Opportunity Is South : Canadians: They’re All Over the U.S.

For years, some nationalistic Canadians have been complaining that American culture dominates their lives, the movies and television programs they watch, the books they read, even the consumer products available in their supermarkets.

But, now, it is becoming clear that Canada is exacting its revenge. Canadians and Canadian culture seem to be leading a counterassault on the United States.

The office building you work in may well be Canadian-designed or Canadian-financed. The drink you have on the way home could well be distilled in Canada. The man anchoring the evening news on television is likely to have come from Canada. And if you go out to a movie theater or watch a TV sitcom, a lot of the people you see are likely to be Canadians.

Everyday Influence

It may not always be possible to identify the Canadians, for they look like Americans and sound pretty much like Americans. But, suddenly, Canadians are everywhere. In show business and just plain business, Canadians now influence everyday American life to a far greater extent than the people of any other country.

“I doubt that you can find any other example where a society has been as penetrated as much as the United States has by Canada,” said Norman Snider, a political and cultural commentator in Toronto. “For whatever reasons--a common language, shared values and views, even a failure of Americans to see us as aliens--Canadians are able to cross the border more easily than anyone else and win acceptance.”

Anyone with doubts should consider Michael J. Fox, the young star of the television show “Family Ties” and the movie “Back to the Future.” A Canadian. How about Howie Mandel in NBC-TV’s “St. Elsewhere”? Or are you a Trekkie devoted to William Shatner as Capt. James Kirk? They’re both Canadians, and testimony to the growing Canadian influence.

Lincoln’s Image

Even the image Americans have of some of their great leaders is the product of this country of only 25 million people. The late actor Raymond Massey may have been the ideal Abraham Lincoln, but he was born in Toronto. And the man who played President Woodrow Wilson on the screen was Alexander Knox, another Canadian.

If you are a trivia fan, your passion may be “Trivial Pursuit,” the creation of two Montreal reporters, Chris Haney and Scott Abbott.

In fact, the Canadian connection may start in the cradle and keep you from the grave, at least for a time. Pablum is a Canadian creation, and the life expectancy of many Americans has been increased because of a Canadian doctor, Frederick Banting, the developer of insulin.

Why do they head south to make their names, all these Canadians? Largely for the same reasons that Henry Fonda, Johnny Carson and dozens of others left the Midwest for New York and Los Angeles: the opportunity to display their talents and to make some money.

Mandel, a Toronto native and veteran of the long-running “St. Elsewhere,” said in a telephone interview: “I’d love to work in Canada, but they don’t ask me to do anything. My first job with the Canadian Broadcast Corp. was this year.

“You don’t get international exposure (in Canada). Here in Los Angeles, I can go somewhere 15 minutes from my house and do something and I’ll be seen all over the world.”

If that is true now, it was doubly so when actor Lorne Greene went south in 1954, after a radio and theater career that had made him one of the best-known Canadian actors--in Canada.

“There were many performers who honed their talent and perfected it in Canada,” Greene, who played the stern but fair American pioneer, Ben Cartwright, in the long-running Western “Bonanza,” said by phone from his home in Los Angeles. “But they just couldn’t get as much work as they would like. Art is worldwide. If people have to go to Hollywood or Timbuktu to practice their art, they’ll do it. Of course, they might not get paid as well in Timbuktu.”

‘The Big Ocean’

In Greene’s case, he said, “I was a fish and this was the big ocean and I had to find out if I could swim in it.” According to Snider, Canadians do exceptionally well in the United States because they are often the top of the line in their fields.

“You get our best people, because the best need a large scope to work in, and they find that in the States and not in Canada,” he said. “Also, Americans are a competitive people and they appreciate good work and success, no matter where it comes from. It also helps that Canadians are so apparently like you (Americans) that they aren’t seen as threateningly different.”

They get no special break, though, from the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, except that as tourists they may cross the border freely, without having to show any documents whatever. The quota for immigrant visas is the same as for most other countries, 20,000 a year.

No Green Card Quotas

But there is no quota on the so-called green cards that enable aliens to work in the United States. According to an INS spokesman in Washington, green cards are issued routinely to aliens with “exceptional abilities,” and many Canadians find it easy to pass that test.

Canada’s influence is not limited to the field of entertainment. In Los Angeles, for example, Canadians are playing a major role in downtown development.

Cadillac Fairview, a Canadian real estate leviathan, is a major partner in the $1.2-billion California Plaza, part of the Bunker Hill redevelopment project. It will embrace high-rise office buildings, a hotel, condominiums, retail shops and a museum of contemporary art, and is described as one of the largest such projects ever undertaken in the United States.

The Canadian real estate firm is also responsible for buildings in Beverly Hills and for Gateway Center in Torrance.

It doesn’t stop there. It hardly begins. One of the world’s largest real estate developers is a Canadian firm, Olympia and York, currently constructing the 8-million-square-foot World Financial Center in New York City.

Billions in Buildings

Olympia and York, owned by the Reichmann brothers of Toronto, bought eight New York skyscrapers for $350 million in 1977. Those buildings together with three others purchased soon afterward are now valued at $2 billion.

Olympia and York haven’t forgotten California. They put up the World Savings Center in Brentwood and the 26-story office building at 400 S. Hope St. in Los Angeles.

Americans don’t seem to mind that Canadians are doing it.

“I’ve never found it more difficult to do business in the United States than anywhere else, including Canada,” said Martin Seaton, head of Cadillac Fairview’s California operations.

He added in a telephone interview that operating in the United States “requires careful preparation and knowledge of the area. You have to learn how things are done, but that’s also true in going from Toronto to Vancouver.”

‘North American Operation’

And, Seaton said, while he has never run into a serious problem because he and the company are Canadian, it’s not a point that is stressed. “We don’t avoid it or push it to the forefront,” he said. “We style ourselves as a North American development operation. Besides, most of our staff are American.”

Developers aren’t the only Canadian businesses active in the United States. The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (the 10th largest bank in North America), the Bank of Montreal and other Canadian financial institutions put up money not only for Cadillac Fairview and Olympia and York, but for non-Canadian development south of the border.

How important Canadian investment is in the States was highlighted recently in Phoenix when a downtown developer had to delay a multimillion-dollar project because he was unable to get financing from Toronto. “Without Canadian money, we can’t do it,” said Judy Kendall, a spokeswomen for the developer.

A lot of Americans couldn’t get things done without Canadian money. In 1984, $30 billion in Canadian money was directly invested in the United States, second only to the investment from Japan. And this is not to mention that Americans buy more Canadian products than any other nation’s.

Canadian Brands

A lot of that Canadian production is liquor. Seagram’s, Hiram Walker, Chivas Regal Scotch and B&G; wines--they’re all produced by Canadians.

And for the Californian who takes pride in the state’s wine, consider that Sterling, Monterey and Paul Masson vineyards are all owned at least in part by Seagram, which also built one of modern architecture’s greatest structures, the Seagram Building on New York’s East Side.

There is even a Canadian claim to the telephone. Alexander Graham Bell was born in Scotland and spent much of his life in Canada. He made his prototype for the telephone while living in Brantford, Ontario; he also made the first call there, though he could only talk, not hear a response.

If Canada’s claim to the telephone is questionable, there is no doubt that telling time is far more accurate and rational because of Sandford Fleming, a Canadian railroad engineer who developed standard time to make sure the trains would run on schedule across the continent.

Cultural Talents

In culture, too, Canadians make their talents known. Last year, two of the best-selling novels in the United States were the work of Toronto writers Robertson Davies and Margaret Atwood. Plenty of American readers are also enthralled by Mordecai Richler and Saul Bellow (both from Montreal), as well as the late Will Durant and the late mystery writer Ross Macdonald. There is some dispute, but Canadians also claim the Beat Generation troubadour Jack Kerouac, whose parents were French-Canadian.

Don’t overlook that the guru of many Americans of the 1960s and ‘70s was Canadian Marshall McLuhan, creator of the idea that “the medium is the message” and the notion of the world as a global village.

Not-so-serious readers are making a Canadian publisher rich. TorStar Corp., publisher of the Toronto Star, produces 52 Harlequin romances a month, with the United States as its biggest market.

The invaders haven’t neglected sports. If you follow the Los Angeles Lakers and the UCLA Bruins, or any basketball team, then you are a fan of a sport invented by a Canadian, James Naismith, who put the game together north of the border with nine to a side.

No. 1 Draft Choice

Hockey, of course, and lacrosse are Canadian exports, as was baseball’s Ferguson Jenkins. The Canadian invasion has gone so far that next year Los Angeles Rams fans will be seeing, as the team’s No. 1 draft choice, tackle Mike Schad from Queens University of Kingston, Ontario.

It never seems to stop.

The man who anchors ABC’s “World News Tonight” is Peter Jennings, a Canadian who once sold furniture on television in a small Ontario town. If you prefer PBS for your evening news, Canadian Robert MacNeil will tell you about it at length.

Morley Safer of CBS’s “60 Minutes” is a Canadian, as are Barrie Dunsmore, ABC’s London bureau chief, and Henry Champ, the NBC reporter who caused a recent stir by refusing to disclose where he interviewed Palestinian terrorist Abul Abbas, accused of masterminding the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro.

Americans get electricity, natural gas, oil and other natural resources from Canada, and if some for-now-farfetched thinking can be realized, Americans are going to get much of their drinking water from Canada. Proposals have been put forward on both sides of the border to tap Canada, which controls up to a third of the world’s drinkable water, as American rivers and lakes dry up or their water becomes unpotable.

But if Canadians provide Americans with news, money, buildings, products (the second-largest manufacturer of telephones in the United States is a Canadian firm, and New York’s new subway cars are being made in Montreal) and even some of their sports, it is in entertainment that the quiet neighbor to the north has virtually taken control.

The only woman to have won the heart of America’s Man of Steel, Superman, was played by Margot Kidder, a Canadian. Does John Candy make you laugh, or David Steinberg, or the entire SCTV crew, or Dan Aykroyd, or Martin Short or Gilda Radner? All are Canadians, as is Lorne Michaels, developer of NBC’s “Saturday Night Live.”

Despite its reputation as a dour sort of place, Canada gave birth to the producers of “Animal House,” the “Porky” movies and “Police Academy.” One of Hollywood’s hottest directors is Ivan Reitman, who directed and produced the high-grossing “Ghostbusters” and the current “Legal Eagles.” Reitman is from Toronto.

Canadian influence in U.S. filmdom isn’t new. Mack Sennett came from Canada to introduce the Keystone Kops to the United States. He was followed by Mary Pickford (America’s Sweetheart), King Kong’s heartthrob, Fay Wray, as well as Yvonne De Carlo, Ruby Keeler, Norma Shearer, Colleen Dewhurst and Alexis Smith.

Moose Jaw Native

Monte Hall learned to make a deal growing up in Winnipeg, following in the footsteps of one of the original game show hosts, Art Linkletter, the pride of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, and leading another Canadian, Alex Trebek, into that favored TV field.

Hank Snow and Anne Murray set your toes to tapping? Canadians. The late Glenn Gould, one of the world’s premier pianists, was Canadian. Neil Young, The Band, Bryan Adams, Paul Shaffer, Corey Hart, Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, Oscar Peterson, Robert Goulet, David Foster (six Grammy nominations last year), Maureen Forrester, Jon Vickers--all are Canadians.

Why is it that Canadians seem to be successful in the United States? Are they any different from Americans?

“Not really,” Mandel said. “We just have to work harder because we’re worth 38% less”--a reference to the lower relative value of the Canadian dollar.

To Greene, the reason for success is ability. “Canadian talent is strong and bright,” he said.

There are, of course, theories that Canadians make Americans laugh because, as foreigners, they see humor in what is overlooked by the natives as normal. Martin Short of SCTV and “Saturday Night Live” recently told MacLean’s Magazine that “it helps to have a distance from what you’re satirizing.”

Small in Yugoslavia

To Mandel, funny is funny. “People don’t know I’m a Canadian,” he said. “It’s an international thing, although I personally don’t go over big in Yugoslavia.”

Others think Canadians have to be funny to survive in the snow and shadows that make their country less than a laughing matter.

And then there is the notion that there is some sort of Canadian conspiracy, that Canada is taking over the United States under the leadership of comedians and actors and abetted by traitors who issue Canadian performers legal immigrant green cards.

Mandel denies any such conspiracy but adds, “Maybe they haven’t let me in on it.”

Greene said: “Well, of course there is. There always has been, didn’t you know that? . . . I’m behind every conspiracy. Who do you think invented the Greene Card?”