An Accidental Canadian: Reflections on My Home and (Not) Native Land

Sarah Robertson is the editor of the Canadian Book Review Annual.

“What defines a Canadian best?” asks Globe and Mail columnist
Margaret Wente. “It must be the lurking fear that somewhere, somehow,
you might have offended someone.” In this collection of her columns,
the award-winning journalist who “grew up in a Wonder Bread suburb of
Chicago in the 1950s” demonstrates no such trepidation as she takes on
Canadian icons ranging from hockey (“a lot of goons bashing at each
other”) to Margaret Atwood.

Wente is a self-described small-c conservative whose views on victim
feminism, SUVs, the public school system, and Dr. Laura, among other
topics, are guaranteed to infuriate left-leaning readers. But she’s no
Ann Coulter. She supports gay marriage, admires Pierre Trudeau, and
considers the monarchy “a ghastly institution.” And when it comes to
political opposites like Adrienne Clarkson and Lord and Lady Black,
she’s an equal-opportunity basher, calling the latter “millionaires
who aspired to live like billionaires” while noting the former’s
“unfortunate tendency to confuse herself with the real queen.”

A number of columns are devoted to boomer trends, with a self-mocking
Wente serving as both wry observer and exemplar of her generation’s
aspirations, pretensions, and anxieties. In “Roughing It in the Bush,
con Latte,” she and her husband confront the harsh realities of
fashionable country living: “We discovered a swamp that materialized
suddenly in the spring where we thought our driveway was going to be. We
discovered it because we drove into it and the car sank.” In “Better
You Than Me, Sister,” the exercise-resistant author ponders the cult
of healthism: “Whatever happened to the pleasure principle? … [H]ow
did the most hedonistic generation on earth turn into a bunch of
self-righteous, guilt-ridden self-deniers?”

Here’s Wente on the idealistic founders of Google: “They think the
Great Satan is Bill Gates. But because of their own market dominance,
the next Great Satan may be them.” Love or loathe her politics,
Canada’s answer to Maureen Dowd will keep you entertained.