The Beaver Bites Back?: American Popular Culture in Canada

Sara Stratton teaches history at York University.

Generated by a series of conferences and influenced by the negotiations
leading to the 1988 Canada–U.S. Free Trade Agreement, this book
explores the relationship between Canadian and American culture. It is a
common assumption that Canadians pile their plates high at the salad bar
of American popular culture, paying little attention to what they
ingest. As the title of this volume tentatively suggests, this is not
necessarily the case. Although avid consumers of American culture, we
are not uncritical, and we are not without a distinctive, embattled
culture of our own. The Beaver Bites Back? is more about Canadian than
about American popular culture.

The collection would have been more coherent had the initial
impressionistic essay by the late Frank E. Manning been replaced by Paul
Rutherford’s historical analysis of the interplay between American and
Canadian culture. The latter essay (which appears at the end of the
book) traces what may, in an oversimplification, be termed the
“love–hate” relationship Canadians have with American culture. An
understanding of this dynamic sharpens the focus on other points of
discussion in this collection: the “distinctiveness” of Canadian
culture, its protection by the federal government, and the undeniable
influence of American culture.

Essays focus on television, music, drama, movies, and sports, as well
as on the broader questions alluded to above. Especially worthwhile are
the point/counterpoint articles (by Bernard Ostrey, Bruce Feldthusen,
and G. Stuart Adam) that debate the meaning of Canadian culture and the
value of federal mechanisms as a means of protecting it. The most
provocative point in this exchange, and one that merits more discussion,
is Adam’s argument that culture is more than just the arts; it is a
people’s way of life. Some articles are very weak; for example, Mary
Jane Miller’s comparison of the American TV drama L.A. Law and
Canada’s Street Legal grossly underestimates the similarities between
the two, and thus undermines the argument that Street Legal is an
“inflection” (rather than a reflection) of the American show.

Nevertheless, this is an interesting contribution to the literature on
the Canadian– American relationship. It is strengthened by its own
diversity of opinion.