This article in Quora magazine was so good I just had to put it in here for your consideration.
It's well written and he makes some really good points!
Guest Post by Mark Kahnt:
The typical American doesn’t know enough about Canada to see it as being particularly different from the United States. Many are surprised that 1/4 of our population speak French as their first or only language. Canada uses the metric system for “official” measurements. Our political system arose and evolved on the Westminster model that made for a centre of the road political culture easy to maintain and foster.
But the underlying consideration of how each nation came about is a key part of why we are so different. The American colonies were economic and social settlements, moving non-conformists such as Puritans and Catholics out of the home country to allow for more political and social stability at home as well as religious “freedom” so long as you were of the religion of your colony. The economic plantation colonies were much more businesses and their tenant settlers harvesting from the lands and selling back to the home country.
Up the coast, there were Acadia/Nova Scotia, Nouvelle France and Newfoundland. These were outposts of Scotland, France and England, where the European powers were competing for territories and access to the resources. Beyond that was Rupert’s Land, a territory so large that no one in Europe could have pictured it, so ruggedly barren that no one would have thought to want it, given to a trading company. Anyhow, the populated areas came to be British through conquest over half a century of separate wars, including here in my hometown with the fall of Fort Frontenac.
What became Canada received a sizeable number of refugees from the American Revolution - people that had supported the Crown and were made quite unwelcome by the independence partisans. As the years have past, those in what remained as British North America witnessed American empire building attempts in the War of 1812 and continued concern and mistrust when faced with the Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny. Even with the Second World War, Canada and Britain watched American businesses trading with Nazi Germany until the country found itself drawn into the war. There is always a bit of a distrust of American motives and a strong understanding that Canadian interests are really only of concern to Americans if they are also American interests.
Canada is comfortably a part of a post-Empire, the Commonwealth of Nations, led by the Queen of Canada. We have built a nation based on people being together in the same space, whoever they are, whatever their cultural histories, knowing that we need to pull together in this rugged land if we are going to be successful. We are culturally connected to much of the world as a result, and use that to help foster peace in a way that the American approach hasn’t.
Canada, being a land built by warfare between two powers, doesn’t glorify guns or religion, or necessary liberty to the extent of overrunning the liberty of others. We work together through the best tools we have available for common goals, our government, which we trust to at least be well intentioned with respect to our common interests. The British North America Act 1867, the heart of our constitution, speaks to Peace, Order, and Good Government.
Meaning that a Donald Trump administration here could be argued as unconstitutional…
We may not agree with particular administrations, but we are generally fine with the concept of government. Our west was not settled first by wagon trains seeking land, but traders collecting furs and the North West Mounted Police, setting out public safety, security and order.
It made for a country with different philosophies, values and underlying political considerations and tensions from those in the United States. It is not wrong, it is just that each country has different interests and needs, in the past, present, and going forward.
Which is why any American that looks on Canada as that part of North America that just hasn’t yet entered the Union is actually in need of taking time to understand the differences and why they have occurred.
Probably over a plate of poutine.
😛
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