Just to please balladeer ...

... this thread made me remember Margaret Atwood's 1972 book, "Survival: A Thematic Guide to Canadian Literature". It's her opinion, elaborated upon in the book, that the central themes of Canadian poetry and fiction are "survival" and "victims"; all interesting stuff and worth reading.

In the first chapter, she makes an interesting point about "Who am I?": 'But in Canada, as (Northrop) Frye suggests, the answer to the question "Who am I?" is at least partly the same as the answer to another question: "Where is here?" "Who am I?" is a question appropriate in countries where the environment, the "here," is already well-defined, so well-defined in fact that it may threaten to overwhelm the individual. In societies where everyone and everything has its place a person may have to struggle to separate himself from his social background, in order to keep from being just a function of the structure.'

She does discuss how people in the "Old World" exist in extremely defined cultures - everything from class structures to built environment. The "New World" must have been a seriously discombobulating experience for settlers (early, late,even 'current') because the tangible and intangible landmarks just weren't (aren't) there. There's probably tons of stuff written about the psyche and the 'pioneer spirit'.

I feel that American's do work to an overall definition of, "What is American"; you've got your pledge of allegiance and written constitution and even concepts of "un-American activities" (which means there must be a definition of 'American' to begin with). If there's one thing I've learned from Mudcat, it's that there are a lot of Americans who aren't completely on-board with at least parts of this definition (bless you all!) but still ...

Canadians, on the other hand, don't have that kind of definition; we don't have a pledge of allegiance (I'm Joe and I am Canadian, doesn't count, does it?) and we've only recently 'brought the constitution home', and our flag isn't that old and we keep changing the words to our national anthem. My mother talks of her generation being the first to demand the right to put "Canadian" for nationality on government forms rather than "British" - although, being Canadian, it was more a matter of digging in heels rather than open revolt. Canadian history has never been shaped by bloody conflict; if I remember correctly the closest we ever came to civil war started in a pub up 'round Hogs Hollow in Toronto and was over in a couple of hours. The big decisions have mostly been made through compromise rather than knock-down-drag-out-winner-takes-all action.

So, in terms of our music and to return to Jed's query, I think we take a lot of this on board. We absorb the bits of our fellow Canadians' cultures that we like. We don't have a definition of what Canadian is so a lot of our music explores what it's like to be 'in' Canada and maybe by 'describing' what that is, it will be like 'almost' having a definition - but better. And it's the musicians and poets and artists who are best placed to do this.

My 2 cents worth anyway.

sian