Oh, Canada!

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From today's Cleveland Plain Dealer


Canada welcomes restless U.S. liberals to sweet anonymity
Friday, November 19, 2004
Steven Hayward

As a Canadian living in the United States, I've grown ac customed to hearing left-leaning Americans vow to move to Canada each time they perceive a new last straw on the cultural or political front. But now it seems the camel's back may have at last really broken with the re-election of President George W. Bush. The Plain Dealer rePorted on Nov. 5 that the Canadian Citizenship and Immigration Service's Web site experienced record daily traffic when it got 179,000 hits in a single day - nearly double the old record of 90,000 - and that 115,016 of those visits were from computers in the United States.

Why wouldn't disillusioned Americans consider heading north of the border? We all speak the same language, shop at the Gap, and the Thursday night lineup on NBC beams its way into all receptive homes as if the 49th parallel didn't exist. But the truth is that there are a number of rude surprises in store for the fed-up, fired-up emigrant who just wants to live out her life on the peaceful, pro-Kyoto, anti-war side of the Great Lakes.

First off, you'd have to leave your guns behind. That might be difficult, even for liberals. Remember, even John Kerry goes duck hunting and owns 33 guns. There are, in fact, far fewer firearms north of the border. According to the Canadian Firearms Centre, there are 7.4 million firearms in Canada. In the United States, there are 30 times as many, 76 million of which are handguns. There's also no Office of Homeland Security in the Great White North, which is a huge inconvenience. All this month here in Ohio, my neighbor refused to rake his leaves; I made a call to Tom Ridge. The lawn's now pristine but my neighbor hasn't been seen since. You can't get anything done that quickly in Canada.

You won't be able to listen to as much radio as you do now - unless you're a big Celine Dion fan. The Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) requires that commercial radio play a minimum of 35 percent Canadian content. This means that, whether they want to or not, Canadians know every word of every Barenaked Ladies song.

Hockey night is also a bigger part of your life in Canada. From September to June, every Saturday, everyone in the country watches "Hockey Night in Canada." Such blind devotion to sport is often difficult for Americans to accept. They are accustomed to setting aside only every Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday for watching football.

Perhaps the most widely held misconception Americans have about Canadians is that Canadians speak both French and English. This is simply not true. Most English-speaking Canadians refuse to speak French, just as many Quebecois may not acknowledge your existence if you address them in English, so even a bilingual American might not be at the advantage he or she would expect. You have to learn to use your French and English like a Canadian. For example: If, as you are crossing the border, the immigration officer addresses you in English, reply to him in French; if he then switches to French, assert your right to speak to someone who speaks English.

And, finally, you'd have to give up the good fight. At about the same time as 11 states were ratifying the ban on same-sex marriages, Saskatchewan became the seventh Canadian province to allow them. The judge who made the decision cited an earlier judgment handed down by an Ontario court that stated, "the dignity of persons in same-sex relationships is violated by the exclusion of same-sex couples from the institution of marriage."

Go figure. That's Canada for you, and I wonder if American liberals are ready for it - for finding themselves in the majority, with nothing to fight for.

Hayward is an assistant professor of English at John Carroll University.

© 2004 The Plain Dealer. Used with permission.