A column about Canada Day seemed appropriate this week. Stuff about qualities that define Canadians could have been an interesting, if not exactly original, approach to an item readers would see on the eve of the nation’s 138th birthday.
You know, the “My name is Joe and I am Canadian” things we all joke about, like the much vaunted politeness, our penchant for saying “I’m sorry” when it isn’t even our fault, and the way we often define ourselves by what we are not – not American, to be precise.
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And yes, we tend to be honest and modest and we appreciate humour and we have some Canadian Tire money stashed in the cushions of the chesterfield. Not the sofa, the chesterfield.
The plan was taking a nice maple-leafed shape when news came in that the United States had confirmed its first home-grown case of BSE.
It’s a sad occasion, I thought immediately – and politely. Considering the damage BSE has done to the Canadian cattle industry, this is a difficult time for our American friends. So in true Canadian fashion, allow me on behalf of that industry to say “I’m sorry,” even though it isn’t our fault.
And furthermore, let me define the problem by what it is not. The infected animal is not Canadian, to be precise.
There are those among us who might take just a wee tuque full of satisfaction over this turn of events – and I say that just to be honest, in the Canadian way. But we Canadians, modest and generous as we are, send our sympathies and offer what assistance we can, particularly if it involves shipping cattle south. That’s just the kind of thing we do up here.
Can we find any humour in it? Well, I confess to a brief flirtation with a smile, when I thought about how R-CALF will square this happenstance with its rhetoric about the risks of Canadian beef to the average, red-blooded American consumer.
But the smile was quickly snuffed, because it isn’t polite. I’ll leave the humour angle to Jim Carey and Mike Myers and Rich Little and Stephen Leacock, to salute a few generations of Canadian comedy.
Who knows, at this point, what the costs of this single case will be to the American cattle industry? One can only be grateful that whatever the amount, it will be less when measured in American rather than Canadian dollars.
Still, if the damage proves great, there are probably a lot of Canuck cattle producers who would offer whatever Canadian Tire money they can find in their chesterfields, except they’ve probably already spent them while trying to keep their ranches afloat.
My name is Barb, and I am Canadian.
