Canadian Content

 

The people of Europe are now rising up against mass immigration, primarily because they see it overwhelming their own cultures. 

There is as yet no similar resistance in Canada, even though our immigration levels are higher. 

This is because the average Canadian is under the tragic misapprehension that he has no culture to protect.

And this is a spectacular failure of our governments and our education system. It is their job to promote distinct Canadian culture, as a matter of both national unity and of quality of life. For centuries, they have been doing the opposite, and flooding out our culture with “multiculturalism” is just the final stage. 

Justin Trudeau has publicly announced, “there is no Canadian mainstream.” Once a colony, always a colony. Canadians are conditioned to imagine that culture is always something that must be imported. We are here to hew wood and draw water.

When I was going through school, I chafed that almost everything we read in literature was written in the UK; an English major did not include a single course in Canadian literature. It felt almost subversive to be keeping tabs on Canadian literature in my free time. Now, seamlessly, the Britlit has been replaced with aboriginal literature, alienated immigrant literature, post-colonial literature from the Third World, anything but Canadian literature, on the transparently false premise that these, and not the Canadian voice, are the voices previously unheard in Canada and suppressed.

Canada actually has an impressive and productive artistic culture, and everyone knows it except Canadians. When Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize for literature, the reaction from the average Canadian was probably, “Who is Alice Munro?”

This is criminal malpractice by our governments and our educational systems. It is as though they have deliberately set out to destroy Canada.

Canada has no mainstream? 

We have Anne of Green Gables, which is as fine a piece of writing as has ever been done anywhere. It is the founding document for a proud Canadian tradition of children’s literature and children’s culture. This needs to be celebrated, as Denmark celebrates Hans Christian Andersen. 

We have Robert W. Service, who is the most successful poet in the English language. We are especially powerful in poetry, with Leonard Cohen, Margaret Atwood, Irving Layton, Al Purdy. Related to this, we have a special strength in lyrical songwriting, which made Canadians especially prominent in the 60s folk revival: Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Ian Tyson, Stan Rogers, Stompin’ Tom Connors, Gordon Lightfoot, Neil Young, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Robbie Robertson. We were and are the best.

We have a rich and beautiful tradition of humour, and of the sympathetic portrayal of small town life. We have Stephen Leacock, especially Sunshine Sketches. We have Thomas Chandler Haliburton. And that tradition stretches on through W.O. Mitchell, Wayne and Schuster, to Norm MacDonald, Corner Gas, and Schitt’s Creek. 

We have great visual art. Everybody knows about Krieghoff, the Group of Seven and Emily Carr; maybe Paul Kane. But they are not the best. They seem more like tokens, cliches: “look, they painted Canadian landscapes.” Big deal. Tom Thompson was the man. And we should be celebrating William Kurelek, Douglas Coupland, and Alex Colville; painters who painted Canadians and Canadian life, not just postcards of the place. And when we speak of Canadian art, we must cite Yousef Karsh, the greatest portrait photographer ever. And we have great architects: Safdie, Gehry, Erickson, I guess I must also mention Cardinal, although I find his work appalling.

We are great at design; the Canadian flag is the best in the world, and that reflects a wider tradition of Canadian heraldry. In Sofia, Bulgaria, I was shown with immense pride a block of buildings they believed was the pinnacle of architectural style. These were buildings that would not have stood out in Montreal or Quebec City.

And, yeah, there’s hockey, a Canadian sport that has become a world sport. There are not many countries that have that level of cultural prestige, that their pastimes become international. As well as hockey, we have given the world the canoe, the kayak, the snow shoe. 

And we have great culinary traditions: poutine, of course; it really is available now all over the world. Our tradition of cheddar cheese used to be the world’s best, not to mention Oka and other regional cheeses, until it was destroyed by the government’s cartel system, which shut it out from world markets. We developed the McIntosh apple. We developed the Montreal bagel and Montreal smoked meat. We decided to put pineapple on pizza, but anyone is entitled to at least one mistake. Canadian rye whisky is world-renowned. We gave the world maple syrup!

And all this despite our government and our schools working against us. Despite the mobs tearing down our statues and our monuments and denigrating our founders. It is worth preserving. It is worth rising up for.

This is not to say we should be against immigrants. Many of the greatest aspects of Canadian culture have been produced by first or second-generation immigrants. The best culture comes from the mix of cultures. But it must be a melting pot; the idea must be that we are making something new and distinctly Canadian here, and we are all in this together.

Multiculturalism is colonialism. Multiculturalism is the enemy.