Canadians Are Not Americans

Katherine Morrison

Description

On a 300-year journey through the historical, political and sociological milieux of Canada and the United States, Morrison examines national views of the past, nature, place and home, religion, violence and the law, humor and satire, women, race and class.

Informations

• Publié par: Second Story Press
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2003
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781926739106
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Canadians are not Americans
Canadians are not Americans
Myths and Literary Traditions
Katherine L. Morrison
N ATIONAL L IBRARY OF C ANADA C ATALOGUING IN P UBLICATION Morrison, Katherine L., 1925- Canadians are not Americans : myths and literary traditions/ Katherine L. Morrison.
Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 1-896764-73-8
1. Literature, Comparative-Canadian and American. 2. Literature, Comparative-American and Canadian. 3. Canadian literature-History and criticism. 4. American literature-History and criticism. I. Title.
PS8097.A4M69 2003 C810.9 C2003-900554-2
PR9185.3.M67 2003
Copyright 2003 Katherine L. Morrison
Cover design by James Kirkpatrick Text design by Lancaster Reid Creative
Printed and bound in Canada
Second Story Press gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation s Ontario Book Initiative .

Published by S ECOND S TORY P RESS 720 Bathurst Street, Suite 301 Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 2R4
www.secondstorypress.on.ca
For Russell and our family: Donna, Leslie, Rob, Mark, Tony, Charlotte, Elliot, Ben and Laura
Contents
Preface
Notes
1. The Launching of National Myths
Notes
2. A Sense of the Past
Beginnings
American Genesis
The Canadian Search for a Past
Conclusion
Notes
3. Nature
The Commanding Presence of Nature
Romantic Naturalism in the United States
Omnipresent Nature in Canada
Conclusion
Notes
4. A Sense of Place
Conflicting Images of Home
American Wanderlust
The Home Base in Canada
Conclusion
Notes
5. Religion and the Church
Christianity in North America
Religious Innovation in the United States
Striving for Church Unity in Canada
Conclusion
Notes
6. Gender, Ethnicity, and Class
Struggles for Equality in North America
The Rocky Road Toward Civil Rights in the United States
Religious and Class Differences in Canada
Conclusion
Notes
7. Violence
Rights, Human Perfectibility, and the Rule of Law
High Hopes and Hidden Devils in the United States
Law and Order as a Survival Technique in Canada
Conclusion
Notes
8. Humor
The Development of Two Humorous Traditions
Tall Tales and Biting Satire in the United States
Social Paradoxes and Subtle Irony in Canada
Conclusion
Notes
9. The Tenacity of National Myths
Notes
Bibliography
Credits
Index
Acknowledgements
A MONG THE MANY PEOPLE that have contributed to the development of this book, none deserves my gratitude more than the late Professor John M. Robson. In poor health and working on the papers of Northrop Frye, he asked to read the manuscript. His words of praise and encouragement helped sustain me through revisions and the inevitable frustrations of seeing a work through to publication.
Particular appreciation goes to Ann Schabas, Mary McDougall Maude, and Rosemary Shipton. These three women went well beyond editing to give invaluable help with structure, context, and the balance of history and literature.
Those who read the manuscript at an early stage and made helpful suggestions include Barrie Hayne, W. J. Keith, and Dennis Duffy; also Ruth and the late Claude Isbister.
My thanks to David Staines, who generously read and commented on the manuscript of an unknown writer. I was much too slow in recognizing the best of his advice. My thanks also go to Ian Montagnes, Ann Robson, and Ruth Bradley St-Cyr, for their many helpful suggestions.
A special thanks to my publisher, Margie Wolfe, and her staff, especially Laura McCurdy, whose eagle eye caught many an error.
My husband, Russell, has been a strong support and severe critic, while our daughters read and commented on the manuscript. The rest of the family has been a steady source of encouragement. My thanks to all.
Canadians are not Americans
Myths and Literary Traditions
My interest [in Canada] has stemmed in large measure from a desire to understand the United States better [It] is precisely because the two North American democracies have so much in common that they permit students of each to gain insights into the factors that cause variations .
Seymour Martin Lipset, Continental Divide
In the beginning the Americans created America, and America is the beginning of the world one can still hear the confident tones of its Book of Genesis: We hold these truths to be self-evident. At least a Canadian can hear them, because nothing has ever been self-evident in Canada .
Northrop Frye, Divisions on a Ground
Preface
T WO PREDOMINANTLY E NGLISH-SPEAKING NATIONS share the vast expanse of North America. To most Americans - and to much of the rest of the world - the two nations differ little except in climate, for they share a common British heritage and similar patterns of immigration. Subtle cultural differences appear insignificant to most Americans, but not to Canadians or to a small but growing number of Americans seeking insight into their own national character.
My interest in cultural differences between the United States and Canada developed gradually. I moved to Ontario as a young adult, an American with a Canadian husband and an expected first child. Having lived in Michigan, Illinois, and Tennessee during the previous five years, I was prepared for a slightly colder climate, but not for social or cultural changes other than what I would find moving from one American state to another. The transition was easy; neighbors were friendly and there were other recent arrivals, some from the United States and many from the United Kingdom. I never felt out of place, yet something was unsettling. Jokes about when Canada would become the next American state seemed in poor taste; also, there was a sense of having moved backward in time. There was more churchgoing than I was used to and my new friends did old-fashioned things like collecting flowery china cups and saucers. These habits seemed rather quaint, but hardly slowed my transition to becoming a Canadian. I gradually absorbed the mythology and began to see the United States through the eyes of an outsider.
As my family grew, this outsider s perspective continued to interest me. I began graduate work in nineteenth-century American literature, which brought the United States and its development into sharper focus, but did little to advance my understanding of Canada. In the late 1970s I was hired to teach early American literature at a Canadian university, but the course was cancelled because of poor enrollment. Perhaps, I thought, Canadians are as indifferent to American cultural history as was clearly the opposite case. When I developed a course comparing the works of nineteenth-century writers in the two countries, interest ran high. Although I had done much work preparing the Canadian material, there was still a lack of understanding of this country that had been my home for so many years. It was clear that I needed to go back to my books and learn more about the history and literature of Canada.
Looking at the histories of the two nations, I came to appreciate that the American Revolution, as Canadian historian J.M.S. Careless says, created modern Canada no less than it created the American republic. 1 The forefathers of many of today s English Canadians were the Loyalists who fled the American colonies and settled in Nova Scotia or Quebec, 2 the two colonies that remained in the British Empire. Those two colonies bore little resemblance to the future nation called Canada, and the leaders of the new United States believed that only mistakes and incompetence had prevented a clean sweep of the colonies. Surely, they thought, time and good sense would correct the situation.
Manifest Destiny 3 was a vaguely remembered term from a history book for me, but I came to appreciate what an intensely held conviction it was to nineteenth-century Americans, who believed that it was their destiny to expand across the entire North American continent. For over a century, this belief prevented American acceptance of a second English-speaking nation, even though Canada s Confederation took place in 1867. As late as 1919, some American senators suggested that Britain pay its World War I debt by turning Canada over to the United States. The American government finally recognized Canada as a separate country in 1920. Historian W.L. Morton notes that the first Canadian diplomats puzzled the Americans, who behaved as though the former provincials were a parody, somehow vaguely irrelevant, of the Americans themselves. 4 Some of my own memories began to have greater meaning. For example, I recalled a series of radio talks given by Robert McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune , outlining a plan for Canada to become part of the United States. My own father was puzzled by Canada s failure to join the United States. Neither McCormick nor my father could fathom that Canadians had strong objections to becoming Americans.
My study of Canadian/American political relations spanning more than two centuries sparked the idea of tracing the development of other ideas through the literature of the two nations. Cultural mores are often ephemeral, but when they are entrenched by traumatic events - usually wars - they tend to spawn the creation of myths in national cultures. The more traumatic the event, the more deeply the my