Canadian Days: Unique Canadian Things

* This is an earlier blog entry, but I've decided to reprint it since it fits in with the theme of entries about Canada.

Earlier this year I spent some time in Canada, a country I had wanted to visit for a long time. I qualified for a six-month working holiday visa, and stayed in Toronto for three months before coming home. I wasn't able to find employment, unfortunately, but while I was there I discovered that the question "What defines Canada?" is dubious to some Canadians. When I was in Toronto I stayed at a hostel, and one of my roommates was Canadian. When I asked him what made Canada unique he groaned. "Oh, God...," he said with annoyance. Also, I had read Canadians tend to be sensitive to the question. This was reinforced when I saw Douglas Coupland's "Souvenir of Canada," a documentary about what he thinks are things that define the Canadian character. At the beginning of the film Coupland states that he had been thinking about what made Canadians Canadians for a long time--as if it were a perplexing problem. Although I was only in Canada for short time I do believe there are things that are uniquely Canadian. Here are some of them below:

• Poutine (Fries covered in gravy and cheese)
  


• French and English are official languages in Canada
  


• It has a French speaking province (Quebec)
  


• Canada is sparsely populated
  


• Alot of Canada is wilderness
  


• Most people in Toronto are polite
  


• The seasons tend to exist in the extremes
  


• Most Canadians live within 200 miles of the Canadian/U.S. border
  


• Canada is the second largest country in the world
  


• Alot of movies and television shows are filmed in Canada, particularly in Toronto and Vancouver
  


• Timothy's Coffee, Tim Hortons and Second Coffee
  


• Hockey
  


• David Cronenberg
  


• The Tragically Hip
  


• The pervasiveness of the term "eh"
  


• The CN Tower

There's no doubt the list can be extended beyond this, but since I was only in Canada for a short time my knowledge of the country is limited. But I wonder why some Canadians consider the question "What defines Canada" to be dubious. If I were asked what defines the United States a number of things immediately come to mind: it's the world's only great power, it exerts an enormous amount of cultural influence, it likes to innovate, it's a big country, it's a very religious nation, etc. The list of things that define the U. S. seem endless. But it might be because Canada shares a common culture with the U. S. I know there are things about Canada that are peculiar to Canada (like poutine), but I know if most Americans went to Toronto--which is Canada's cultural center--they would say its no different than the U. S. Since the U. S. is the only great power in the world and historically has been a huge innovator all the western nations are bound to be influenced by it, especially Canada since it shares a border with it. But ironically this attitude--being sensitive to the question of what defines Canada--may be another thing that is uniquely Canadian.