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| 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 รคr
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.
