tjhorton@ai.toronto.edu ("Timothy J. Horton") (07/28/89)
Are the differences between the two "cultures" of Canada not tiny, in comparison to those between each and its parent culture of two centuries ago? On a larger scale, don't significant differences seem to evaporate? Aren't there are a lot of bigger differences that don't seem to create the same "cultural" reactionism? elf@dgp.toronto.edu (Eugene Fiume) pointed out: >Just look at the different sets of values that a vanilla "big-city" Canadian >has from a vanilla "small-town" Canadian. I think the tensions we are observing today in Canada are not really rooted in culture, but a more general group alienation phenomenon. Certainly language differences magnify the basic problem, but they do not create it. It seems that anywhere people see themselves as a group, separate from another, some begin to see things in an us-against-them fashion. And when a group finds obvious enough differences to support the perception of them-as-aliens, the separation takes on strange new dimensions and a life of its own. I don't think there's anything specifically "cultural" about it. The seed of the basic problem exists across countries, within provinces, between villages and cities, between neighborhoods, between working classes, between religions, between political groups, between language groups, and so on. Wherever differentiating factors dominate communalizing factors, it will tend to rip subgroups apart. Several years ago when I spent a lot of time with friends in Quebec, I came to know some people through mutual acquaintances who were genuinely hostile toward things English. I managed to get along and eventually became good friends with a few. I really tried to figure out the hostility, but I don't think I found many tangible reasons for it. It seemed to be at least 80% a matter of the predominant "group" perceptions. If that is the case, the basic phenomenon seems to be widespread. In northern rural Alberta, one does not mention a Toronto address when looking for work. Coming out of highschool I worked in a factory where students admitting aspirations to university or business were met with open contempt (by other males, in particular). I'm sure many others have experienced a lot of this sort of thing, within Canada. (Incidentally, just as I got work in a mine near Edson, the Premier of Alberta called on employers not to hire "outsiders" like me -- to prefer Albertans; here I was in the middle of my own country, and such discrimination had both political and popular assent.) Recognizable subgroups generally seem to become opposed, and without anything to break down the "alien" perception, seem to tend towards self-perpetuating militancy. The problem does seem to show up more vividly in the blue-collar milieu, but aside from that, it isn't specifically cultural, in the usual sense of the word. elf@dgp.toronto.edu (Eugene Fiume) writes: >Language is an over-rated cultural factor. I must agree. The spoken English of Shakespeare's day is as incomprehensible to a modern unilingual anglophone as French is. And so would be the culture; Les Anglais seem to share one heck of a lot more culture with the Quebecois than with their Victorian English ancestors. The real impact of the current language difference, to my mind, is to enhance the *perception* that the other party is somewhat alien. "Whoever isn't with us is against us," goes the old saying. I once put a question to the net: what would be different in Canada if the French had historically held sway? Would a foreign visitor (say Far Eastern) standing at random places here in Canada observe large differences between these two alternate universes? I doubt it. After discounting language, I think the differences between Toronto and Montreal pale to the differences between Toronto Ontario and Erbsville Ontario.