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This is an excellent observation. Anglo-Canada is very much a prudent, don't rock the boat, if it ain't broke don't fix it, type of society.
It's likely due to the fact that it's (or was) the most disproportionately Scottish of all of the anglosphere settler colonies.
More likely Anglo- Canada is much more prudent than the US is that it was settled by Loyalists to the Crown. Before and after the American Revolution happened, these were the people who didn't see things the same way as the "Patriots" saw it i.e. overly high taxes, unfair royal decision making, excessive burdens on the Colonists, etc. They didn't share the same zest for breaking off from Great Britain and declaring independence because they didn't think the society was broken and to this day, you can tell that many Anglo-Canadians still have a proud sense of belonging to the British sphere of influence as much as many if not all Americans have no regrets for 1776.
I mentioned in another post (and correct me if I am wrong), as a politician in Canada, you vote with your party and any sort of cross-party agreement would require coalition blocs which is similar to politics and government in the U.K. Well, the U.S. Congress does coalitions as well but numerous times individual politicians would simply cast a vote siding with the opposite party. No politician in the U.S. would get overruled or officially expelled from his/her party for doing such a thing (do this enough times and you'd lose your friends in Congress that's all). This is something I notice that derives from that deeply ingrained value of individual liberty that Migratory Chicken mentioned about. This is quite in contrast to the togetherness found in Canada and the U.K. I'm not saying which political and social system is better, I'm just helping point out the differences that were shaped by each nation's history.
More likely Anglo- Canada is much more prudent than the US is that it was settled by Loyalists to the Crown. Before and after the American Revolution happened, these were the people who didn't see things the same way as the "Patriots" saw it i.e. overly high taxes, unfair royal decision making, excessive burdens on the Colonists, etc. They didn't share the same zest for breaking off from Great Britain and declaring independence because they didn't think the society was broken and to this day, you can tell that many Anglo-Canadians still have a proud sense of belonging to the British sphere of influence as much as many if not all Americans have no regrets for 1776.
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Good point.
It's as if you took a single society, and then divided it roughly between the most rebellious ones on the one side, and the more prudent ones on the other.
Obviously, most Americans and Canadians are not descended from these people today, but I think this still permeates society in both countries to this day.
Also keeping in mind that there are many non-anglos who speak French as their native or secondary language. I'm ethnic Chinese and I'm learning French. I have a lot of Arabic, Persian, and African friends who speak fluent French living in Ontario and ROC. Increasingly due to immigration, those ethnic groups with higher language skills will make up a greater proportion of Canada's population.
That pretty much describes my situation. I always thought it odd that a supposedly 'bilingual' country would have so many citizens who were mutually unintelligible to each other, so I endeavoured in my youth to learn the bloody language. Not for reasons of 'getting a good job in government' or for any practical reasons but simply because I thought it'd be a good idea to understand the other official language of my own country. Idealistic, perhaps, but when is someone supposed to be idealistic but in one's youth?
It took me about a year of intensive immersion in French media (lots of CBC french and magazines/newspaper reading) and some buckling down on the rules of french grammar...and a few trips to Quebec...but I got through. Now 20 years later I still have a pretty good grasp of the language despite never making use of my knowledge of french day by day. In the rare occasions I feel the need to waste my time watching government propaganda, I'll slip over to the Radio Canada broadcast (whose anchors are mostly hotter than Parson Moosebridge anyhow) rather than watching the National, just to exercise my brain a bit by wrestling with la langue de Moliere.
Oh, I would never deny that American news has a huge influence in Canada. Too much even.
I just don't think that the overall effect is to push Canada to the left. I think it pushes Canada more to the right.
Just look at where American news influences in Canada are the greatest and where they are least present. And which areas lean left and which areas lean right.
Quebec is the most leftist and least conservative part of the country, and it is also the province where people would consume American news the least (by far).
You also have to take into account the Cultural exchange between the US and Canada is Quebec is New England, which VT and MA beat Canada to Gay Marriage, and has very high Minimum Wages and worker protections compared to the rest of the United States. Very different than bordering North Dakota, Idaho, or Montana. Even Michigan and Minnesota are significantly more conservative than New England (excluding NH)
How would I know? We are just a multiethnic company, arrondissement, city, living and working alongside each other. It is not just about two-way adjustment between the English and the French, it is a thousand-way adjustment.
Most are civil if your from out of town, but remember there is an underlying bitterness towards English people over a battle in 1759 that is now illegal to reenact. On the Plains of Abraham ended the Catholic churches dominance over Que. The hated Church fanned the flames of division and that spirit is still alive today. "Ostie Tabarnac" are the swear words against the church and the worst reserved for you, maudit Englais or square head. If English people are square heads is it only if they're from Quebec?
The spirit of the thing was fanned by the Catholic church that kept everyone poor and dumb with 15 kids on the farm (Catholics were forbidden to read the bible) and their power struggle with English Protestants. France religious wars between 1562 and 1598 even threatened the authority of the monarchy.
The most Catholic place in the world beside Rome was Quebec, so you know the hate was magnified "Maidit Englais" right!.
England was on moral collapse and the Wesley brothers started a movement that brought the nation back from the gutters. Though England became no political saint, the abolition of the slave trade by the British Parliament was the result of the campaign spearheaded by devout Christians, and it stands to this day as perhaps the finest political achievement of what would now be called faith-based activism.
If the English hadn't come you would be a happy Catholic today spouting "Ostie tabernac" etc, instead of maudit Englais.
Confronting the darker side of Quebec’s history has not been easy, particularly for that province’s small but influential elite, dominated by nationalistes.
Jean-Francois Nadeau, arts editor of Montreal’s Le Devoir, produced a full-scale biography of Quebec’s infamous Fascist party leader Adrien Arcand with an alluring title, The Canadian Fuhrer
In her PhD thesis she offended many by identifying Lionel Groulx, Quebec’s modern patron saint, as a purveyor of anti-Semitism and a nationalist who was remarkably tolerant of right-wing extremism. Her 1998 book Myths, Memories and Lies went public with a shocking account of how some members of Quebec’s elite, nationalist and federalist, supported Nazi collaborator Marshall Philippe Petain and his Vichy government in France during the Second World War and then helped bring war criminals to safety in Quebec after the war ended.
Delisle was strongly chastised for speaking out and when Montreal writer Mordecai Richler took her side, she became a bête noir and she was essentially blacklisted in French Quebec.
Today it is not English and French, it's just the same power struggle between rich and poor. The rich in Quebec have the right to school in private and they all do, The poor can not. the French are no better than the English were, my 80 year old mom couldn't post a not on the bulletin board to get the instructions for her meds in Englishin and stuff like that you vote for, shame on you.
I was alive and spent a fair bit of time in Quebec during several of the worst separatist eras. I have seen the hatred that was spawned (primarily on the Quebecois side) and the stupidity of it all. I also know that most of it sprung from the Montreal area, with the youth and a few idiot older people. In the rest of Quebec there was no such animosity, even in most other towns and rural areas where no English was spoken. But, in Montreal, if you talked to many ordinary citizens they would say that they wanted to leave Canada and join the US. I avoided Montreal as much as I could after I was treated very badly and literally spat upon for being an Anglophone there who tried to speak French and wasn't perfect at it - so it was obvious I was not 'one of them' (though at the time I was married to a Francophone and my daughter was being raised bilingual). No such thing happened in Quebec City, the northern areas or the townships. When those from the Montreal area vacationed or competed in things like band competitions, etc. it was always in the US, never anywhere in Canada where English was spoken - and yet they would cross the border to places where only English was spoken and somehow that was going to be better. They somehow thought the grass was greener starting 2 steps inside the border to their south. Never made any sense to me. We have stupid people in Canada just as there are anywhere else - some speak English, some speak French.
I have heard this before, and to me it's just astonishing. Whatever grievances Quebecois have with Anglo Canadians will not be alleviated if they joined the USA. Quite the contrary. They would get far less special treatment than they currently get.
Still, I cannot imagine this being a very popular sentiment. But it does exist: e.g., Parti 51.
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French Quebecers rude towards English speakers.
