Jan Morris once said that Canadians could drown in niceness.
We are notorious for being polite, a view borne out by countless polls that confirm “We’re Number 1” when it comes to helping someone else actually be Number 1. When others say “Good morning” or “Hello”, we will happily say, “I’m sorry.” Indeed, so endemic is this quality that it’s spreading to citizens of other nations, and to a large sub-group of Canadians.
Donald Trump is responsible for the former, and the ideal of truth and reconciliation for the latter.
In 2003, Jean and I joined a group of 75 hikers from around the world to hike New Zealand’s Milford Track. The night before we set out, the organizers asked us all to divide up into groups of the country we were from and sing a favourite national song to the others. Ugh.
The two of us Canadians chose Monty Python’s “Lumberjack Song” not because it was Canadian, but because it was about everyone else’s image of Canadians.
There were about a dozen Americans, and one of them stood up and said before they sang “Take Me Home, Country Roads”, he wanted to apologize on behalf of his group and of Americans everywhere for its President, George Bush. I thought at the time, what kind of people – citizens of the mightiest empire in the world – introduce themselves by apologizing?
I suspect there’s a lot of this going on today as Americans travelling outside of the US meet foreigners on their own turf who look at them with steely disdain. In March, long before Donald Trump's predations took hold against immigrants, Democrats, and basically anyone among the 95.83% of the world’s population who isn’t American, I was on a Zoom call with an American travel planner. I mentioned that many Canadians are not only not travelling to the US, they aren’t dealing with American-owned companies. To which she replied: “Oh, I’m not an American; I’m a New Yorker.”
With each passing day, the humour in that joke grows thinner.
So imagine our surprise last week when eight of us Canadians met up with 10 Americans in the High Arctic. We saw them. We heard them, and all of our national biases went into overdrive. They were all men, all white and their voices told us they were all from the south. Ugh…they’ve got to be Republicans.
Then the first one came forward to introduce himself: “I’d like to apologize for my President.”
By the end of our trip, they all had. Indeed, they were the very opposite of Ugly Americans. How could we be so wrong, so soon?
Which brings us to land acknowledgements. They began as an apology by non-Indigenous Canadians to our founding people for the terrible way we’ve treated them for over 400 years. They’ve grown into a necessary prelude to events, large and small, especially those where Indigenous Canadians play a role.
Land acknowledgements have some distant cousins, born from different motivations but often with the same public face.
When I go to an AA meeting and stand up and say “My name’s Bob and I’m an addict,” it’s not that I like beating myself with a hair shirt. It’s because if I don’t, I could come to forget that I am an addict and start to think I can take cocaine again.
The same rationale exists on a much larger scale with Quebec’s license plates which have the words “Je me souviens” on all 6.3 million of them – not an apology but a constant reminder for Quebecers to honour and remember the province’s French-Canadian roots.
I’m not saying cease and desist with land acknowledgements; I’ve advocated for them whenever an Air Canada flight lands in Canada, the way Qantas does in Australia.
What I’m saying is they should be more direct, not less. Sometimes, just saying “I’m sorry” speaks volumes. But when they grow too long, they take on the flavour of grace before dinner, rote and empty of meaning for too many people, written more with kitchen-sinkism in mind than clarity.
So let me be the first to suggest that land acknowledgements should be shorter. “Je me souviens” says in three words what too many land acknowledgements do not say – and they should.
Meanwhile…
1. Dying is the new living. American poet Andrea Gibson died last week at the age of 49. One of her last poems was Love Letter from the Afterlife which offers a bold new view of what most of us fear is The End.
Speaking of living on, China has legions of zombie museums that are open in name only…shuttered by the collapse of the property market and their private funders.
Car companies can die strange deaths too. You’d think Tesla is a car company. Actually, it’s a subsidy-producing company that makes cars on the side, the same way General Motors, in 2009 when it went broke, was a health benefits organization (which it paid to all its pensioners) that also made cars as a side hustle.
Penultimately, one of the most famous car companies on earth just died.
And finally, is the age of internet links dead?
2. Landing Work. Could you have landed a job at Vogue in the ‘90s? Plus, the highest-paid woman in pro soccer is Canada’s Olivia Smith who earned a $1.8 million transfer fee to join Arsenal in Liverpool.
3. Two AI tools and one AI gathering. Even if you feel like Bambi in the AI forest, it’s time to get up off your past and learn all about it.
Here are two great (and partially free) AI tools:
The first is MyLens AI which helps you visualize dense information and untangle complex concepts. Just take your pasted text, webpages, PDFs, spreadsheets and YouTube videos and it instantly creates an interactive visual with mind maps, flowcharts and timelines.
The second is how to humanize your AI-generated text.
As for the AI gathering, there’s a conference at the University of Toronto on October 23 and 24 with some of the world’s most original thinkers on “Who’s Afraid of AI?” Like Laurie Anderson, James DiCarlo, Katherine Hayles, Fei-Fei Li, Geoffrey Hinton and Robert Lepage. Early details here.
4. TIFF turns fifty. Even scrappy little festivals can grow up and even grow great. Here’s all the galas at the Toronto International Film Festival’s 50th edition, from Sept. 4 through 14. The full schedule will go live on Aug. 12. Bookmark here to see the films and get your tickets.
Speaking of golden anniversaries, this summer marks the 50th anniversary of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which not only made Jack Nicholson’s career, butDanny DeVito’s too.
5. Unwindings, great and small. First, the slow sad death of CBS who cancelledThe Late Show With Stephen Colbert. Was it politics, or money? Seems it was both.Plus, climate breakdown is forcing the natural world to reset its billions of clocks.Finally, how did we learn to start worrying and fear everything?
6. Murmurations. The most interesting shapes happen when starlings are attacked by birds of prey. Next, orcas offer gifts of food to humans. Then, Margaret Atwood dives deep into A Tale of Two Cities and pulls out a feminist novel.
7. Strange but true. Do great storytellers live happier and longer lives? Probably, says Scientific American. Can Advil cure dementia? Possibly, says this British study. Does the Harvard Law Review favour Black and Latino authors? Probably, but it’s complicated.
8. Harm and hate. Don’t think that hate isn’t a Canadian trait. This report by think tank The Dais reveals how online harms turn into online hate in Canada – and how we can stem its nasty tide.
Meanwhile, a new twist on the eternal tale of young con men targeting women of a certain age – and wealth.
9. Different strokes. You’d think every country wants a distinctive flag. No. Why termites and ants don’t plan their work. They have stigmergy.
Plus, McAtlas: A Global Guide to the Golden Arches. Don’t turn up your nose. It’s won two James Beard Awards. Plus, the world’s most common and hackable passwords.
10. Answers to painful questions. Why do hurt people hurt people? As The School of Life notes, “…the truth may be a great deal more circuitous and complex.”
11. What I’m liking. We stumbled across Spike Lee’s 25th Hour, a 2002 post 9-11 New York drama starring Edward Norton, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and a young Brian Cox. How did we miss this?