Canada's Panamerica Identity

[kwoldtimer]

Re small cars/big cars, one thing that really struck me when I lived in Panama was how much Panamanians loved their big-ass SUVs. A Latin new money thing, I think.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by GreaterMontréal

festival du cochon graissé ? festival rodéo mécanic ?

La Presse


http://rodeomecanic.com/

wait ....

Festival de la vache qui chie,

no shit



Rodéo du camion

http://elrodeo.com/

One thing you can say about Quebec. It covers all the bases.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by lio45

Lol, it was my exact reaction at first, when we met... "Okay, clearly you're not originally from there, so what brought you there, and where're you from?"

I used to jokingly think she was the only Anglo in Lévis but when the candidates' signs started to pop up for the election a couple months ago (to replace CAQ's Christian Dubé) I noticed that there was at least another one, and she was a municipal councillor, no less!!

A not-that-well-known fact (that I've been familiar with since a long time) is that Quebec City peaked at a significant Anglo element (English-Irish-Scottish) and then it went back down over the decades as the city slowly continued to lose national importance in the expanding-westward country.

It's just logical that it spilled to Lévis. Among other examples, George T. Davie had his operations there. (The original site's still there, there's a little museum too in one of the buildings.)

/off-topic

Federal Public Safety Steven Blaney is from Lévis I think, but I am not sure you can really call him an anglo. His English was very shaky at first. It has improved but he still has a very noticeable accent.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by kwoldtimer

Quebec City had a substantial Anglo population until the Depression, did it not? I remember being told once that Sillery was originally an Anglo enclave.

At one point in the mid 1800s Quebec City was about 40% anglo. Around the same time that Montreal was majority anglo. It did not last long in either case.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by Acajack

At one point in the mid 1800s Quebec City was about 40% anglo. Around the same time that Montreal was majority anglo. It did not last long in either case.

A piece on the subject (1973):
http://www.cbc.ca/archives/categorie...in-quebec.html

[niwell]

Originally Posted by Acajack

One thing you can say about Quebec. It covers all the bases.

Yeah, for every fashionable, wine-sipping sophisticate who listens to world music and classical there's Gilles with a mullet and acid washed jeans who loves drink cinquante, hunt, rocks 80s hair metal and probably watches some bizarre form of truck based motor sports.

I mean, this exists in Ontario as well but probably cut down a bit on both extreme edges. And also not as much within the same metro area

• Video Link

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by niwell

Yeah, for every fashionable, wine-sipping sophisticate who listens to world music and classical there's Gilles with a mullet and acid washed jeans who loves drink cinquante, hunt, rocks 80s hair metal and probably watches some bizarre form of truck based motor sports.

I mean, this exists in Ontario as well but probably cut down a bit on both extreme edges. And also not as much within the same metro area

• Video Link

Wow, I'd be really interested in knowing how you found that! Of course it exists in Quebec but how did you know how to look for a this song that evokes it?

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Federal Public Safety Steven Blaney is from Lévis I think, but I am not sure you can really call him an anglo. His English was very shaky at first. It has improved but he still has a very noticeable accent.

He's a francophone, although obviously there was at least one Anglo among the ancestors.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by lio45

Interesting remark... Again reinforces the fact that culturally the two countries are so close that other "cultural divides" (like urban/rural) are actually greater. In most cases, it's the opposite. i.e. if you put a rural German/urban German/rural Mexican/urban Mexican in a room, the most culturally close pairing is guaranteed to not be the two urbanites together and the two hillbillies together. Try instead the pairing where they can talk to each other to begin with... not even starting to get into the stuff they grew up with, the food they're used to, cultural expectations, etc.

Yeah, given that this is a thread for urbanistas anything urban-related tends to get exaggerated in its importance, and this is especially true of the things city slickers have in common regardless of national boundaries. We've had people on here say that Parisians and Londoners (and even Tokyoites!) have more in common with each other than with people in smaller cities and towns in their own countries. It is almost comical when you think about it, and people who say that have obviously never really sat down and had a drink with people in London or Paris, much less Tokyo.

[niwell]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Wow, I'd be really interested in knowing how you found that! Of course it exists in Quebec but how did you know how to look for a this song that evokes it?

I heard the band a long time ago when I lived in Ottawa and have always kind of enjoyed them. That was my favourite song and the video especially typified the "trashy" aspect of Quebec to me (in a good way).

I was also reminded of cowboys fringants when my coworkers band opened up for them in Toronto recently.

[MolsonExport]

Les Cowboys Fringants are very popular with the nationalist crowd. They do put on a good show.

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by rousseau

I'm sure there's lots of hunting in northern Ontario, just like in rural Quebec, but the point is that hunting is widespread throughout the U.S.

As per my anecdote, tens of thousands of people from southern Michigan go north in the state for hunting. To the point where the I-75 is literally filled with pickup trucks with gun racks and those little trailers (still don't know exactly what they were) come hunting season.

Do you see this in Ontario? No. Are you saying that when hunting season starts in Quebec you see thousands and thousands of pickup trucks driven by hunters jamming the highways going north? Really?

I'm not talking one or two, or an anecdote about your grandfather, I'm talking about something that is unmistakably a major part of the culture that is impossible to avoid. If this is really what it's like in Quebec, then wow, I had no idea. But somehow I suspect we're talking about vastly different degrees of scale.

Living in Michigan right now. I don't know one hunter. In fact, I've met more vegans and vegetarians here than I ever did while growing up in Ontario.

[theman23]

Originally Posted by saffronleaf

Living in Michigan right now. I don't know one hunter. In fact, I've met more vegans and vegetarians here than I ever did while growing up in Ontario.

Congratulations, you live in a college town.

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by rousseau

Guns, violence, racial tension, socioeconomic disparities, loud people, aggressive people, a vague but palpable sense of menace at night: these are common denominators throughout the U.S. that override the differences between San Francisco and rural Alabama as compared to perceived similarities between southern Ontario and Michigan.

Typical jingoistic Canadian anti-Americanism.

I don't deny that all of those things exist, in aggregate, at a greater level in the US than in Canada. But "throughout the U.S."? That is wildly inaccurate.

Haven't seen a gun or violence or racial tension in Ann Arbor. People are friendly and well educated. I've encountered morons blasting horrible songs from their phones on public transit systems in the GTA -- not once has something like that happened here.

Menace at night? I've wandered around sober/high/drunk in the middle of the night in downtown Ann Arbor with no sense of "menace."

I'm sure I could drive a couple dozen miles to Detroit and experience all of those things in spades. And I'm sure Ann Arbor is an outlier. But to suggest that these negative characteristics are "common denominators" "throughout the U.S." is demonstrably false.

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by theman23

Congratulations, you live in a college town.

It seems like you are trying to undermine the importance of my post. Rousseau quite explicitly stated that these were commonalities throughout the US -- from San Francisco to Alabama. Presumably that includes places like Ann Arbor.

And I've lived in a college town in Canada which was considerably more "menacing" at night time and did not have many vegans or vegetarians.

When you make bold claims like that, it needs to be corrected. It's one thing to say that those characteristics exist in greater proportions, in aggregate, in the US, but different to suggest that it is ubiquitous.

[theman23]

Which college town have you lived in within Canada?

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by theman23

Which college town have you lived in within Canada?

Waterloo, ON.

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by lio45

On the other hand, do you really think that health care is something that makes a big cultural impact?

I mean, if you para-dropped an alien in Vancouver, Seattle, Halifax, Boston, with his given assignment being to observe the "culture" for a while and report his observations, you really think he'd manage to identify health care as a major culture-shaping characteristic shared by the Vancouver-Halifax and Seattle-Boston duos and unshared between the two groups?

Good point.

Americans don't view their complex health care system -- a mix of coverage received from state, federal, philanthropic, religious, school, employer, and private sources that varies state by state -- to be a unifying or essential component of American culture.

Americans don't think, after football, what defines us is our complex health care system, that varying mixture of state, federal, philanthropic, religious, school, employer, and private source system.

Moreover, there are diverse points of view in the US on health care -- including a very substantial percentage that support universal health care. Not to mention that 1/3 of Americans are on government provided health insurance, and it will climb to 1/2 by 2022.

In fact, I think few countries do this. Canada is an exception. Many Canadians do point to the public health care system as a defining aspect of what it means to be Canadian. Whether this suggests that Canadians are scrounging at the bottom of a barrel for unique cultural traits or genuinely value health care more than other societies when it comes to defining themselves is up for debate, I suppose.

[theman23]

I don't think anyone would characterize Waterloo as "menacing". The difference between the two towns is so minor from a safety point of view, that any difference in perception could be chalked up to an unlucky experience.

Anyways, you're taking an absurdly literal interpretation of rousseau's argument here. Sleepy little college enclaves aside, his point is largely true. Maybe you'll come to agree if you bring it up with the locals.

[saffronleaf]

Originally Posted by someone123

I think this reflects the bias toward superficial characteristics I was talking about earlier. Most people evaluate cultural differences on the basis of how obvious and apparent they are, but there's no reason why these differences must be considered the most important. I think the most interesting differences are the ones that have the largest impact on the way people think and behave and consequently the way they live.

The health care you get has a very big impact on your life, and the lack of public health care in the US is pretty directly related to how much people there buy into the extreme free market rhetoric that has become a key feature of US culture.

Arguably it has less to do with ideological factors. The separation of powers and federalism, among other things, can make overhauling the health care system difficult. There is also path dependency; a well entrenched private health insurance system is difficult to uproot.

That said, describing the American health care as free market in any sense is wrong. 1/3 of Americans receive public health insurance from the US government; this will climb to 1/2 of Americans by 2022. Meaning that more than 160 million Americans will be insured by the US government. Quite possibly the largest public health insurance plan in the industrialized world.

Moreover, private health insurance companies are extensively regulated, to the point where it is even difficult to say whether it is 'private' in any substantive sense. Firstly, profits are regulatorily capped. Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, insurance companies are constrained in using actuarial data to determine premiums -- determining insurability, as you may imagine, is the heart of what insurance companies do. And this, too, is regulatorily constrained.

Finally, even to the extent it is ideologically based, there is substantial ideological diversity on the topic.

To use the rhetoric of some neoliberals in the US and paint the entire US with that brush is not just an unfair overgeneralization, it is also simply wrong. That neoliberals invoke some mythical historical unregulated version of the US is sad and entirely inaccurate. I've been studying American regulations for the last 2.5 years and I can provide you with sources if you'd like.

Seriously, to use the neoliberals to paint the US or to assume their views reflect US policies is like using UKIP as the basis for describing UK culture.

The US is thoroughly a mixed market economy with extensive regulations. I 100% grant that many of those regulations are not optimal. They are the product of compromises between numerous groups (some of which really should not have as much influence as they do, like corporations) and systemic gridlock. But the US is extensively regulated. There's no free market.