Canadians Are Not Americans: Myths and Literary Traditions

Naomi Brun is a freelance writer and a book reviewer for The Hamilton
Spectator.

Morrison began to explore the fundamental differences between Canada and
the United States when she moved to Montreal in the 1970s. Canada,
simply put, was not very much like the American Midwest she knew so
well. She found the winters to be chillier, the culture to be quaint,
and the language to contain words she’d never heard before. Even the
mentality seemed distinct: Canadians valued “peace, order, and good
government” over “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Morrison spent the next 30 years delving into the differences of the two
nations, and in Canadians Are Not Americans, she has proposed an
interesting theory about the origins of our disparity.

The first European settlers came to the United States to escape
oppressive religious and political institutions. They wanted to farm, to
spread the word of God freely, and to pursue lucrative economic
opportunities. To meet these ends, individualism was held in higher
esteem than social duty, so American literature revolved around cowboys,
pioneers, and young men heading west. In Canada, however, lone rangers
died fast. Europeans arrived here under the auspices of the Roman
Catholic Church and the Hudson’s Bay Company, and were cared for by
the Canadian government. Under Prime Minister Sir John A. MacDonald, the
government built a railroad to populate the west and keep settlers in
barren lands stocked with supplies. Loyalty to church, business, and
government ensured survival in a harsh land, and the emerging literature
focused very much on the struggle to endure.

Due to their vastly different relationships with institutions,
Canadians and Americans developed a separate ethos about history,
geography, nature, spirituality, and human rights. Morrison, a hybrid of
both traditions, calls up key episodes in chronology and literature to
support her hypothesis. Even-handed, convincing, and clear, she has
created a thought-provoking read for any student of comparative culture.