Canadian Culture . . . really?

Abandoned Ranch House in Grasslands National Park

WE are people of culture. WE Canadians, that is, but our cultural vessel is fragile and must be packed in bubble wrap to protect it from Americans who would rather see us overwhelmed with their culture. Americans know better than anyone where a buck can be made, and how to make it.

If we're going to agree to an updated NAFTA trade agreement, it will not include the right for the American “cultural industry” to overrun our country, supplant our culture, bury us in Hollywood schlock. We won't stand for it, and so we'll maintain the right in any agreement to subsidize our tiny “cultural industries” like the CBC, NFB, authors & publishers, poets, musicians, recording companies, etc., etc., to whatever degree it takes to make “made in Canada” prosper.

Ah, culture. So hard to define but in its most basic sense, it's at least a combination of some values, some traditions, some sensibilities, some practices, some worldview that Canadians share. It's got to be more significant than maple syrup or hockey, doesn't it? and it must be uniquely Canadian or there can be no “Canadian culture.” If a Swede, or a Russian, or an Afghani cuts us, we've got to bleed Canadian—at least enough for him to say, “Jag ser att du är kanadensisk!”

And then there are our official policies of multiculturalism and bilingualism, each proclaiming that we're not, nor do we aspire to be, a cultural monolith. For there to be a convincing argument for the existence of a Canadian culture, there needs to be a layer of approximate unanimity (on at least some values, traditions, sensibilities, practices) that rides above French Canadianism, Sikhism, Islamism, above Baptists, Catholics, Inuit, Crees, Filipinos that is held in common by the multi-cultures of Canada. Perhaps there is. Perhaps that something draws people to Canada's shores. Perhaps the fact that we all stand to sing O Canada at hockey games gives evidence that there is a Canadian Culture worthy of preserving, elusive as it may seem from time to time.

The Stanley Cup is named for a Canadian and originated in Canada. The fact that no Canadian hockey team can even come close to possessing it may be a more significant cultural marker of the future than Lord Stanley's legacy. Even when we punch well above our weight, there's always someone out there who can deck us at will.

Or if Shitt's Creek or Dragon's Den or endless pipeline debating became the standard metaphors for Canadian Culture, I think I'd move to Iceland.

We live in a culture-destroying age. Culture has the power to unite people in common purpose, unite people in celebration, in work, in play. Culture creates a home where people feel they belong, and belonging is one of the key components of mental health and well-being. We dare not let conscious, intelligent culture-building be displaced by mob mentality; a mob is not a culture; a mob masquerades as a culture united by rage and fear rather than by hope and generosity of spirit.

It could happen to us, and it will unless the prophetic voices among us break their silence.