I love my country. I yield to no one—not even to Mike Myers, who once swore an oath to “renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity” to Canada, or to Mark Carney, who collects passports like other people collect bumper stickers—in my allegiance to the only country of which I have ever wanted to be a citizen. If required, not only my elbows but my life are hers. So, know that when I say this, I mean it with a full metric ton of true patriot love: Canada, you ain’t special. More importantly, you have to stop acting like you are. It’s not helping you, and it’s getting embarrassing for everyone else.
I don’t mean that there aren’t special things about Canada. I will put up the Pacific Coast of Vancouver Island, where I grew up, against any landscape in the world for sublime and rugged beauty. Others might cite the Rocky Mountains, the lake-flecked Canadian Shield, or the winsome fishing villages clinging to windswept rock above the Atlantic. There is also our enviable history of peace, order, and good government, health care, ice hockey, and, uh, insulin, and…give me a minute…oh, right, poutine and Hawaiian pizza, at least one of which is edible.
Of course, none of these things is all that special. Plenty of countries have lovely landscapes. The Canadian Shield is part of a craton that extends up to Greenland and down to Texas. Most of Europe matches or exceeds our commitment to social welfare, and almost every developed country has universal health care, most of them cheaper and better than ours. Other countries, of course, have national sports and national dishes. Where Canada really stands out these days, unfortunately, is not for these common virtues but for our peculiar vices. Our national sin is smugness, from which follow entitlement and ingratitude.
Patriotism is one thing—and generally a good thing—but Canadians’ grossly inflated sense of our place in the world today often veers into delusional monomania. This was illustrated a few months ago by Doug Ford’s wince-inducing reaction to the news that Donald Trump might lump Canada and Mexico together in his tariff policy. “I want to emphasize,” Ford said, that “to compare us to Mexico is the most insulting thing I have ever heard from our friends [the United States].” Why? What does he think Canada looks like from Washington (or Beijing, or Berlin)?
