You can live a long time beside someone, even share a connubial bed, and wake one day to find you hardly recognize the other. It can apparently happen to nations, too.

The image of Canada and the United States as societies growing ever more distinct crystallized this past week in a few telling vignettes.

In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau twice formally apologized to Canadians failed by past governments. He expressed sorrow and regret and promised compensation to former students of Newfoundland and Labrador residential schools, and followed that with a moving apology in the House of Commons to persecuted sexual minorities.

Meanwhile, his appointment of a new Supreme Court justice raised virtually no controversy.

In the U.S., by sharp contrast, President Donald Trump on separate occasions offended both American citizens and a crucial ally. He used the name “Pocahontas” as an insult at a ceremony honouring Indigenous veterans and then outraged one of America’s closest allies by retweeting hateful posts about Muslims from an extremist British group.

Meanwhile, he exchanged puerile insults with North Korea.

Thirty years ago, during the debate on a free trade agreement between the two countries, Canadian opponents of the deal warned darkly that the border would be erased, cherished national institutions would die, and Canadian culture and values would wither should it come to pass.

Well, free trade did become reality. But rather than having grown indistinguishable from Americans, Canadians looking south are apt these days to sound like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. “Who are those guys?”

Probably no one has studied the relationship over recent decades more than Canadian researcher Michael Adams. His latest book comparing Canadian and U.S. political cultures is entitled Could It Happen Here? Canada in the Age of Trump and Brexit.

He concludes that it’s unlikely.

Evidence suggests that Canadians and their governments have managed to prevent or mitigate “the accumulation of corrosive social forces that finally surfaced angrily in the populist politics of the Trump/Brexit era,” Adams wrote.

The federal election of 2015 and Conservative MP Kellie Leitch’s subsequent drubbing in her leadership bid suggested that Canadians are unimpressed “by politicians blowing the sorts of dog whistles that allowed Trump to mobilize so much racial resentment in 2016.”

Instead, Canada increasingly defines itself by ethno-cultural diversity, he said, and sees an ever-changing demography as not just a point of pride but “the engine that injects values of openness, tolerance and compromise into every sphere of social life.”

Of course, there have been eruptions here of the sort of tribalism and ill will on which Trump trades. Rebel TV. The Parti Québécois’ aborted “Charter of Values.” Leitch’s “Canadian Values Test.” Tempests about hijabs.

But, according to Adams, Canadians seem to possess a homing instinct for the middle (even when we stray from it temporarily) and tend to find compromise and buy into progressive values.

In fact, almost 60 per cent of Canadians said they preferred elected officials who make compromises with adversaries, he found, whereas only 40 per cent of Americans did.

“In one country compromise is a dirty word; in the other, it’s an expectation about the right way to conduct the public’s business.”

Perhaps most telling in Adams’ research is the divergence between Canadians and Americans on patriarchy and authoritarianism.

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Asked in 2016 if the “father must be the master” in a house, 50 per cent of Americans strongly or somewhat agreed with the statement. In Canada, only 23 per cent did.

“It shouldn’t be a surprise that in a country where patriarchal values continue to be so dominant, there’s virtually no maternity leave, reproductive rights remain deeply contentious and health care is heavily dependent on employment status,” Adams said.

Patriarchy, he noted, also correlates highly with religiousity, parochialism, xenophobia, patriotism, gun ownership and support for the death penalty.

To be sure, Canada and the U.S. came to the current day by different roads. Canada did not have the monstrosity of institutionalized slavery on a large scale or the trauma of civil war to work through and it lacks the U.S. gun fetish and penchant for overwrought religiousity.

We also seem less prone than Americans to the egregious assault on facts and evidence — only logical in a country determined to reinstate Statistics Canada’s long-form census, the better to arm decision-makers with data.

A quarter-century ago, Rodney King — whose beating by police led to the 1992 riots in Los Angeles — famously asked “can we all get along?”

After another week of human grace and folly, Canada seems far abler than our nearest neighbour to say Yes.

These days, that difference between the countries could hardly be more starkly illustrated than through comparison of the leaders.

“Trump is status-obsessed, dominant in voice and manner, bullying and narcissistic,” Adams wrote. “Trudeau offers a metrosexual public persona — trim and handsome, but courteous attentive, upbeat.”

It’s not uncommon to hear disheartened Americans wishing that the two countries could trade leaders.

Canadians, as is our increasing inclination when it comes to the United States, hold quite a different view.

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