Lost in North America: The Imaginary Canadian in the American Dream

LOST IN NORTH AMERICA

The Imaginary Canadian

in

The American Dream

JOHN GRAY

Talonbooks • Vancouver • 1994

To my fearless mother

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

1: DEATH BY METAPHOR:

IT’s NOT WHAT YOU SAY, BUT HOW YOU SAY IT

In the Beginning Was the Word

California Dreaming

The Welfare Trap

The Wrath of the Canadian Victim

Adam and Eve

Catch You with Another Man, That’s the End

A Window of Opportunity

Analogue and Digital

Thugs

A World of Our Own

2: THE IRON PEOPLE AND THE EARTH PEOPLE:

A TRAIL OF CROSSED SIGNALS

Space Travel

Crossed Signals

Witches and Demons

An Endangered Species

Out of the Woods

3: THE HIDDEN PEOPLE: ENJOYING THE INCOGNITO LIFESTYLE

Down in the Dumps

Not Quite the Global Village

Preemptive Insulation

A Bunker of Cheer

A Traditional Disgrace

A Nice Guy

4: THE VISIT: A DOMESTIC WILDERNESS EXPERIENCE

Family Pets

A Mixed Reception

A Frightening Experience

Quite a Girl

5: A TALE OF TWO VILLAGES: SAVIOURS WITH FORKED TONGUES

Outside

Oh Baby Allans

Up for Air

Dancing to an Old Tune

Angels of Deliverance

Martyred by the Hyphen

Star Gazing

Disastrous Majorities

Up for Air (Reprise)

6: THE EXTRA GANG: THE NATIONAL DREAM, REMEMBERED

You Are What You Recall

The New World

Frontier College

The Servants’s Entrance

John Adam

Ant Work

A Canadian Miracle

7: GETTING VAGUE FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY:

A VIEW OF THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE

A Figment of the Imagination

Where Is Here and Where Is There

The Best Laid Plans

The Errant Canadian

Lies My Father Told Me

Watch the Adjectives

8: HOW TO MAKE THINGS WORSE:

A CANADIAN RECIPE FOR DECAY

Vital Signs

To Hell in a Hand Basket

Friend or Foe

The Birth of a Bureaucrat

The Decline of the American Empire

The CBC and Who

Fingerpointing on the Titanic

The CBC and Me

9: NORTHERN ANXIETY: THE DELICIOUS TASTE OF DREAD

The National Emotion

Diminishing Returns

An Old Joke

Anxiety and Hope

10

FRESH HALLUCINATIONS: GETTING AWAY FROM IT ALL

Eclectic Lifestyle

Who Wants to Go to Ottawa

Let Us Go to Denmark

Friends of Danish Culture

11: CONSUMER OPTIONS: HOW TO MAKE THINGS WORK

The Gap

A Vague Uneasiness

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Canadian

And Now... This

Two Nations

Brought to You By...

The Cultural Clear-Cut

How to Make Things Work

EPILOGUE

INTRODUCTION

Every age and every nation has certain characteristic vices, which prevail almost universally, which scarcely any person scruples to avow, and which even rigid moralists but faintly censure. Succeeding generations change the fashion of their morals, with the fashion of their hats and their coaches; take some other kind of wickedness under their patronage, and wonder at the depravity of their ancestors.

—Lord Macaulay

Here in British Columbia, we have become used to early morning telephone calls from back east, where people frequently forget about the existence of time zones. I suppose they in turn complain that we wake them up in the middle of the night.

The pleasant female voice belonged to the Clerk of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, conducting a review of the Canada Citizenship Act: Would I appear before the Committee to share my thoughts on the matter?

I had heard about these federal activities. The Globe and Mail had run a story about invitations to celebrities with a conspicuously Canadian identification—Peter Gzowski, Margaret Atwood, Stompin’ Tom Conners, we all know the list—to talk about the meaning of Canada. Later, a CBC radio news report—in a Discouraging Canadiana sidelight delivered with masochistic relish—indicated that few of these emblematic figures were interested in doing so. Some had declined out of a reluctance to become involved politically; others simply could not be bothered. A few were honest enough with themselves to admit that they knew nothing about the matter.

More honest, I’m afraid, than I.

Clearly, my name had been drawn from the bottom of the barrel.

Of course I had been through this sort of thing before, many times. During the Progressive Conservative reign, their urbane Minister of Communications hosted periodic think tanks in which culture-types sat around tables in rented conference rooms and complained about Canada. Marcel Masse, a Quebecer, seemed perplexed and amused by everything he saw and heard in English Canada, and could launch into the most impressive extemporaneous rants you ever heard—about the need to decolonize both Quebec and Canada, how his ministry established the context for all other ministries, how difficult life was for a sensitive human being in the current economic climate. He was always elegantly turned out, yet his skin exhibited a slightly uneasy glow, as though he wished someone would open a window.

The Minister, as he put it, needed our ’elp. Our minds were to provide him with ammunition, with which to repel the forces of philistinism approaching from a westerly direction. He was our champion, out to slay the dragon of ignorance on our behalf—or so the argument went. Culture ministers use it all the time to gather a constituency for their issues and to insulate themselves from personal abuse.

We would gather in the upper room of an upscale hotel. The Minister would gaze about the table thoughtfully with large, liquid eyes, like a benevolent patriarch, as we intense men and women in leather and denim poured out our hearts over coffee and muffins, surrounded by bureaucrats with blank faces and Mont Blanc pens, scribbling like mad.

We would talk about all sorts of things: how to improve the status of the artist; whether the cultural industries would be better served under the umbrella of the Environment Ministry or the Defence Ministry; how to make the artist less dependent on government—that sort of thing. We could go on for hours; and if you keep doing anything long enough, you can convince yourself that you are really getting somewhere.

Later we would all enjoy a last supper together and go home, and never hear another word about it.

But despite a profound sense of futility, of being the butt of a long-term practical joke, I never failed to attend these events. It was something you just did—like jury duty. Serving on panels is a cultural form of conscription—painful, inconvenient and boring, yet deeply thrilling at the same time, for you feel yourself to be contributing in an unspecified way to something greater than yourself. Now the Committee on Citizenship and Immigration was calling me to action. I thought I knew even less about immigration than I knew about culture, but this did not deter me, for it is widely accepted that the Canadian government knows more about what goes on in the minds of Canadians than we know ourselves. My task was not to wonder why; again I had been called upon to serve the Parentland, and again I would not refuse. Ready, aye, ready.

Unlike M. Masse however, the Clerk of the Committee gave me a choice of two appearance modes: I could fly to Ottawa, all expenses paid, to appear before the Committee—which seemed extravagant for the meagre insight I had to offer—or I could take advantage of state-of-the-art electronics and appear via something called a teleconference.

Without knowing precisely what it was, a teleconference seemed ideal—sleek and contemporary, reeking of virtual reality and the Global Village. I imagined it to be like reading the news on TV, or doing a double-end interview on Midday. For some reason, images of Star Trek came to mind. As things turned out, it wasn’t at all like that. In hindsight, it would have been less mortifying had I flown to Ottawa.

The voice of the Clerk assigned me a date and time for my teleconference, together with a Vancouver address. A day later, somebody called back to say that the address had been changed. Then the time was corrected—my appointment had in error been scheduled for Ottawa time. Had I arrived at the appointed hour, I should have been three hours late and everyone would have gone home.

Next day, an eighteen-page fax snaked its way onto my kitchen floor, bearing the House of Commons letterhead with its heraldic coat-of-arms and the hopeful legend, Ad Mari usque ad Mare. The covering letter was so respectful, my chest swelled with pride:

The members of the Committee feel strongly that it is Canada’s writers and artists who best express the spirit and meaning of citizenship....

Only when I tried to compose something to say to the Committee, something that would express the spirit and meaning of citizenship, did I ask myself exactly what that sentence meant, and whether its implied assumptions were indeed true.

Immediately, I was in trouble.

Precisely in what way do Canada’s writers and artists do that? Stompin’ Tom Connors may be as Canadian as Insulbrick, but when he wrote Bud the Spud, did he mean to say that driving a produce truck from PEI to Ontario had something to do with citizenship?

I tried to imagine a new immigrant from, say, Sri Lanka, parsing the lyrics to Sudbury Saturday Night, searching for the meaning of Canadian citizenship:

Oh Momma’s playin’ bingo

And Daddy’s gettin’ stinko

’Cause there’s no one down at INCO

On a Sudbury Saturday night...

Even a sampling of more highfalutin’ Canadian culture (and there is plenty of that on hand) was of no help. I thought of Atwood’s existential feminist awakenings in the face of some death symbol or other; of Alec Colville’s chilly artifacts depicting normal life, frozen into abnormality and menaced by some compositionally-induced threat. For that matter, what did the Group of Seven, with their trees and lakes and sky, have to do with citizenship? The more I thought on the subject, the more inadequate I felt. Feverishly I pored through the remaining seventeen waxy fax sheets for some insight as to what was required.

Entitled, elliptically, A Citizenship Strategy, the document did not ease my mind for, as far as I could tell, the Committee had set itself an agenda of weighty matters indeed:

1. HOW THE VALUE AND VISIBILITY OF CANADIAN

CITIZENSHIP MIGHT BE ENHANCED.

2. HOW THE FAIRNESS AND INTEGRITY OF CANADIAN

CITIZENSHIP MIGHT BE STRENGTHENED.

Value. Visibility. Fairness. Integrity. What did these words mean? How were these ideals to be attained in any sphere of human life, private or public? Most appalling of all, what the Hell did they mean by the word Citizenship? Did they intend it to describe a person, a legal status, or an action?

A person: The nineteenth-century European concept of the nation-state assumed that humanity naturally divides into peoples and that, in a perfect world, a people should have a country of their own to reflect their peculiar, genetically-determined beliefs and needs. However, this eugenically-based nationalist vision fell seriously out of favour with the rise of National Socialism and the war that followed. (Germany evidently felt that, as a people, they required more.}

Besides, when you consider the shifting twentieth-century demographics in countries such as Canada, where every child is born equipped with officially-sanctioned hyphens to indicate multiple cultural affiliations, this vision of citizenship seems rather tricky to apply.

A legal status: More likely, citizenship is meant to signify some sort of legal covenant—especially given the preponderance of lawyers in government. But if it refers to a legal contract, then it is an extremely one-sided one. To begin with, citizenship is awarded upon birth: The state grants the citizen with a priori rights, whereas the citizen, having been proclaimed so in utero, has not admitted to any responsibilities in return. If Canadian citizenship is a legal contract, then it has been signed by only one party. The citizen can hold the nation to its end of the bargain, yet remain free to break or abrogate the contract at will—or even to sign a contract with another nation at the same time. Some contract.

An action: Or perhaps citizenship refers to a number of responsibilities the citizen agrees to undertake: to vote, for example, or to pay one’s taxes, or to give one’s opinion to government hearings when asked. But how then can such a citizenship indicate a permanent status? How does it apply, say, to the expatriate retiree who plans to die in Florida, or to the dual citizen born outside the country who has never set foot in Canada? With what actions are they meant to express their citizenship on an ongoing basis?

I do not know any two Canadians who will agree on these things, and for that reason we hate to talk about it at all. We never discuss what citizenship means in school, nor do we debate it in our national media: how then are we to explain it to the recentlyarrived dentist from Uganda, or to the Jamaican restauranteur?

The covering letter went on to explain that I would have ten minutes in which to share my thoughts on these issues, after which I might be asked some questions by members of the Committee. Ten minutes to discuss the meaning, value, and integrity of Canadian citizenship: Clearly I had been called upon to write a haiku.

For two days I worked on my statement. I pictured myself facing a recent immigrant, clutching my pithy statement about Canadian citizenship, my one precious kernel of meaning to guide him or her in their new life. But this miracle of minimalist eloquence eluded me, and in my imagination I stammered, perspired, and babbled on.

I implored the Kenyan bank teller not to believe what she sees on television and in movies, newspapers and magazines. I cautioned her that these media images and slogans do not represent Canada; that despite the evidence of our cultural media, Canadians are not a confrontational people—on the contrary, our guiding public principle is a spirit of accommodation, a mutual granting of peripheral space expressed and embodied by the landscape itself, enabling Canadians, however hyphenated, to get along.

I explained to the Italian pharmacist that this ethic of accommodation is continually at risk, thanks to cultural and geographical distance and the domination of our media by more monolithic and confrontational cultures; that to find Canada, one must turn off the TV and the radio, and watch how people behave in their own town, on their own street.

Canadians resent littering, but will not complain if you do. They can be belligerent, but will apologize when they bump into you—sometimes even when you bump into them. You are unlikely to be shouted at, hit, or shot by a Canadian, unless he has been drinking or there has been a terrible mistake. If you look about in real life, again and again you will find evidence of an implicit accord that is the basis of the Canadian way of life, and it is up to Canadians to maintain it for our own sake and for our children....

Thus I babbled. Even now, reading this, I fight the urge to erase the document. Though appropriate to a Dominion Day luncheon speech, as food for the Standing Committee it seemed like thin gruel indeed.

At the appointed hour I entered a shoebox-like building and climbed the stairs to a floor stocked with rented office equipment, belonging to a company that deals in audio-visual technology. The office was temporary and entirely without character—a couple of workmen could gut it to the wall studs in a matter of hours.

The dark-skinned receptionist gave me a lovely, telegenic smile and invited me to sit down. Five minutes later, a tall woman in a pink suit shook my hand, then ushered me down a hall and into an empty boardroom, where she indicated a seat at the end of a long table.

I sat. Before me on the table crouched a gadget about the size of a speaker phone. At the other end of the table loomed a giant video projection screen, on which a group of people talked soundlessly around another table—the kind of stock shot you see on Parliamentary television. Some wore translation devices in their ears. Behind them, assistants bustled back and forth, gathering and distributing memos. The large screen and the bright, flat lighting rendered the picture fuzzy and pastel. If this was virtual reality, then it was far more virtual than real.

I looked uneasily at the woman in the pink suit: Do I need to clip on a mike or something?

No, no. They can hear you. She smiled down at me as she exited, closing the door behind her. I was alone—or perhaps not.

Mr. Gray? An unfamiliar female voice rattled over the tiny speaker. Are you with us?

Yes, I replied, without knowing who she was or what she meant by with us. Then, almost immediately, I heard my own voice through the speaker: Yes, the voice said, nervously.

Hello, Mr. Gray, she repeated.

How do you do, I replied.

How do you do? echoed the little speaker, in a thin parody of my own voice.

My heart sank, for I knew what was up. Most of us have been a party to one of those transatlantic satellite calls in which you hear your own voice echo back at half-second intervals. This electronic quirk distorts the rhythm of conversation entirely, forcing the speaker to choose between utter cacophony and the stilted communication of robots. It becomes impossible to talk, hear or think.

Then to my horror I saw someone on screen, situated in a panel near the lower right-hand corner, like the sign language interpreter on cable television.

My God, it was me.

Evidently that gadget on the conference table contained both a mike and a hidden camera, for there I was on screen, fuzzy and pastel, staring back at myself. In a visual counterpart to the echo effect, I could watch my every move mirrored before me—after a split second’s delay. No, it was worse: I was not mirrored, but photographed. I could see myself as others saw me.

As any actor knows, to perform and observe yourself perform at the same time is the surest way to achieve disaster on stage. The mind simply will not work that way. It is like trying to drive, looking through the windshield and the rear-view mirror at the same time.

The disembodied female voice invited me to begin my presentation, reminding me with gentle firmness that I was limited to ten minutes—so that there will be lots of time for questions. Her accent sounded Ontarian, her tone Presbyterian. I envisaged a tailored suit or sweater set, pearls, stylish eyeglasses and a large watch.

I began. I delivered my pathetic homilies about accommodation and decency and, as predicted, the voice that stammered back at me—my own voice—rattled me. Though I knew it was a mistake, irresistibly I glanced up at myself. My movements appeared false and uncoordinated—I seemed rather Nixonesque. I had never seen myself as Richard Nixon before. I tried to adjust my expression to something more telegenic, made myself look worse, and lost my train of thought. I dug my wretched, glowering mug back into my manuscript and concluded.

There followed a long pause, then: Are you finished?

The voice sounded slightly incredulous—Is that all? Then for no reason that I could see, a man with thin reddish hair and spectacles appeared on the screen, turned to the person beside him, and laughed soundlessly, in stop-motion: no doubt enjoying a joke at the expense of the idiot from Vancouver.

I looked away, sheepishly, as did my screen persona.