothering) our close allies and economic partners. Roy MacGregor’s Canadians is the more optimistic of the pair. He fol- lows a path blazed by an iconic Canadian political observer, Bruce Hutchinson, in his The Unknown Country (1942). MacGregor takes the reader across the country pro- vince by province, as he rides former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s fun- eral train into history, recounts the funeral ceremonies of Maurice “Roc- ket” Richard as the backdrop for the Canada-hockey nexus, extols forgot- ten heroes such as World War I com- bat ace Will Barker, and travels through the empty north to meet native “First Nation” Canadians. On a lighter note, he recites a list of Canadian inventions ranging from caulking guns to the Wonderbra, including the creation of highway center lines. Perhaps that last devel- opment was necessary to provide an answer to the question, “Why does a Canadian cross the road?” Answer: “To get to the middle.” But, essen- tially, MacGregor views Canada as a “bumblebee”: no observer can under- stand how it flies, but it does — and will continue to do so. Cohen is less sanguine and more barbed, with no signs of mellowing since his previous book, While Canada Slept: How We Lost Our Place in the World (2004), created a major fuss among his countrymen. Rather than employing the classic travelogue to show us his country, he constructs a variety of prototypes that collectively make up his Unfinished Canadian . These include the “Hybrid Canadian,” a mixture of input from England, France and the United States and the “Observed Canadian,” via whom Cohen sorts through mus- ings by a variety of outsiders who have written about Canada. In his discussion of the “Uncon- scious Canadian,” he cites a popular TV program that surveyed viewers to identify the nation’s greatest citizen to demonstrate Canadians’ woeful igno- rance of their history. The chapter on the “American Canadian,” exploring ritualized anti- Americanism, will probably be of most interest to U.S. readers. The author suggests that politicians’ disre- spect for their southern neighbors constitutes “pandering to the lesser instincts of an insecure people.” Ultimately, Canadians remain happy to accept the U.S. security “subsidy” that permits them to spend expansive- ly on social programs while scolding Washington for fiscal irresponsibility. Yet instead of his compatriots’ diverging from Americans (as argued by one recent sociopolitical text, Michael Adams’ Fire and Ice ), Cohen believes there is actually increasing convergence in economic attitudes, political practices and lifestyles, though Canada is moving more rapid- ly toward the U.S. than vice versa. Cohen has already generated con- siderable media angst back home with his caricature of the “Capital Canadi- an.” In that chapter, he trashes Ot- tawa as a national capital that makes the least of its opportunities, filled with uneventful architecture, poor urban planning and cuisine that is “unflavored and unfavored.” But to be fair, John F. Kennedy memorably pilloried Washington, D.C., as a city “with Southern efficiency and North- ern charm.” So one might reasonably conclude that there is hope for Canada’s capital, as well. Neither volume examines the Quebec/national unity conundrum. Such timidity is regrettable but hardly surprising, for it is the rare English- speaker who can deal with Franco- B OOKS