Nowhere is the structural concept behind Canadian culture more debated than the culinary sphere. And nowhere is there more disagreement on what it means to be Canadian. But allow me to wade in with yet another new insight…
A fancy Fondue ‘station’: Just like Canada – Self-contained, self warming. Ready to
enrobe newcomers in a smooth, cheesy matrix composed of personal
freedom, mutual respect and socialized medical care…
Beauty, eh?
I’ve never felt the need to justify myself as a Canadian, to prove my culture is different in some way(s) from others. Much less do I go to lengths to prove being Canadian is somehow better than being, say, American or British. But I’ve run into folks who almost make a hobby of it…
Just self conscious?
It’s just possible that the third parties insist on lumping us in with other, more imposing national-ities. Even here in my own country, folks from Europe, Africa and Asia have accused me of not being who I am.
“Canada is just like the US, right?” they say, naively. Or, “So, you’re, like, owned by the UK?”
And at times like that, I DO feel compelled to wet them straight… But it’s hard to explain just what Canada is, and who we are.
Defined by imigration
Canadian cuture – like the US or UK – has been overwhelmingly influenced by immigration. But in a different way. The UK, as am island nation, used to be defined by its lack of mixing with other cul-tures. The US was quite the opposite in its beginnings, composed of hundreds of small groups of indigenous peoples who agreed to disagree and pretty much kept to their own regions on a vast continent. Political and nationalistic issues only arose when Europeans came, and started ‘claiming’ the New World as their own.
‘Americans took their own path, breaking violently from the British, and more or less subjugating other competitive cultures such as French, Spanish and the ‘native’ people who predated them. But in the Great White North, the mish-mash of fur traders, indigenous peoples and other folks – pre-dominantly French immigrants – mixed uneasily but successfully with each other.
In culinary terms, being Canadian has always meant co-existing with others, rather than blending with them. Canada has always been less a smooth emulsion (like mayonnaise) and more like a zesty vinaigrette – which tends to separate into its component parts if you don’t regularly give it a little shake.
Technically…
Canada is a sovereign nation with its own laws, currency and collective values. Our style of govern-ment is more like that of the UK than that of the US. But it’s also different in key ways than both.
When it comes down to our culture, though, it’s always been hard to come up with a simple ‘label’ that says it all.
The essential label
I’ve never liked labels. Especially when it comes to cultural or racial identities. But I’ve come to ac-cept that some folks just aren’t comfortable unless there are clear, simple labels to describe con-structs and different them from one another.
But recently, I had one of my periodic epiphanies. And came up with the perfect culinary description of what it is to be Canadian.
Americans call their culture a ‘melting pot’. They’ve accepted – often reluctantly – the coming of folks from other cultures. But never fully accepted them. Thus, the concept of the hyphenated-American identity: African American, Asian-American, even Native-American. This, the US has always been more like a stew – in which all the components remain separate and distinct, but swim in the same ideo-logical broth, defined by the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
The Brits started out pretty purely celtic and Anglo-Saxon. But they, too, have been inundated with waves of Asian and African immigration since the Second World War. As a result, they, too have been rendered into a cultural stew.
But Canadians… We have always offered our own brand of democracy to newcomers from everywhere in the world. There have been times we even invited them to come here and help us settle our vast land mass. We’ve never turned away refugees from other cultures’ conflicts. And I think we’re better off for it.
Who we really are…
In 1826, French politician and epicurean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, wrote, “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are”. If that’s true, then Canada is most like a fondue.
Equally constituted of British and French influences, and Protestant and Catholic religions, and richly influenced by a world of other cultures, we have always agreed to disagree about some things. But like Americans, we are united by our Constitution and Charter of Rights and Freedoms – which are both more British than American, yet still definitely not British. And our philosophers agree with our politicians that Canada was essentially built on its open and welcoming immigration policies. But unlike a melting pot or a stew, we are something else, again.
But the popular notion that Canada is a ‘mosaic’ has never really cut the mustard. ‘Mosaic’ implies something like a picky eater’s plate, where a variety of foods are welcome, but are kept separate from one another – never really meet, much less blend.
The ‘fondue’ metaphor invites one to think of a warm, thick blanket of rich, zippy Cheese Sauce, into which we have dunked all our component cultures as they arrived, integrating them peacefully and happily into an overall matrix composed of equal parts personal freedom, mutual respect and so-cialized medical care.
My take
In short, Canada has taken all the best of what’s come its way over its relatively short life as a sov-erign nation, and discarded the rest. Other countries could do worse than to emulate our approach to nation building. And I’m not the first one to say that!
~ Maggie J.