Quote:
Originally Posted by rousseau
It might be interesting to people who aren't aware of how unique Canada's history is, but on this forum it's been beaten to death. I'm not sure why you keep poking at this hobby horse of yours, to be honest. The sparse population of Loyalists retreating to our side in 1776 have been overshadowed culturally by the massive juggernaut to the south of us ever since. It's not rocket science.
The excitement is purely organic, and I don't think the explanation is all that complicated. No Canadian sports team has ever had a chance of success at this high a level before. People in Athens and Kathmandu will be watching. They don't watch Olympic hockey or curling. The epic nature of what is at stake here is palpable. Yes, this speaks to a yearning of Canadians for gravitas, something that we hosers have never had. .
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With all due respect, this is just a more intellectual variant to the classic Canadian rebuttal about acculturation to the U.S.:
everybody else in the world is doin' it too!
So sure, people in the Athens and Kathmandu are more likely to be aware of the Raptors right now than they are of the Saskatchewan Roughriders or even the Montreal Canadiens. That's a fact.
But the degree to which this stuff has immense global traction is always extremely overstated, as it is in this post of yours.
Taking an example from the political sphere, I have a good friend who is Italian. Never lived outside Italy. Never been to North America. He is very up on politics and current affairs. Living in a big city in Italy, as a white collar professional, in the age of globalization and the Internet, he learned of the election of Barack Obama *from me* on the day following the election in the late afternoon, when I asked him "hey whaddaya think of that?", and he replied "what do I think of
what?"
So this notion that everyone on the planet always has their eyes glued on American stuff in all areas (culture, politics, sports, society, etc.) is largely a fallacy that exists to explains a certain way of being Canadian-and-their-neighbours. (Yes, American stuff resonates globally more than any other - just not as much as is often claimed.)
Another example. I've got hundreds friends on social media from a United Nations of countries. Since birds of a feather flock together most are interested in politics and current affairs. Down to a man/woman, the only ones other than Americans who post shit about Trump are Canadians. And most of the Canadians post more stuff about Trump (and U.S. issues) than they do about Canadian issues. My friends in the rest of the world generally post stuff about their own countries' issues, or global stuff like the plastic garbage island in the Pacific or the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean.
My last word (for now) is that it's OK for Canadians to be like this. If that's the nature of the country then so be it. But the denial sometimes is a bit much. It's as if Italians argued that their country was super-organized and orderly, or claimed that everyone in the world (including the Germans and Japanese) was every bit as disorganized and disorderly as the Italians.
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