Claire

Americans know they are the greatest people of the greatest nation on earth. They may not know it innately but they are told from their very early years and they internalize this truth at a very early age. They tell themselves this constantly and they tell each other just as constantly. It is the air that they breathe and the water they drink. 

It is so obviously undeniably true that it seems like the world must be made up of 2 kinds of people: Americans and people who wish they were Americans. I mean why wouldn’t everyone else want to be American? They are the greatest people in the world. Everybody agrees. Everybody says so. Except . . . Canadians.

Canada is a conundrum in this respect. Here are people who live close by. Who are more like Americans than any other people on earth. Who speak the same language and share many of the same cultural traits. People who should know how great America is and how great it is to be American and yet  . . . and yet they don’t. Or maybe they just won’t admit it.

Canadians don’t want to be Americans. This is perplexing. Of all the people in the world they should be the most envious; the  most desirous of all the blessings of being American and yet they are not. They are not Americans and they seem to be quite happy about it. They are happy to not be Americans. And they are all kinds of other things things just as improbable, and suspicious. 

They are polite. They take pains to be polite and inoffensive. How weird is that? They are polite, helpful, and hospitable. In 2001 when the World Trade Center went down, Gander Newfoundland, a town with a population of just over 11,000, took in 6,600 stranded travellers from 38 American planes for 6 days and asked nothing in return.

They take care of each other too. They have free health care. They all pay so that even the poorest Canadians can go to a doctor any time they want. No one in Canada goes bankrupt because of medical expenses. No on has to start a Go Fund Me if they break a bone. Medical care for everyone comes out of their taxes and they are okay with it.

They believe in fair play. It was a Canadian, Brad Katsuyama, who figured out that high speed trading had effectively created a rigged Wall Street stock market. Rather than using the system to his own advantage, Katsuyama, an advocate for fair trading, set up a new Wall Street trading platform that simply eliminates the problem.

And yet for all of that they are deadly in war and fierce in defence of their sovereignty. The last time (first, last, and only time) the USA invaded Canada (The War of 1812) they came and burnt the Whitehouse down and then went home! 

They are incomprehensible. They don’t want to be Americans. They’ve never wanted to be Americans. During the Revolutionary War Canada, a British colony, was the refuge of the United Empire Loyalists. Canada was made of people who left the newly independent states because they didn't want to be Americans. 

They don’t want to be Americans at all.
They never have.
And they are happy about it.