What has stayed constant is a certain chippiness. Canadians feel both superior to and dependent on America, thus resenting it; they often get mistaken for Americans, and are afraid of being culturally subsumed. They feel the rest of the world ignores them, which is a pretty accurate perception. And they're always trying to define who they are (not American, not British, not boring) and not quite succeeding, being presented with the daunting challenge of a country that covers five-and-a-half time zones, speaks two languages and contains a province that periodically wishes to secede (and if it did so would set the four Atlantic provinces adrift).

What does it mean to be a Canadian? Not only is it a wildly pretentious way to start a book, it is also a question that has beguiled us since day one.
Canada has been called a lot of things. We have been called one of the world's greatest democracies. We have been called a shining beacon of hope for those fleeing tyranny. Readers of the Toronto Star will know us as an evil construct built on the shame that is colonialism.
And, of course, we have been called stunningly beautiful and a terrible place to winter.
We are nothing if not self-deprecating. We pride ourselves on not taking ourselves too seriously.

We have not tried to sell you on Canada – our chapter on climate is chilling – but the truth is that Canada is a nice place to be. There is little discrimination by Canadians against draft resisters, and there is a surprising amount of sympathy. Most Americans lead the same lives in Canada they would have led in the U.S. Americans who immigrate are not just rejecting one society; they are adopting another. Is it really freer? Most draft resisters – and most Canadians – think so.

Anybody with any ambition at all, or intelligence, has left Canada and is now living in New York . . . Canada is a sweet country. It is like your retarded cousin you see at Thanksgiving and sort of pat him on the head. You know, he’s nice but you don't take him seriously. That's Canada.

If you stay in Canada, I can, too. Everybody says Canada is a hard country to govern, but nobody mentions that for some people it is also a hard country to live in. Still, if we all run away it will never be any better. So let the geniuses of easy virtue go southward; I know what they feel too well to blame them. But for some of us there is no choice; let Canada do what she will with us, we must stay.

A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian

Canadians look down on the United States and consider it Hell. They are right to do so. Canada is to the United States what, in Dante's scheme, Limbo is to Hell.

Canada is not a melting-pot. Canada is an association of peoples who have, and cherish, great differences but who work together because they can respect themselves and each other.

Dig deep into its communitarian ethos and it reads more like an America that might have been, an America fervently devoted to the quaint goals of working together and getting along. Of course, this America does exist. It's called Canada.

I found Toronto an immensely likeable city, spacious and gentle and slightly dignified, but in a low-key, friendly way. The only people who didn’t seem to think much of it were its inhabitants, who could hardly wait for you to ask directions, because that gave them the perfect opportunity to apologise for it. What they were apologising for I never understood. I think they felt uninteresting, compared with America. I took the opposite view; I remember reading about the doctrine of American “Exceptionalism” and thinking that what I liked so much about Canadians was that they consider themselves unexceptional. This modest, unthreatening attitude seems to produce a nation that is stable, safe, decent and well respected. It’s just a shame that for seven months of the year it’s so cold that only Canadians would put up with it.

Canada has managed to cultivate a culture that is simultaneously self-hating and self-righteous. We have no pride in being Canadian. Yet we are confident we are better than everyone else.

Canada is either an idea or it does not exist. It is either an intellectual undertaking or it is little more than a resource-rich vacuum lying in the buffer zone just north of a great empire.

One critic called me one of the most magnificent resources Canada has allowed to escape to the United States. Because I was born and raised in Vancouver and lived up there until I was 17. My kids sons Bruce and Michael are, of course, American citizens. But not me. I defiantly refuse to change.

It interests Americans that Canada is clean and empty and unimplicating; the largest country in the world that doesn’t exist. Without distinct music or food or capacity for rudeness— less rich, less angry, less complicated, less neurotic, less dark, less brilliant.