Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!neat.cs.toronto.edu!tjhorton
From: tjhorton@ai.toronto.edu ("Timothy J. Horton")
Newsgroups: can.general
Subject: Do cultural differences really motivate the clashes in Canada?
Summary: culture cannot be the real root of the problem
Message-ID: <89Jul27.134600edt.10423@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
Date: 27 Jul 89 17:47:29 GMT
Distribution: can
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
Lines: 60

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.