Canada: kind of bland, lacking identity and a passive country.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Clearly the world thinks we have a very unique physical, social, and political makeup it's just a shame that the some people continually tell us we for no other reason than to feed like a pig at the public trough.

I do think that this whole issue is a little strange and parochial.

For example, when people talk about distinct cultures they often view them as distinct with respect to their own (in this thread, Canada's). This introduces a huge bias because it overestimates how locally distinct faraway countries are, and that's what we complain about when we complain that Canada is not distinct enough from the US. How distinct are Colombia and Venezuela? Botswana and Namibia? I don't know, but those are the sorts of differences you should look at if you are trying to argue that Canada is abnormally undistinguished.

I also think our view of foreign cultures tends to be oversimplified and idealized. Canadians talk about "Chinese" people for example (maybe with some vague knowledge of 2 major languages) but there are 56 recognized ethnic groups in China and 10 of them have more than 5 million people. In most cases it would be pretty inaccurate to point at a country and assume it corresponds to a well-defined "race". Canada doesn't measure up in these discussions because it is being compared to an abstract concept.

[Brandon716]

^You could say other nations, like Canada, have just as many "ethnic" groups, actually probably more. English, French, Germans, Scots-Irish, Italian, Nordic people, Afro-Canadian, etc. etc. But traditionally other people who come to Canada consider white Canada to be a monolithic group just as much as Canadians view ethnic differences in China as a singular Chinese group.

What we're really talking about are ethnic difference vs racial differences, as you already know. Despite all the immigration in the past several decades, Canada is still the most "white" country in the Americas. Its whiter than the USA, its whiter than central and south America. So to be "Canadian" many outsiders still think of white Canadians without realizing the divisions within, such as french separatism, regionalism, and etc. In that context its easy for people to talk about China as a more singular nation. It is a singular nation-state, afterall, so its not unfair to call Chinese as Chinese from that perspective. National identity can trump ethnic differences. For example, an Afro-Canadian or Indian-Canadian or Hispanic-Canadian is still Canadian, just as various Chinese ethnic groups are "Chinese".

In terms of where Canada fits into the picture of some people who think its bland, I think everyone should feel free to roam about the world and settle where they see fit. If someone thinks Europe is more interesting, move there. If someone thinks living in the USA is better, move there. Same for every other nation and vice versa, if people think Canada is amazing they'll continue to come.

A few themes I strongly agree with that have been proposed so far: Canada is one of the few places in the world where you can feel free and feel somewhat post-national as people have called it. There are pockets of nationalist sentiment, particularly Quebec nationalists, but also elsewhere. If you don't like this free-going, mixture of cultures living together then yea Canada may seem a little bland, but many people - like me - feel liberated by being in a nation that is a mixture of various cultures that live together rather than one strangling identity that tries to overpower everyone else.

There's nothing more depressing than living in a place where one nationalist sentiment takes over and tries to force everyone else to its will, historically on the human scale those nations are the ones everyone runs away from. Considering how many people apply to immigrate to Canada that are turned away - one of the highest rates in the world - it shows where people want to be and I think that's a better judgment of "blandness" than anything and the best vote of public opinion. Canada is anything but bland, its one of the places people around the world want to come to and is in high demand.