Article content continued

As for English-speaking Canadians, on the other hand, Duncan points out that the question of our participation was somewhat moot, since we Anglos didn’t then comprise a critical mass in regard to either politics or war-making. For the most part, English Canada was little more just a string of scattered supply depots, military barracks, ports, trading posts and tiny settlements. What did Americans think of Canadians? The short answer is they didn’t. (And two and a half centuries later, they still don’t: over four days of covering the Democratic primaries in New Hampshire earlier this month, I heard Canada mentioned exactly twice — once by Bernie Sanders as a prop for socialized medicine, and then again by Amy Klobuchar for a laugh line about how Minnesotans could see our country from their front porches.)

This is not the first time I’ve heard early Canadian history explained in this humbling way. But I found it especially resonant in this particular moment, with anti-pipeline protesters out on the streets of Canadian cities decrying the very presumption that our governments can assert sovereignty over Canada’s own land mass, even with the explicit permission of elected First Nations band councils.

Twenty years ago, we bashed America. In 2020, we bash us.

Canada Is Fake, read the title of a widely circulated article published last week. Just a few years ago, that kind of headline might have seemed absurd to most of us. But in the current environment, I’m reminded that, insofar as history goes, it’s hardly a novel claim. To many Quebecers, Anglo Canada was always simply the moral successor to a hated colonial occupier. To many Indigenous societies, we were genocidaires. To the United States, we remain the half-forgotten residue of whatever British military supply chain remained operational following the fall of Yorktown. Seen from the outside — and even some part of the inside — English Canada is indeed kind of “fake.”