Canada's Search for Identity

...Canada's frontier with the United States is widely celebrated for its lack of fortification...

...Not all the complaints, by any means, are unjustified...

...But the Canadian politician has always been tempted to spice his complaints with a little demagoguery...

...This insistence, and a great many legal niceties which serve to fortify it, is the only real boundary between the most celebrated friends in the history of nations...

...It is unbalanced in America's favor, since the U.S...

...The country's trade is distressingly unbalanced, due primarily to the U.S., its biggest customer and supplier...

...football isn't soccer...

...When a Canadian screams, he screams good...

...But simply because the frontiers of trade, business and cultural contact are so open, the main problems will continue to be psychological...

...Increasingly, therefore, a Canadian politician trying to touch the national psyche rallies the voters "round the flagpole...

...or a "more distinctive" design for Canadian Fords...

...It is simply that they fear us, even in friendship, as the biggest single threat to their sense of independence and identity...

...Yet soon after, the State Department said almost the same thing, officially, firmly and rudely, in a press release issued minutes after a copy was handed to the Canadian Embassy...

...In effect, he tries to conduct election campaigns not against Conservatives or Liberals but against the Americans, who, history tells him, have never done well in the race for Parliament...

...But Canadians could not help wondering whether disaster with de Gaulle and anger with Adenauer was not being taken out on them...

...We are being swallowed up by the Pentagon," cried Lester Pearson, the Liberal opposition leader two years later...

...If this were to be demonstrated in next April's election, the latest quarrel may yet turn out to have been worthwhile, for it would have taught Canadians something new and inspiring about themselves...

...Air Defense Commands...

...In the longer run, too, discretion would seem to be the best thing Washington can contribute to good relations with Canada...

...There was a strong implication in the release that Diefenbaker was doing all this for narrow political profit...

...or "less tolerance" for U.S...

...or "greater effort" for disarmament...

...or "more understanding" for the Washingtonmaligned Cubans...

...Canada likes to recall that it entered each of this century's major wars two full years before the U.S...

...or "more Canadians" as directors of companies...

...But today the nation is tied to NATO and, in this Hemisphere's military scheme, almost wholly integrated with U.S...

...Canadian resources for Canadians," shouted John Diefenbaker in his most successful campaign for the prime ministership in 1958...

...Diefenbaker's ranks split, his Opposition spoke up, his Government broke down, and the quick and facile men of the New Frontier simply said nothing...

...Just about the only thing that distinguishes Canadians from Americans is their persistent urge to be different from us...

...sells far more than it buys in Canada...

...Others pretend that their tie to the Commonwealth makes it somehow awkward to accept Washington's suggestion that they join the Organization of American States...

...Recently, there have been some signs that anti-American campaigns no longer wash so well in Canadian political wars...

...Many, including members of Diefenbaker's Cabinet, agreed with Washington's arguments even as they deplored its method of expression...

...Max Frankel is a Washington correspondent for the New York Times...

...As for Washington, it decided the best thing to do after expressing regrets for the form—but not the content—of its rebuke was to keep perfectly still...

...But whereas normal allies can quarrel in dignity, intimates can only heave pottery or threaten divorce...

...or a "better deal" for Canadian wheat and a "better break" on American tariffs—in short, "Canadian resources for Canadians...

...Only three months ago, the Administration dealt resoundingly with an American liaison officer to the Canadian nuclear research program when he publicly expressed what many others here believed—namely, that "Canada is most happy to let the United States carry the entire burden of defending the North American Continent...

...New Presidents make it a point to stop off in Ottawa early in their terms and to have the Canadian leaders down for lunch soon after...

...We've been in this anti-American business longer than anyone else," says Canadian Professor Frank Underhill, "and Ottawa ought to be filled with delegations from the new Asian states who have come over here to learn how to do it...

...Although Canadians are scheduled to celebrate their centennial as a nation in 1967, many of them still are not sure they will make it...

...or "open books" from foreign companies...

...The major periodicals, though labeled Canadian, are foreign (and with a pretense of special Canadian service they drain advertising from more indigenous publications...

...Baseball isn't cricket...

...Within 24 hours of the publication of those words, the official was called home and reprimanded...

...Canada's struggle for identity becomes visibly more difficult all the time...

...It accurately accused Prime Minister Diefenbaker of welshing on a commitment to arm the already delivered Bomarc anti-aircraft missiles and defensive jet fighters with nuclear weapons, of divulging information about secret negotiations for those weapons, and of misrepresenting some of the facts about the weapons...

...Ottawa has even scrapped production of its own jet lighters to accept American missiles and planes, as though it were at the receiving end of a foreign aid program...

...For it enabled Canadians to shout "interference" and "diktat" and gave the politically weakening Diefenbaker—not one of the Kennedy Administration's favorite allies—the opportunity of going into an election waving not his program or performance but his patriotism...

...Early in each Administration, too, Washington usually learns that a random sneeze down here can send a feverish cold through Commons up there, and discretion becomes the better part of policy...

...It is undefended, however, not only against our armies but also against our investors, prospectors, books, magazines, TV, movies, sports and lecturers...

...Thus, Canadian-American disputes quickly acquire a vehemence as unusual as the two countries' customary cohabitation...

...policy on China...

...And to prove it, more often to themselves than to us, they insist on the right to disagree with us or to decide for themselves...

...Culturally, Canada has a difficult time asserting itself against the onslaught from the south...

...Nearly all postwar investment in Canada has come from the U.S., and it has given Americans control of 95 per cent of Canada's auto industry, 77 per cent of its rubber industry, 68 per cent of its petroleum industry, 60 per cent of its electrical industry, 51 per cent of its chemical industry and 45 per cent of its pulp and paper industry...

...Virtually every Canadian knows this but very few Americans do— and therein lies the fundamental and continuing problem in relations between the two countries...

...And in this realm there will be no substitute for knowledge, understanding, good manners and an awareness among Americans of the Canadians' perennial search for identity...

...He is likely to demand "full control" of weapons on Canadian soil...

...And if it is any solace, they ought to know, too, that it has at least taught a few more Americans a little more about who, what and where Canadians are...

...and the Soviet Union, they are in the middle and ought to behave that way...

...Thus, many of them pretend that because they are the only nation that borders directly upon both the U.S...

...Our northern neighbors, of course, would like some official consideration for their problems in selling wheat and lumber in the world, and sympathetic understanding for their wish to see more Canadians manage their national wealth and defense...

...American tariff discriminations, especially, have often done Canada disproportionate injury while absentee management has deprived it of opportunities for sound social and fiscal planning...

...Movies, though they sound Canadian, are foreign...

...Unfortunately, Americans know as little about Canada's psychology as they do about its geography...

...Canada's desire to preserve its boundaries accounts for most North American family spats, including the current one over nuclear weapons...

...The colossus to the south has all but incorporated their industry, captured their culture, delineated their defense, and nonetheless ignored them in ignominy...

...Within hours, though, Washington recognized that its outburst had been a mistake...

...But in serious moments, Canadians point out that hardly any of them dislike Americans...

...Young artists, skilled workers and ballplayers head south for new opportunities, while many of the two million immigrants who have come to Canada since World War II consider that they have come to "America" as much as to Canada...

...Considering the widespread ignorance about Canada in the U.S., however, Washington has done amazingly well at grasping the psychological facts of North American life...

...The Administration's impatience, of course, has been cumulative, not only with the Canadians on the issue of North American air defenses, but with all its allies who have been so reluctant to share the Western military burden, economically and morally...

...And the expression of that impatience was consistent with President Kennedy's year-end resolve to make himself a little less popular in order to get a little more done with the allies...