Culture. Is. A. Lie.

I don’t expect all Canadians to have anything in common, even those things which are “typically” seen as Canadian, those things which as easily recognizable as Canadian, those characteristics which brand Canada and everyone who lives here. I don’t like hockey, I don’t drink beer that much and I don’t like national and cultural classifications, assuming that living within certain geographical boundaries defines the people that we can become. Being Canadian doesn’t define me. Would I be different had I grown up somewhere else? Maybe... but there are things inside of me that I feel are irrevocable, and will stay with me no matter where I go and what I do, things that I believe would be a part of me no matter where I was raised. I grew up in rural south-western Ontario, where diversity was nonexistent, where everyone was white, where a very small-town, sort of “Hicksville” mentality tried to smother those who were different. And I was always different, I was a nerd, a goth, then a harcore Marxist – I was always the weird kid with radical ideas who no one understood, and what’s more, no one really wanted to. I wasn’t raised in a diverse metropolitan centre like Toronto, in fact my small town, Strathroy if you wanted to know, couldn’t be more different from Toronto or Montreal. Canada is too large and diverse to be cohesive. I don’t think I could begin to describe the culture of Canada, because I don’t think that it truly exists.

Something which is seen as “Canadian” is the acceptance of multiculturalism, but my experience growing up in Canada was not characterized by diversity. If I wasn’t raised anywhere near diversity, why do I embrace it? I don’t think it has anything to do with being Canadian, I think it has everything to do with being a tolerant person who believes in equality and individuality – this is who I choose to be. I would be this way if I had grown up in the USA, or Australia, or the UK.

My strong environmentalism would be another aspect of myself I do not think I could escape, whether I grew up in the Great White North or not. Wilderness and respect for it is supposed to be a part of Canada’s culture isn’t it? Isn’t it perceived that way, both by Canadians and others? When really the reality is that Canada is lagging behind in preserving our natural spaces, with a marked reluctance from not only government, but the Canadian people, to change how we exploit the land which we have claimed for our own. And so in some aspects of “culture” I see lies – comforting falsehoods that people can whisper to themselves, use a shield to protect themselves from needing to claim personal responsibility to change. The illusion that Canada is eco-friendly serves to placate entire masses of people who could do something to preserve some of the most biologically diverse and unique areas of the world. Canada has 1/3 of the world’s wetlands and 1/5 of the world’s wilderness – and we’re not protecting them. Instead of characterizing ourselves by a mistaken cultural identity of being tree-huggers, why don’t we let our actions and our environmental track record speak for itself? The truth is there, and it doesn’t make us look like tree-huggers - quite the opposite. The multiculturalism is mentioned above is another illusion of our "Canadian identity." One need lool no farther than the First Nations to see very clearly that we are not as accepting, or as supportive of those who are different from the European-descended "norm" than we would like to believe. It seems ironic to me that those who were here first, on this land we call Canada, are now pushed to the margins and excluded by our so-called multicultural society.

But Hey! We’re Canada! We’re diverse! – In other words, let’s not do anything about it. We don’t need to do anything about it.

A nation is an artificial construction, and I would rather be defined by the way I interact with the world around me, by how I treat the environment, and how I treat my fellow human beings – and these are my choices. This has nothing to do with a “state” or with “Canada.” I actually have a strong aversion to nationalism, I think of it as misplaced loyalty to a “state” - when our loyalty should be to the earth and to each other. What’s more, nationalism often walks with its extreme sibling, patriotism, and together they have misled, caused wars, and continue to perpetuate injustice.

I don’t like to think of culture in terms of being defined by nation-states, an individual can choose how they want to move through the world, an individual can choose who or what to associate themselves with – and I hope that individuals can see past the veil, past the illusions about our identity that Canadian “culture” tries to perpetuate. I choose to distance myself from nationalism, I don’t want to let a love of an artificial entity overcome my empathy for the earth and others. Nationalism places “the nation” above “we the people” and above nature, and by associating my culture with a nation, by accepting cultural stereotypes and using them to help define myself, I am stepping towards that precipice.