When the archaeologists come and dig up the land where Davis Kovacs comes from, they will find that cars and Bruce Springsteen lived there.

I grew up on the front lines of the Cold War, a child presented with the prospect of nuclear annihilation as a certain eventuality; thus, my most comforting pre-pubescent evenings were those when I was able to tune in the French radio from Québec broadcasting the Canadiens games through to my digital alarm clock perched at the side of my bed in the suburbs of New York City.

But the signal faltered in and out; the clouds having to align with the ground conductivity for the AM comfort to beam through, the radio silence a constant hazard.

America is a melting pot, while Canada is a mosaic goes the refrain: It seems that the shame in being American to many Canadians is centred on what is seen as my country’s hegemonic approach to world culture. Say what you will about the United States of America, but puritanical stability has always been its fetish (and triumph) as a political entity; as such, being a U.S. immigrant in Canada carries with it the associated guilt of hegemony, oppression and Empire.

In grade school, I remember my envy at how Canada dominated the United States on the physical globe; Canada represented refuge, an escape route, a safety valve: Canada maternal, Canada sexy, Canada on top. Then, in high school in New York I learned about American political expediency in history class when I was taught about the Alien and Sedition Acts. As the US was preparing for a naval war with France, these Acts represented one of the earliest of many digressions from the Constitution whereby the US indulged its “hegemony streak” in spite of the Constitution’s spirit. For several years, it became illegal to say anything bad about the U.S. government (1798-1802). One of the acts contained in the A&S is still in existence today and represents the legal framework for the establishment of the Guantánamo prison in Cuba (known to Trekkies as the Anti-Klingon act, its official name is the Alien Enemy Act).

Manifest Destiny and the Canadian Woods
Later, Manifest Destiny, responsible for America’s great expansion in the 19th century presented a dizzying and horrifying concept; Manifest Destiny comes to you, but it is up to you to find yourself in the Canadian Woods, as Sir MacKenzie did, commiserating with the natives to situate the first crossing of the continental divide north of Mexico goes the Canadian refrain; or, a melting pot is fascist, a mosaic is liberal goes the ground conductivity; or, America bad, Canada good….

Federations and Confederations

A few years ago I took a book out from the library at The State University of New York, Plattsburgh where I used to teach in the English Department entitled Why Federations Fail by the venerable political philosopher Thomas Franck. Franck’s thesis was that federations are wonderful political structures, malleable and firm in the best of ways, but that they were nearly impossible to keep from splintering; what the Canadian Confederation needed in order to survive went the subtext, was a massive counterbalance of stability on its border. As the U.S. has evolved into our very massive electromagnet on the other side of the border, Canada has also evolved, its fragile warring factions held in place by Trudeau’s proverbial elephant she is still sleeping with night in and night out, still whispering those sweet nothings to across the sheets, be it in Italian, French, the Queen’s English, Mandarin, Russian, or what have you… all the while most content in assembling her mosaic, piece by piece, Klingons (and ground conductivity) be damned (just so long as he doesn’t twitch and grunt too much)….

– In the next post I will be looking at an American perspective on Quebec sovereignty.