National Pride and Sense of Identity Seen Emerging in Canada

Painfully slowly at times, a strong sense of national pride and identity seems to be emerging in Canada.

Canadian native Kate Nelligan recently appeared on stage here en route to a bravura performance on Broadway in “Spoils of War.”

The actress was making her first professional appearance in Canada after triumphs elsewhere, but she professed surprise that anyone would find that quirky fact about her career interesting or relevant.

When a new owner purchased the Toronto Argonauts of the ailing Canadian Football League, the local speculation was rampant that he was interested not in the club but in the lease for the city’s spectacular new Skydome to bring in a National Football League franchise.

The sale terms finally were produced to show that he would not have any such rights to the stadium even if the Argonauts folded.

Canada has its complexes.

Talk of a New Canada

When Prime Minister Brian Mulroney emerged in his hometown of Baie-Comeau, Quebec, for a resounding victory celebration after the Nov. 21 election, he spoke of a new Canada that was proud of its abilities and ready to compete internationally.

By contrast, this is what Canadian media expert Marshall McLuhan, who died in 1980, wrote to then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in 1968:

“Canada is the only country in the world that has never had a national identity. In an age when all homogeneous nations are losing their identity images through rapid technological change, Canada alone can ‘keep its cool.’ ” The campaign was fought over such issues of national identity and purpose, summed up in the question of whether Canada should go ahead with the free-trade agreement with the United States signed by Mulroney and President Reagan in January, 1988.

The election outcome with a second consecutive majority government for Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative Party cleared the way for the trade agreement.

The election brought Canada an unusual amount of attention internationally, something of a surprise to most Canadians who routinely say their country is of only limited interest to the world. It also served domestically as a rare episode of intensive debate and soul-searching.

Pride in Canada

Perhaps the greatest surprise was the pride both camps felt in Canada.

For Mulroney and the pro-free traders, Canada was a land of competence and hard work, ready to take on competitors in the United States without the protection of tariffs despite being outnumbered nearly 10 to one.

For anti-free traders, Canada was a caring country and unbridled market forces--seen here as being American--could threaten its traditions of generosity and protection for its people.

No line brought greater applause to Liberal Party leader John Turner, who ran a fervent campaign against the free trade agreement, than when he roared: “When you walk into a Canadian hospital, they don’t check your credit card before they check your pulse.”

A certain smugness could be noted in Canadians running down their list of concerns about too much contact with the United States, from the cleanliness of Canadian cities and lower crime rates to their belief that government exists to take care of and provide services for its citizens.

No Fear of ‘L’ Word

The “L” word for liberal that is buried so often in U.S. politics is nothing to be feared in Canada. Indeed, the comparable word game played here is to point out that the emphasis in Progressive Conservative Party should be on progressive.

Although free trade overwhelmed all other issues this fall, one of the major controversies expected in the coming months is about the government’s role in providing child day care.

Writer and popular historian Pierre Berton believes geography and history have created a firm identity in Canada and too much has been made of a national inferiority complex.

“We are a different kind of people than the Americans,” he said in an interview, adding that he opposed the free-trade agreement because of its potential threat to national identity and culture.

Peter Newman, a senior columnist for the national news weekly Maclean’s, said the fall election was the most heated race in generations and predicted that its impact will linger.

‘A Very Precious Thing’

“What we already have is a very precious thing,” he said in a phone interview from British Columbia. “We like what we have here, and we want to keep it.”

The youthfulness of Canadian institutions plays a key role in national perceptions.

The nation dates to 1867 when its four original provinces joined, but British colonial institutions lingered far longer. The maple leaf flag was adopted in 1964, and the last vestiges of colonial status were eliminated with the passage of the Constitution Act of 1982.

The conference room at the Ottawa headquarters of Heritage Canada, a national, nonprofit organization formed with government support in 1973, is decorated with paintings from each of the country’s regions.

The scenes are impressive and picturesque, from an ornate courtyard in the city of Quebec to a small town in Ontario to homes built during the Gold Rush in the Yukon’s Dawson City.

“Let us celebrate our diversity,” Constance Johnson, the organization’s spokeswoman, cheerfully told a visitor. “But it sounds more like coping--at the moment we’re not quite ready to celebrate.”

A Cultural Mosiac

Canadians like to emphasize that they chose instead of the American-style melting pot to retain a cultural mosaic, adding in dozens of immigrant societies to the basic English and French differences and their persistent tensions.

There also is great interest in the vast, sparsely populated northern portions of Canada as a contributor to national identity.

“Few have seen the cliffs of Baffin or the eskers of the tundra but we all live cheek by jowl with the wilderness; and all of us, I think, feel the empty and awesome presence of the North,” Berton wrote in his book, “Why We Act like Canadians.”

The bulk of the Canadian population of 26 million lives in cities and towns stretched from the Atlantic coastal provinces to British Columbia on the Pacific, most not more than 200 miles from the U.S. border.

With or without the free-trade agreement, the $150-billion annual exchange between Canada and the United States already is remarkable as the largest two-way trading relationship in the world.

Ignored by U.S.

Each is the other’s No. 1 trading partner, but Canadians complain that they are ignored by the United States and expect that to happen again now that the uproar over free trade has subsided.

“I think the Americans will overlook us, as they always do,” Newman said. “Unless you make some noise, they just take it for granted.”

Canadian economic growth, fueled by trade--mostly with the United States--has lasted and at times boomed during the last six years.

The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says growth was 4.25% for 1988, trailing only Japan’s 5.75% growth rate among the Group of Seven industrial democracies. The forecast was for a decline to 3% growth in 1989.

The government’s Statistics Canada found that Canadians’ standard of living was 90% of that in the United States through much of this decade.