Condescending Elitism? Naw!
Isn't that nice. We're considered, by a former British High Commissioner to Canada, none other than the 'second Baron of Moran', John Wilson, to be a "moderate, comfortable, people".
Like a well-worn pair of slippers? Surely it's true. We even think of ourselves as moderate. And without doubt, we are people. Comfortable in our skins too, one could verily venture. Can we let it all end there?
Oh. There's more? Pity.
"Canadians are mildly nationalistic (but perhaps less shrilly so than Australians), very sensitive, especially to any expressed or implied British sneers about Canada as 'boring', and perhaps somewhat lacking in self-confidence", wrote Lord Moran so fulsomely in 1984. Oh well, that's aeons ago, isn't it? But this is still confusing; if we're 'mildly' nationalistic' how can we then be 'less shrilly so' than Australians?
Tch, tch, Lord Moran, is it one, or t'other? Can't get your act together? So busy pick-picking at the national character of those provincials that you cannot even straighten out your thoughts? Lacking in self-confidence? Us? Um, mebbe so. S'wot happens when you're plebeian, nothing like British elitism. We have our faults, sure 'nuff.
(Look what we do to the Queen's English! And this blogger prides herself on her elegant turn of phrase, correct use of language. Sigh. Yet another fanciful notion those Canucks are so fond of turning over in their flawed colonial minds.)
Our late and esteemed - occasionally, in any event, and more so after his departure as prime minister; even more so upon his untimely demise - Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau considered a "well-to-do hippie and draft dodger", by Lord Moran. How very undiplomatic, how ungenerous, how bloody-mindedly British. Oops, forgot; he IS British.
Canada, points out Lord Moran, is bereft of the "ferocious competition of talent" of which the Mother Country is so singularly replete. "Anyone who is even moderately good at what they do - in literature, the theatre, skiing or whatever - tends to become a national figure", according to he - him - the man - Lord Moran. And he should know, lordy, he should know.
We've also sinned (Lord, forgive us) by having "squandered some of their resources", and at the same time being too thick-headed to grasp the utter, aghast horror the outside world experiences in witnessing television imagines of "crude redneck Canadians clubbing to death baby seals on the ice."
Pity we hadn't an Iron Lady to wage war in exotic waters, in far-off islands claimed by that aristocratic one to be their possession, and in the process, slaughtering others - human beings - of the vicinity who felt otherwise. Falklands, Malvinas; what have you. Now there's an image of imperial entitlement - hurrah!
See, Britannia still rules!
Like a well-worn pair of slippers? Surely it's true. We even think of ourselves as moderate. And without doubt, we are people. Comfortable in our skins too, one could verily venture. Can we let it all end there?
Oh. There's more? Pity.
"Canadians are mildly nationalistic (but perhaps less shrilly so than Australians), very sensitive, especially to any expressed or implied British sneers about Canada as 'boring', and perhaps somewhat lacking in self-confidence", wrote Lord Moran so fulsomely in 1984. Oh well, that's aeons ago, isn't it? But this is still confusing; if we're 'mildly' nationalistic' how can we then be 'less shrilly so' than Australians?
Tch, tch, Lord Moran, is it one, or t'other? Can't get your act together? So busy pick-picking at the national character of those provincials that you cannot even straighten out your thoughts? Lacking in self-confidence? Us? Um, mebbe so. S'wot happens when you're plebeian, nothing like British elitism. We have our faults, sure 'nuff.
(Look what we do to the Queen's English! And this blogger prides herself on her elegant turn of phrase, correct use of language. Sigh. Yet another fanciful notion those Canucks are so fond of turning over in their flawed colonial minds.)
Our late and esteemed - occasionally, in any event, and more so after his departure as prime minister; even more so upon his untimely demise - Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau considered a "well-to-do hippie and draft dodger", by Lord Moran. How very undiplomatic, how ungenerous, how bloody-mindedly British. Oops, forgot; he IS British.
Canada, points out Lord Moran, is bereft of the "ferocious competition of talent" of which the Mother Country is so singularly replete. "Anyone who is even moderately good at what they do - in literature, the theatre, skiing or whatever - tends to become a national figure", according to he - him - the man - Lord Moran. And he should know, lordy, he should know.
We've also sinned (Lord, forgive us) by having "squandered some of their resources", and at the same time being too thick-headed to grasp the utter, aghast horror the outside world experiences in witnessing television imagines of "crude redneck Canadians clubbing to death baby seals on the ice."
Pity we hadn't an Iron Lady to wage war in exotic waters, in far-off islands claimed by that aristocratic one to be their possession, and in the process, slaughtering others - human beings - of the vicinity who felt otherwise. Falklands, Malvinas; what have you. Now there's an image of imperial entitlement - hurrah!
See, Britannia still rules!
posted by Pieface @ 6:02 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home