Terre de Nos Aïeux
While it’s true that, during the long journey around the world, I missed some cushy things from North America (good showers, good coffee, English, an easy existence) I would be remiss not to mention the things I missed about Canada. I also think it’s fair to say that I’m not sure I would’ve ever really noticed these elements of Canadiana had I not been apart from them. (Hardly a new observation, I know; things are never clearer than when seen from afar.)
When I first started to remember to miss Canada, we were on a train in India listening, ironically, to an old broadcast of This American Life. The broadcast was titled “The Canadians That Walk Among Us” and chronicled the American surprise upon learning that some of the people residing there were actually Canadians. They seemed to blend so well into American culture (apparently), that you never could tell that a person was from Canada until another famous Canadian was brought up in conversation, at which point any Canadian would be compelled to identify the star as a compatriot. And we caught ourselves doing the same thing! Example:
“So the other day, I was listening to ‘Summer of ’69’ and… ”
“Canadian! Canadian! Bryan Adams- he’s Canadian! So am I. Just thought you should know, neither Bryan or I are American. Continue with your story.”
Anyway, as a segue in the broadcast, they played a jazz version of Hockey Night in Canada and it had been so long since I had heard that song, it very nearly brought a tear to my eye as I remembered the things I missed about home. Apart from HNC – which I really never watched as a faithful fan, it’s just a tune that is as much a part of my existence as the national anthem – I have to say that I really missed the diversity of this country. Now that I’m home, I appreciate much more that I can walk through a major city and see different races and hear several languages and eat sushi for lunch and palak paneer for supper. (And, really, Canada is hardly an example of an even mixture of races.) It’s such a relief to have variety again in cuisine and so… I don’t know… comforting to be part of a population composed of different heritages. Maybe the reason I’m comforted is because that’s what I’m familiar with; so many other places seem, to me, to have a homogenous population, relatively speaking. Funny the revelations that comparison brings about: though I can hardly say that I “know” another country, I feel like I now “know” Canada even better.
Otherwise, there were some little, stereotypical things about Canadian culture for which I pined: politeness, courtesy, personal space, the CBC, the cold, a self-deprecating humour that falls just short of being morose. On this train in India, where it first occurred to me that I could miss a country, Marc and I started talking about the things that were Canadian – not North American – that we missed. This eventually led to a discussion about the culture and we gave ourselves the challenge of defining what is to be Canadian without using the word “not”, as in “we’re not American” ; this is trickier to define without that element of comparison that seems to come so naturally. (Ask an American how they would define themselves and it certainly wouldn’t involve how they are not Canadian. Ha! Can you even imagine!) I wish that we had recorded our answers because I suspect our answers to that question would be different than before we left and certainly different if we weren’t half a world away struggling through a hot and crowded climate. Though I remember it involved hockey.