Canada's Panamerica Identity

[kool maudit]

i was once a far greater proponent of the north-south-is-the-true-north-american-axis than i now am. i think that a great deal of my former faith in this ideal had a lot to do with a certain dyspepsia regarding the canadian federal dialogue (i was sick of how canada... sounded when it talked about itself. in some ways i still am), and my aesthetic preference for certain sorts of places, for a certain visual ideal.

looking at canada both in the rear-view mirror and from a distance, i have come to feel that the differences between montreal and boston, and the similarities (or cultural continuities, really) between montreal and vancouver are both more significant than i once maintained.

this does not replace my earlier view (that basically held that north america's true divisions were the temporal, "waves of settlement" ones), but it reduces its importance. the truth is, architecture, development patterns and spatial idiosyncracies are interesting but they are simply do not play as large a role in canadian or american life as i once argued, and certain country-specific circumstances play much larger roles than i once allowed.

canadians seem... canadian. americans are clearly a linked people, but there are differences (australians are also a linked people). the differences are slightly closer to the portugal/brazil scale than they are to austria /germany, which in turn is probably closer to the more minimal spread that i once argued for.