By Leilani Graham-Laidlaw, Opinions Contributor
Talk to a mental health specialist about identity and you’ll hear about all the ways in which the affectations that make up our identities can go wrong – weak identities, multiple identities, identifying with external sources that completely consume our identities. Talk to the average Canadian about our cultural “identity” and you’ll hear them complaining about exactly that: “we have no identity,” “we’re too fractured,” or worse, “too American.”
So either our culture is mentally unsound or we just don’t know what we’re talking about.
I call the latter. Other countries are talking about us – they see a “Canadian” thing going on. Canadian chic is officially a fashion in Paris. There’s no other explanation for the many new hiking shops selling overpriced boots and flannel on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. Colette, the ultimate purveyor of Parisian cool, just launched a “We Love Canada” collaboration with Sorel – remember those boots your mum bought you at Sears when you were a kid? Yeah, you can now pay 250 euros ($350) for them. Or you could, if they weren’t sold out. They’re also shlocking thousand-dollar Canada Goose parkas created by a champion dog sled racer, and a Roots X Douglas Coupland collaboration with t-shirts, skirts, furniture and skateboards.
Now this last part is potentially alarming. In the words of a friend, if Coupland’s idea of “Canadian” is gaudy neon test-patterns and faux pixelation prints, then we’re in deep trouble. But the mix-tape that comes with the collaboration is great! Really, the point is more in all the nice little write-ups about maple leaves and what makes Roots and Sorel (and Coupland, Margaret Atwood and €6 Blistex) so very Canadian. Ask the New York Times. Or the British mags. Or if you want your ears blown off, ask the Japanese. Everyone loves Canadian culture, but we Canadians probably couldn’t tell you what it is.
What is it, exactly? I can’t tell you, either. That’s a whole other article, or four years spent in Dal’s Canadian Studies program. Defining culture is a task which would elude anyone– and I don’t want to point fingers, but being forced to learn Canadian history every year from grades one to ten killed some of the magic of the attempt. We’re a young country as far as they go, but a fairly short history repeated over and over again ad nauseum does not necessarily equal a weak or boring home.
But do we really need to define our culture, anyway? I will tell you that we have one, not just because everyone says we do. We know who Coupland is, and Atwood. You might remember those big furry boots. You definitely have a parka saved somewhere for the winter, or your mom’s going to be on you about needing a warm winter coat. You know that Halifax has a pretty sweet local music scene, or you should know – with the most bars per capita in the country, you’ve probably stumbled upon a few amazing shows. We just finished the Atlantic Film Festival, so there’s Canadian movies out there somewhere. You want capital-A Art? Go make friends at NSCAD. Stop whining about not having a culture before we have to self- prescribe some kind of country-wide cultural psych assessment.
Maybe our problem isn’t that we have no definable culture, but our national— dare I say cultural?—penchant for insecurity. We seem to have no problem selling Canuck culture to people outside of Canada, but we’re pathetic at marketing Canada to Canucks.
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