Word: canadianization
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Even Canadian humor is a hair shirt, and the nation's undernourished pride is evident from the way Canadians joke about themselves. "We're an enormous Switzerland without the numbered accounts." "A Canadian is a man who hasn't yet had an offer from the U.S." Out of the trapping country of the Far North comes the gibe that "the symbol of Canada is the beaver, that industrious rodent whose destiny it is to furnish hats to warm better brains than his own." And a familiar aphorism holds: "We've had access to American know...
...Canadians know what they are not-not U.S.-American, not British, not French-but they do not seem to know what they are. They suffered from an identity crisis well before modern novelists discovered the condition, and their sense of no-self could fill half a dozen Antonioni movies. "We have achieved the most amazing things," says Prime Minister Lester Pearson, "a few million people opening up half a continent. But we have not yet found a Canadian soul except in time...
Larger than China in territory, Canada has fewer people (20 million) than Ethiopia. This small population in a vast, largely forbidding land has created a standard of living second only to that of the U.S. Yet most Canadians are disturbed by the fact that this was made possible largely through a massive influx of U.S. capital. Four times, Canadian soldiers have gone to war and fought superbly: in World War II a nation of what was then 12 million raised an army of 1,000,000 and lost more than 40,000 dead. But Canadians have never fought...
...reasons for this Canadian record are not hard to find. They lie in the country's long colonial status, in its special racial mixture, and in the somewhat overwhelming nearness of the U.S. giant...
History deprived Canadians of the customary sources of nationalism. The British North America Act was, in essence, a Confederation not of free provinces but of colonies (Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick). It was a quietly negotiated compact between ruled and ruling. Other colonies and territories joined the Confederation over the years, and Canada slipped toward independence almost effortlessly. At Vimy Ridge in World War I, the courage of Canadian fighting men won Canada the courtesy of a separate signature on the treaty of Versailles. But not until 1931 did Canada achieve genuine independence...