Americans shouldn’t
take for granted their friendly neighbor to the north
Misconceptions in the United States about
Canada are quite common. They include: there is always snow in Canada;
Canadians are boring, socialists and pacifists; their border is porous and
allowed the Sept. 11 terrorists through; or, as the U.S. Ottawa embassy staff
suggested to Washington, the country suffers from an inferiority complex. With
Canada Day and America’s Independence Day just past, this is a great time to
clarify some of these misconceptions and better appreciate a neighbor that the
United States at times takes for granted.
With the exception of the occasional glacier,
skiing in Canada in the summer just isn’t happening. Frigid northern winters,
however, have shaped the tough, fun-loving Canadian character. When it is
30-below, the Canucks get their sticks, shovel off the local pond and have a
game of shinny hockey.
The harsh winters have also shaped Canadians’
sense of humor. Canada has some of the world’s greatest comedians, from early
Wayne and Shuster, to Rich Little, Jim Carrey, Russel Peters, Seth Rogan, Mike
Myers, Leslie Nielsen, John Candy, Martin Short, Eugene Levy and “Saturday
Night Live” creator and movie producer Lorne Michaels.
The suggestion that Canadians are soft on
terrorism is a myth. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau backed down the Front de
Liberation du Quebec terrorists during the 1970s. And the 9/11 Commission
reported that terrorists arrived in the United States from outside North
America with documents issued to them by the U.S. government. Likewise, the
Canadians in Gander countered despicable terrorist acts with love and caring to
their U.S. neighbors when planes were diverted there.
Americans glorify war with movies, but it is
the Canadians who are often the real “Rambo.” The Canadians are anything but
pacifists and their history is certainly not dull. Be it on the ice or
battlefield, this warrior nation has never lost a war that it fought in – War
of 1812 (versus the United States), World War I, World War II, Korea and now
Afghanistan. During the ’72 Summit Series, Soviet goalie Vladislav Tretiak
said, “The Canadians have great skills and fight to the very end.”
In hunting the Taliban in Afghanistan, U.S.
Commander and Navy SEAL Capt. Robert Harward stated that the Canadian Joint
Task Force 2 team was “his first choice for any direct-action mission.”
Contrary to Thomas Jefferson’s 1812 comment
that, “The acquisition of Canada will be a mere matter of marching,” the wily
Native American leader Tecumseh and Maj. Gen. Isaac Brock captured Brig. Gen.
William Hull’s Fort Detroit without firing a shot. The Americans never took
Quebec and when they burned the Canadian Parliament Buildings at York, the
White House was torched in retaliation.
Canada consolidated its status as a warrior
nation during World War I battles at Vimy Ridge, Passchendaele, Somme and the
Second Battle of Ypres, where soldiers were gassed twice by the Germans but
refused to break the line. By the end of the war, the Canadians were the
Allies’ shock troops.
In the air, four of the top seven World War I
aces were Canadians. Crack shots, the names William “Billy” Bishop, Raymond
Collishaw, Donald MacLaren and William Barker, with 72, 60, 54 and 53
victories, respectively, were legendary. These were the original Crazy Canucks,
who regularly dropped leaflets over enemy airfields advising German pilots that
they were coming over at such and such a time, and to come on up. Bishop and
Barker won the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry.
The pilot who is credited with shooting down
the Red Baron, Manfred von Richthofen, with a little help from the Australian
down under, was not Snoopy but Roy Brown from Carleton Place, Ont.
During World War II, Winnipeg native and air
ace Sir William Stephenson, the “Quiet Canadian,” ran the undercover British
Security Coordination under the code name Intrepid from Rockefeller Center in
New York, as a liaison between Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.
Stephenson invented the machine that transferred photos over the wire for the
Daily Mail newspaper in 1922. Americans were not aware that the BSC was there
or that it was stocked with Canadians secretly working to preserve North
American freedom from the Nazis.
Also little known is that Intrepid trained
Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond series, at Camp X, the secret spy school
near Whitby, Ont. Five future directors of the CIA also received special
training there. It is suggested that Fleming’s reference to Bond’s 007 license
to kill status, his gadgetry and the “shaken not stirred” martinis, rumored to
be the strongest in North America, came from Stephenson.
When Wild Bill Donovan, head of the U.S. OSS,
forerunner of the CIA, presented Intrepid with the Presidential Medal of Merit
in 1946, he said, “William Stephenson taught us everything we knew about
espionage.”
American military writer Max Boot wrote
recently in Commentary magazine that Canada is a country that most Americans
consider a “dull but slavishly friendly neighbor, sort of like a great St.
Bernard.” Boot needs to come to Canada, have a Molson Canadian and chat about
Canadian history. He owes his freedom to Canucks such as Stephenson and the
courageous soldiers and fliers of the world wars who held off the Germans while
America struggled with isolationism.
Canadian inventions such as the oxygen mask
and anti-gravity suit, the forerunner of the astronaut suit, allowed U.S. and
other Allied fighter pilots to fly higher, turn tighter and not black out with
the resulting G-force. The 32 Canadians from the Avro Arrow team helped build
the American space program and were, according to NASA, brilliant to a man. The
most brilliant, Jim Chamberlin, chief designer of the Jetliner and Arrow, was
responsible for the design and implementation of the Gemini and Apollo space
programs.
Although Canadians have had a free, workable
medical system for 50 years, they are not socialists and there are not long
lineups, as some politicians opposed to Obama care suggest. This writer has had
a ruptured appendix, hip replacement, pinned shoulder, blood clot, twist
fracture of the fibula and broken foot, and in every case, there was zero cost
to me. Canadians have and value a medical system for all Canadians that is free
with minimal waits. That is not socialism; that is caring about fellow
Canadians.
Americans may be surprised by the Canadian
content in their life. Superman – “truth, justice and the American way” – was
co-created by Canadian Joe Shuster, the Daily Planet is based on a Toronto
newspaper, and the 1978 film’s Lois Lane, Margot Kidder, and Superman’s father,
Glenn Ford, were both Canadians. The captain of the starship Enterprise was
Montreal-born William Shatner. Torontonian Raymond Massey played Abraham
Lincoln in 1956. And as American as apple pie? Ah, no. The McIntosh apple was
developed in Dundela, Ont., in 1811 by John McIntosh.
Many of the sports that Americans excel at
are Canadian in origin. James Naismith from Almonte, Ont., invented basketball.
The tackling and ball carrying in football were introduced by the Canucks in
games between Harvard and McGill in the 1870s. Five-pin bowling is also a
Canadian game. Lacrosse is officially Canada’s national sport, and hockey –
well, Canadians are hockey. And Jackie Robinson called Montreal “the city that
enabled me to go to the major leagues.”
To make everyone’s life easier, Canadians
invented Pablum, the electric oven, the telephone, Marquis wheat, standard
time, the rotary snowplow, the snowmobile, Plexiglas, oven cleaner, the jolly
jumper, the pacemaker, the alkaline battery, the caulking gun, the gas mask,
the goalie mask and many more.
Canadian inferiority complex? That is another
myth. Never pick a fight with a quiet kid in the schoolyard. Never mistake
quiet confidence for weakness. Many a bully has learned that the hard way.
Canadians are self-effacing and do not brag. That does not mean we do not know
who we are. We are caring but tough, fun-loving but polite and creative, and we
share with each other and the world. Our history is exciting but we don’t toot
our horn. The world does that for us. This is the third year in a row that
Canada has been voted the most respected country in the world by the Reputation
Institute global survey.
Perhaps once a year around our collective
birthdays, Americans can raise a toast to their friendly, confident neighbor in
the Great White North.
Gerry Boley is a high school teacher, university lecturer
and writer living in St. Catharines, Ont.
Thanks Win... a wonderful read
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