Scott W. See. The History of Canada. Second Edition

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I think we have already come to understand that while we were

tremendous peacekeepers under the UN, what the world needs now is

peacemakers. There was nothing wrong with our old role. We were

very good at it. But now we have moved on. We have re-equipped

ourselves and are getting on with the heavy lifting of fighting in hot

spots and bring aid directly to stricken regions.

Those who still cling to the old notion of Canada as only ever a non-

fighting nation, that works only through the UN and cares deeply

what the rest of the world thinks of us, have been left behind by

events.

Maybe it’s a generational thing. The Canadians most excited by the

Olympics seemed to be the 20-somethings.

They are not defined by the culture wars of the 1960s and 1970s.

They don’t know national unity battles (except through their

textbooks). They take our cultural diversity largely for granted and

are eager to be part of the global pop/youth culture.

Indeed they are already a part of the global Twitter/Facebook/You-

Tube/texting/Avatar/iPod society.

They are more relaxed about being Canadian, less concerned about

being sucked into the American vortex, positively deaf to arguments

that we need to be sheltered if we are to compete.

It will be years before the political legacy of Vancouver is

understood completely. But let’s hope some day we look back and

see how the games moved us away from our old collectivist goals.

“Vancouver Games Quickly Turn Sour for Quebec,” by Kalli

Anderson, in Globe and Mail, 16 February 2010.

The Olympic spirit may be alive and well in Vancouver, but it was an

altogether different story in the Quebec press over the weekend. The

francophone media kicked off their coverage of the Games with a

collective uproar over the not-quite-French-enough opening cere-

mony in Vancouver on Friday.

Kalli Anderson, “Vancouver Games Quickly Turn Sour for Quebec,” in Globe

and Mail, 16 February 2010.

The Vancouver Winter Olympics and the Press 287

A headline in La Presse cheekily declared, “French is as rare as

snow in Vancouver.” The article quoted Canada’s Commissioner of

Official Languages, Graham Fraser, who described the opening

ceremony as a “show conceived and performed in English with a

French song tacked on at the end.”

Quebec politicians were quick to criticize the Vancouver Organiz-

ing Committee for failing to include more French in the ceremony.

Premier Jean Charest told reporters that he would have liked to have

seen “a stronger presence of French during the ceremony. . . . ”

Insufficient French wasn’t the only criticism of the opening

ceremony in the Quebec press. In a report from Vancouver, La

Presse’s Jean-Francois Bégin wrote that what was “equally, if not

more shocking” was the organizers’ decision to “snub Gaétan

Boucher.” Mr. Bégin deplored the fact that the former Olympic

champion speed skater did not make an appearance during the

ceremony. . . .

In his Journal de Quebec column, Donald Charette lamented an

overall lack of recognition of la belle province during the

ceremony. . . .He suggested that [the organizing committee] should

have made a greater effort to “show the world that this country was

founded by two great peoples, that Quebec represents a quarter of

[Canada’s] population. . . .”

In what was surely the angriest (and most surreal) response to the

opening ceremony published in the Quebec press, La Presse sports

columnist Réjean Tremblay decided to write part of his column in

English, in mock-deference to [the organizing committee]. In a

sarcasm-drenched fury, Mr. Tremblay praised the opening ceremony

for so accurately representing Canada through depictions of “the

Rockies, the Prairies and the Maritimes, while jumping right over

Quebec.”

288 The Vancouver Winter Olympics and the Press

Joe Canadian Rant

Late in the winter of 2000 the Molson company sponsored one of the

most successful advertisement moments in all of Canadian history.

The “Joe Canadian Rant,” as it was instantly dubbed, captured a

sense of Canadian pride and nationalism at the dawn of a new

century. The actor who delivered the lines, as a sort of everyman,

began his pitch in modest cadence, only to complete the commercial

in strident volume and an emotional flourish. The advertisement

cleverly used classic stereotypes and skillfully drew out enduring

distinctions that separate Canadians from their neighbors in the

United States.

Hey. I’m not a lumberjack or a fur trader. And I don’t live in an igloo,

or eat blubber, or own a dogsled. And I don’t know Jimmy, Sally, or

Suzy from Canada, although I’m certain they’re really, really nice. I

have a Prime Minister, not a President.

I speak English and French, not American. And I pronounce it

“about,” not “aboot.”

I can proudly sew my country’s flag on my backpack. I believe in

peacekeeping, not policing; diversity, not assimilation. And that the

beaver is a truly proud and noble animal. A toque is a hat, a

chesterfield is a couch, and it is pronounced “zed” not “zee.”

Canada is the second largest land mass, the first nation of hockey,

and the best part of North America!

My name is Joe, and I am Canadian! Thank you.

Patrick James and Mark Kasoff, eds., Canadian Studies in the New Millennium

(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008), 143.

Joe Canadian Rant 289

Champlain’s Assessment

of Native Peoples

Samuel de Champlain, in addition to being a masterful cartographer,

wrote extensively about his various trips to the new world and

commented on the indigenous peoples that he and his contemporaries

encountered. His narratives give us a powerful insight to the

European viewpoint, but they are of course skewed entirely to the

outlook and sensibilities of French explorers in the seventeenth

century. The following passage comes from his published account:

Des Sauvages, ou, voyage de Samuel Champlain, de Brouage, fait en

la France nouvelle, l’an 1603 (Of Savages: or the Voyage of Samuel

Champlain of Brouage to New France in the Year 1603).

The savages are cheerful and laugh a lot, but they aren’t excitable.

They speak deliberately, as if to make sure you understand them, and

they often stop to think. This is especially true when they are speaking

in council, which is attended only by the chiefs and elders and never

by women or children.

Sometimes they are so short of food, on account of the cold and the

snow, that they are sorely tempted to eat one another, for the game

and fowl they live on migrate in winter to warmer countries. But I feel

sure that if anyone showed them how to cultivate the soil they would

learn quickly enough, for they are sensible and intelligent and ready

to answer any questions you put to them.

Samuel de Champlain, Voyages to New France, trans. Michael Macklem (Ottawa:

Oberon Press, 1971), 72–76.

Champlain’s Assessment of Native Peoples 291

One bad thing about them is that they are very given to revenge.

They are also great liars. You shouldn’t trust them unless you have

good reason to do so and even then you have to be on your guard.

They make great promises but seldom keep them.

They have no laws, so far as I could make out from what the grand

Sagamo told me. He did tell me that they believe in a God who made

all things. I asked him where he thought mankind had come from. He

said that after God had made the world He took a number of arrows

and stuck them in the ground and they turned into men and women. I

told him that this was wrong, that there was but one God who made

all things in heaven and earth. . . .

I then asked him if he thought there was more than one God and he

said they believed there were four—God, his mother, his son and the

sun—but that God Himself was the chief of these. The son and the

sun were good to his people, he explained, but the mother was wicked

and ate them up when she could. The father, he added, wasn’t much

better. . . .

All Christians, I explained, believe in God the Father, God the Son

and God the Holy Ghost—three persons in one God, with no first and

no second, no greater and no lesser. By virtue of prayers, I explained,

we are given the strength we need to resist the devil. I added that if

they believed in God they would have everything they needed and the

devil wouldn’t be able to do them any harm.

The Sagamo admitted that this made sense. I then asked him how

they prayed to their gods, and he said they didn’t have any

ceremonies, that each man prayed in his own way. This of course is

why they have no principles and know nothing of God and behave

like animals. My own opinion is that if the country were settled they

would readily enough become good Christians and would be the

better for it.

292 Champlain’s Assessment of Native Peoples

The Old World Becomes

the New World

The French imperial powers collaborated with members of the

Roman Catholic church to carry out a plan for populating New

France with emigrants from France. A typical argument in favor of

such a design was articulated by Father Le Jeune. “How It Is a Benefit

to Both Old and New France, To Send Colonies Here,” is taken from

one of the richest documentary sources from the colonial period: The

Jesuit Relations. This vast and heavily edited resource consists of

correspondence and reports from Jesuit missionaries over the course

of two centuries. Careful scholars treat the Jesuit Relations with

healthy skepticism because the authors typically crafted their

arguments to place their activities in a positive light, and the reports

probably went through numerous approval stages before they were

released.

It is to be feared that in the multiplication of our French, in these

countries, peace, happiness, and good feeling may not increase in the

same ratio as do the Inhabitants of New France. It is much easier to

control a few men than whole multitudes; yet it must be confessed

that it would be an enterprise very honorable and very profitable to

Old France, and very useful to the New, to establish settlements here,

and to send over Colonies.

Reuben Gold Thwaites, ed., The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents: Travels

and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France, 1610–1791, Vol. VIII

(Cleveland: Burroughs Brothers, 1897), 9, 11, 13, 15.

The Old World Becomes the New World 293

Shall the French, alone of all the Nations of the earth, be deprived of

the honor of expanding and spreading over this New World? Shall

France, much more populous than all the other Kingdoms, have

Inhabitants only for itself?

Geographers, Historians, and experience itself, show us that every

year a great many people leave France who go to enroll themselves

elsewhere. . . .Would it not be better to empty Old France into New,

by means of Colonies which could be sent there, than to people

Foreign countries?

Add to this, if you please, that there is a multitude of workmen in

France, who, for lack of employment or of owning a little land, pass

their lives in poverty and wretched want. Many of them beg their

bread from door to door; some of them resort to stealing and public

brigandage, others to larceny and secret frauds, each one trying to

obtain for himself what many cannot possess. Now as New France is

so immense, so many inhabitants can be sent, here that those who

remain in the Mother Country will have enough honest work left

them to do, without launching into those vices which ruin

Republics. . . .

Now there is no doubt that there can be found here employment for

all sorts of artisans. Why cannot the great forests of New France

largely furnish the Ships for the Old? Who doubts that there are here

mines of iron, copper, and other metals? Some have already been

discovered, which will soon be worked; and hence all those who work

in wood and iron will find employment here. Grain will not fail here,

more than in France. I do not pretend to recite all the advantages of

the country, nor to show what can give occupation here to the

intelligence and strength of our French people; I will content myself

by saying that it would be an honor and a great benefit to both old

and new France to send over Emigrants and establish strong colonies

in these lands, which have lain fallow since the birth of the world.

294 The Old World Becomes the New World

A Portrait of Life in

New France

Many French made their way to New France in the seventeenth

century to observe the colony or to remain for a portion of their lives.

Accounts written by those visitors and colonists were undeniably

subjective; nonetheless, they give us a sense of the promise of the New

World and the challenges that European settlers faced. One such

account was originally published in 1664 by Pierre Boucher, a

French-born emigrant who arrived in Quebec as a young man and

rose in prominence to become a Governor of Three Rivers.

Particularly noteworthy in the following passage are Boucher’s

negative perceptions of Native peoples, especially the Iroquois, and

his comparison of New France to the more established English

colonies.

During my stay in France, various questions on the subject of New

France were put to me by worthy people. I think I shall oblige the

curious reader by mentioning them here and by making a chapter of

them and of my answers to them. . . .

Are there not prairies of which hay can be made? Do not oats grow

there? Perfectly well, and there are beautiful prairies; but hay making

is rather dangerous, particularly near the settlements at Three-Rivers

and Montreal, and will continue to be dangerous so long as the

Iroquois make war on us, for the mowers and hay makers are always

in danger of being killed by them. For this reason we make but little

Pierre Boucher, Canada in the 17th Century, trans. Edward Louis Montizambert

(Montreal: George E. Desbarats & Co., 1883), 69–79.

A Portrait of Life in New France 295

hay, although we have fine large prairies on which there grows very

good grass for making it. . . .

Are there many settlers? To this question I cannot give any positive

answer, except that I have been told that there are about eight

hundred at Quebec; as for the other settlements there are not so many

there. . . .

Have the settlers many children? Yes, and they grow up well

formed, tall and robust, the girls as well as boys; they are, generally

speaking, intelligent enough, but rather idle, that is to say it is difficult

to attend to their studies. . . .

But how can we make money there? What can we get out of it all?

This is a question that has often been put to me, and that gave me an

inclination to laugh every time it was put to me; I seemed to see people

who wanted to reap a harvest before they had sowed any thing. After

having said that the country is a good one, capable of producing all

sorts of things, like France, that it is healthy, that population only is

wanting, that the country is very extensive, and that without doubt

there are great riches in it which we have not been able to bring to

light, because we have an enemy who keeps us pent up in a little

corner and prevents us from going about and making discoveries; and

so he will have to be destroyed, and many people will have to come

into this country, and then we shall know the riches of it. . . .

Our neighbours, the English, laid out a great deal of money at the

outset on the settlements; they threw great numbers of people into

them; so that now there are computed to be in them fifty thousand

men capable of bearing arms; it is a wonder to see their country now;

one finds all sorts of things there, the same as in Europe, and for half

the price. They build numbers of ships, of all sorts and sizes; they

work iron mines; they have beautiful cities; they have stage coaches

and mails from one end to the other; they have carriages like those in

France; those who laid out money there, are now getting good returns

from it; that country is not different from this; what has been done

there could be done here. . . .

Here is another set of questions that have been put to me, namely:

how we live in this country, whether justice is administered, if there is

not great debauchery, seeing that numbers of worthless fellows and

bad girls come here, it is said. . . .It is not true that those sort of girls

come hither, and those who say so have made a great mistake . . .for

before any can be taken on board ship to come here some of their

296 A Portrait of Life in New France