A Turning Point, A Remembering

Welcome back to American Voyages!  Our long absence has come to an end as I find myself once again in possession of a workable computer.

Much has been going in North America lately, events setting in motion a rather vast set of political changes.  While life will continue as normal for many, the extremes of polarity that have built up between camps of ideology and alliance grow farther and farther apart.  At this point, I could easily turn this into a political blog, but there really is no point to such a disservice.  Rather, consider that American Voyages has always been about exploration and trying to paint a picture about the context of our history.  As a radical centrist, its, well, my "thing".  I'm also something of a royalist, at least in a constitutional sense; it's amazing what an un-elected political leader can do to keep a bunch of elected political leaders at bay.  The colonials in the thirteen colonies at first felt the same way; their grievance was with a bloated Parliament and its military-industrial machine.  In fact, they even sent a petition just to George III to ask for his help in dealing with Parliament.

That said, I'm in no hurry to see a king set up, deposed, or necessarily even considered for appointment.  But there are those out there who very much are.  France, much like the United States, is currently undergoing a period of cultural introspection, brought on by a number of different factors.  Extremist populist movements are no less prevalent there, as they have been now for quite some time.  A minority within the far right of the country has been quietly calling for the restoration of the Bourbons to the throne.  This past Saturday, the anniversary of the execution of Louis XVI, a memorial Mass was held in Paris at the Basilica of Saint Denis, the French equivalent of Westminster Abbey.  These faces should look fairly familiar:

They were the last monarchs before the first French Revolution.  Their descendants live on, as do their supporters.  I leave it up to each person to decide whether they were right to have been killed; personally, I think they made their own fate possible, even while I think that the revolutionaries were overreaching themselves.  They tried to flee and attack their own country, just as James II did so in Britain a hundred years before them.  They made little room for compromise, or at least made it a secondary concern, much as the last Catholic king of Britain did.  This was par for the course as far as the Bourbons (and Stuarts) were concerned.  Louis XIV started the process by trying to unify his kingdom through the sheer blunt instrument of an absolute monarchy.  He definitely had his reasons: his uncle Charles I lost his head over not gaining dominance over Parliament.  The Bourbons would ensure that their majesty, wealth, and power would put the nobility in their place.  The problem was, the nobility could be kept in check by ostentatious displays of the glory of the state.  The common folk, however, saw it as an affront to their very struggle for existence.

Populism toppled a regime in France, just as it had transformed a regime in Britain, just as it would change the game in the colonies and Mexico, just as it made the first half of the 20th century a rather terrifying era to live in... just as it keeps doing to this day.  While we need not and indeed should not be slaves to historical memory, we certainly should be aware that it has a lot to teach us, inspire us with, and warn us against.

For my part, I definitely see January 21st as something of a feast day, even while I would throw my support behind Henri d'Orleans and the Orleanist line of succession rather than the Bourbon.  That day in 1793 was a day to be remembered and pondered on for anyone serious about historical memory.  That day was a day in which both the Bourbons and the New Regime failed France, failed themselves, and was a day in which the dangers of extremes became truly painful and divisive, not just here but in a new American nation.  Jeffersonians and Hamiltonians, Anti-Federalists and Federalists started rallying behind supporting Republican France or divorced Mother Britain, even as they were more definable by preexisting theories of government.  People love a cause.  People love to get behind "Change we can believe in" just as much as they love to get behind "Making America great again".  Centrists like Benjamin Franklin, and later, a man very much touched by his aggravating advice, John Adams, would try to acknowledge passion even as they supported a little bit more sanity.  Mr. Adam's epitaph does not proclaim "I did for the dream of a strong central government", it reads:

"Here lies John Adams, who took upon himself the responsibility of peace with France in 1800."

Isolated from his enemies and his former architect of power, Alexander Hamilton, Mr. Adams found his life to be one of a dreamer of change who ended up simply wanting others to have the freedom to dream of their own change or stability.  In the history of my country, there was Guy Carleton, the first Baron Dorchester.  You see, even while I take interest in the revival of interest in a French monarchy (and the French do love their freedom even while they idolize "kings" like Napoleon and De Gaulle, because they are as into populist excitement as much as the Americans), I already have a monarch, Queen Elizabeth.  Her predecessor George III had the wisdom to see Lord Carleton as "a sensible man" who could effectively manage newly British Canada.  He saved my culture, managed to keep Canada out of the colonial cause for independence and helped create English speaking Canada by shepherding loyalists out of the United States when the war was over.  For her part today, the Queen has served as a place for rival camps in British politics to find at least a ceremonial common ground.  In 2011, she even became the first British monarch to visit Ireland as a guest rather than a general leading troops.  She is an ironic symbol, I think, for an alternative to the personalization of politics.

But what we all have is a shared history, progressives, conservatives, moderates, Caucasians, African-Americans, Native Americans... even while we still attend rallies to see a man of powerful presence in a red hat... or stand our ground in the cold as a pipeline threatens to cross close to our native land.  In Paris, a Requiem is celebrated for a long dead king, perhaps to stir up some concept of patriotism, even as others march against this and other visions of what they deem repression.  Lately, all sides seem to be calling their opposition the oppressor.

The king is called to the scaffold yet again; this time he is embodied in no single individual.  This is in many ways the perfect time to read 1984, and not because the "other side" is your enemy personified in Big Brother.  May passion inspire us, not rule us!

A Border Between Friends: Different Priorities.

In the last post on our current topic of discerning a political-cultural divide between Canada and the United States we visited some primal history regarding the development of a modern notion of liberty in our nations. We opened and returned to a concept of liberty that the political forces of the late eighteenth century were familiar with, one that was intimately bound to the power tied to capitalism (or more specifically, capital).  We also ended on a note of something far more simple and familiar for most of us: the desire to live a life unmolested by those who would seek to impose either economic or religious views on people.

Many of the first Colonists or Habitants were probably primarily after a better existence away from all the conflicts over in Europe.  As colonial Canada and the United States grew in size and economic import, however, men of political ambition followed the early colonists and freedom seekers and tried to create little dominions of their own across the sea.  Likewise, any who came over to read the Bible in peace and quiet found some religious reformers and revolutionaries take the same boat and try to start little religious battles that were clearly making life difficult enough over in Britain and even France.

In the end, the religious and economic revolution was forced out of France by a Louis XVI obsessed with eliminating the resistance of Le Fronde; the country was made forcibly Roman Catholic with conservative and slightly Jansenistic agendas.  In Britain Catholicism was instead ousted, and any particular Protestant factionalism shelved in the face of pursuing economic power for the nation and thus for the individuals of the nation (which was clearly tired of religious-inspired civil war).  The battle cry of Liberty thus was suppressed in France for some time, and embraced in Britain, until in the last half of the eighteenth century, when parlors in France became occupied with nothing other than the talk of freedom.  Likewise, talk of Liberty was popular in Britain even after the outbreak of violence in France during the Revolution, but the talk became far more pressing over in the colonies where new waves of taxation were awakening some very old debates.  Liberty for the reason of economic or personal freedom was starting to become an international affair.

So what was it like for everyone, including and especially the ordinary people?

In the thirteen colonies, Liberty meant not having your property infringed upon, especially in the form of taxation or the quartering of soldiers meant to enforce said taxation.  Liberty also meant being able to freely exploit the land, especially the opportunities awaiting beyond the Appalachians which Westminster was otherwise eager to reserve to the First Born of the continent.  Liberty meant being able to defend one's land against encroachment from any hostile party, First Born, British, or even someone from another colony.

In Canada, Liberty meant being able to speak French, remain Catholic if so desired, and preserve a culture while also enjoying the benefits of English law and British developments in representative democracy which had all but been suppressed in France.  After the Loyalists arrived, it meant holding on to hearth and home, just as it did back in the colonies, but not under threat from Britain and King George... under threat instead from intolerant Yankees.  When free land was offered to Americans interested in resettlement, passions became a little less hostile, but the American invading forces in 1812 were seen as no less hostile by such transplanted Americans who actually enjoyed the stability and, yep, lack of government offered by the ruling British.  Here we start to see the beginning of what the negative definition of Canadian identity: being North American and not American.  When the American threat died down, the Loyalists turned their attention to the French-Canadians, who stared back at them from across the Ottawa River, sometimes even from across the street, as my Franco-Ontarien ancestors did.

The English and French wanted protection from each other, in something of a cultural personality battle, even as some loud-mouth, but minority, factions do to this day.  Liberty started to mean "I have rights as a province".  What rights were focused on, exactly?  Language.  Religion.  Education.  Business was, and in my opinion still is, secondary to the debates of cultural freedom.  This is probably why Canada, while decidedly a capitalist nation, has shown only minor aversion to socialistic intervention by the government, in great contrast to the United States where the opposite has been a point of much political drama in the past decade.

In the United States, of course, the states also wanted protection from one another, but this was largely out of economic issues, most notably the issue of slavery.  While cultural debates have always raged on in American political warfare, notably in the realm of civil rights, the power of the Federal government to mess with what the states are allowed to say goes in regards to property has always been the leading force behind helping to define Liberty.  Why?  The United States had long shared a broad common culture, even as immigrants would later pour into the country and regional cultural identity differences were apparent even before the Revolution.  And what of those immigrants?

Canada has had just as many, in proportion of course, as the United States.  The end of the nineteenth century saw all sorts of nationalities pour into both countries, usually for the general reason of seeking a better life and escaping political garbage back in the mother country.  Both countries proved exceptionally capable to absorbing the entire world into a melting pot, but this is the key point of departure:

In Canada, the differences were not considered crucial in deciding how to make someone a Canadian.

In the United States, the differences were considered crucial in deciding how to make someone an American.

Stop for a moment, before drawing conclusions about both countries, however.  Take a look at something very simple in both places, the concept of official language.  Canada has two.  The United States does not even have one, at least not one ever officially declared.  Canada features petty fights over both tongues.  The United States features a general acceptance that English is the way to go and gets into absolutely huge and dramatic patriotic stand-offs over the matter despite, you know, not having declared English the official language.  Citizens have to take an English test, but an interpreter and a lot of assistance in the process are provided for the newly minted American.  In Canada, this is less the case, and you need to do English or French (unless you happen to be in the far north and want to do Cree or something).  Confused at the irony yet?

And what about the general concept of a melting pot?  In the United States, there is little strange about a Black family sitting down for a spaghetti dinner and not having it mentioned that they are eating Italian food, or everyone in town going nuts on St. Patrick's Day despite being in no way Irish whatsoever.  In Canada, half the town might still be throwing an Orangeman's parade!  Go to Wegman's supermarket in Buffalo and find a huge variety of groceries celebrating every known culture on earth with a Christmas display featuring everything from Mexican goodies to Polish-American toasting wafers.  Go to Loblaws over in Niagara Falls, Ontario and notice prominent displays of traditional British cuisine and a Christmas display featuring those annoying Victorian Christmas crackers that my Mom insists are necessities.  Head over to Quebec and find a different world entirely.  Head out into the prairie provinces and find Ukrainian and Icelandic stuff.  First Born influences are also everywhere.  Multi-culturalism is assured, but the individual influences are very obvious.

This is not to say that you can't find tons of different cultural treasures in Canada, especially in places like Toronto (one of the best places to get a curry outside of India is either in London or Toronto) its just that... well the differences will be highlighted, even as they are diluted in the States.  In Canada, cultural differences are viewed as the purpose behind Liberty, and are given anointed protection even as they cause tension here and there.

We certainly have a different emphasis on democracy, to say the least.  But this is not where the differences end.  Again, we return to perspective.  The history of democratic struggle in the United States has always been one of assertive action, sometimes to the point of raw aggression.  In Canada, political freedoms have gradually evolved, with social action being taken defensively.  Political freedoms in Canada have come about  in a parallel history of development with the United States, sometimes even in reaction or as an alternative.  Again, the Canadian mentality is about the democratic experiment looking at the broader portrait of historical awareness, even perhaps into the fishbowl that is British, American, and French democratic evolution.  The American mentality is about the front line of the struggle, an experiment always in a state of flux and even survival.

This is, of course, all opinion and the viewpoint of this French-Irish-Canadian-American looking at his two nations with the perspective of an expatriate looking at both host and home nation from a standpoint straddling the border.  I remain a Canadian citizen because of perspective, even as I continue to live in the United States because of intense fascination.  If ever the two nations were united...

And what of that?  Could they be?  Definitely, and yet not without some pain and difficulty.  We already share a lot in common.  At the same time, we also hold on to a history of "get off my lawn":

The Isaac Brock monument on the site of the Battle of Queenston Heights, overlooking New York across the Niagara Gorge.  This is probably the most poignant reminder that a border still exists between two otherwise peaceful friends.

Yet we also have a history of being allies and building the way to having the longest undefended border in the world.  Signs leading up to border access points on both sides of the line declare not that a checkpoint is coming up, but that there will soon be a bridge to the other country.

Not too far from that monument are multiple bridges manned by immigration officials more concerned with how much duty-free alcohol you have in your car than with how you intend to spend your time in their country.  Above, pointed at the New York side, is the Rainbow Bridge, along with the American Falls of Niagara Falls.  

When you cross over, you will probably see a McDonald's on both sides, you drive on the same side of the road, and you just feel like you are on the other side of a river... and yet it always feels a little bit different, units of distance measurement aside.