Will Straw, the director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada at McGill University in Montreal, said this sense of cultural insecurity was nothing new. “For a long time people have felt that there’s kind of an empty center to English Canadian culture that needs to be filled by the government,” he said. He noted attempts by academics and critics to define certain quintessential aspects of Canadian culture. “People look at Neil Young or The Band and say there’s a sound that’s Canadian, like the sound of the wind blowing across the prairie. But the truth is most Canadians are urbanized, most Canadians live within 100 miles of the U.S. border and we tend to like the same things as Americans for more or less the same reasons.”

Nevertheless, Mr. Straw said, being Canadian is based on more than just the consumption of local culture. “We think that what makes us distinct is our temperament and our values and certain little things — like Tim Hortons doughnuts,” he said. “It doesn’t translate into our movie stars necessarily being Canadian or what we entertain ourselves with being Canadian. There we pick and choose from the rest of the world.”