I had an interesting conversation last night with a friend who is an American living in Canada, about the state of rhetorical affairs in our respective countries. I was telling him about one of the RSA Institute presentations we heard, from Nan Johnson, about the Gettysburg Address and how it has come to stand as the exemplar of American oratory. Yet I can't think of a single item of Canadian rhetoric that has had nearly that level of influence--i.e. people can quote from it, learn to recite it at school, etc. The only thing that comes close, in my opinion, is the poem In Flanders Fields by John McCrae, which we all head to memorize and recite on Remembrance Day. Or, more recently, "The Rant, " which was from a commerical for Molson Canadian (and, we decided, is an exemplar of an epideictic refutationtm).

To explain this phenomenon, we generated the following hypotheses:

1) A revolutionary country requires an early investment in producing national identity through rhetoric, while a country that gradually weans itself away from the great mothership has less of a need to do so, (until it is struck by its own identity crisis much much later in the 1970s.)

2) In America, rhetorical displays of patriotism are produced and driven by the market (see "Proud to Be an American," etc.) I guess that's the true definition of freedom--no one has to force you to produce patriotic pap for the radio; it just naturally arises from the patriotic spirit of the nation. Or something. In Canada, the market does not naturally produce rhetorical displays of patriotism. At least not in song. It didn't even produce many good singers until the CANCON rules were inaugurated. So these have to be commissioned by the government, as was the case when the government sponsored a contest for a song to commemorate the 125th anniversary of confederation in 1992. The song sucked, not surprisingly.

Apparently Canada has a long list of patriotic songs, including these:

At The Canada Jubilee
Bells of Canada
Canada, Land of the Maple Tree
Canada in My Pocket
The Canadian Boat Song
Canadian Folk 'Overture'
The Canadian Girl
Canadian Man
Drink Canada Dry
Hockey Night in Canada Theme
Sweet, Sweet Canada
Un Canadien Errant (A Wandering Canadian)
Young Man From Canada

Aside from "Oh Canada" and "God Save the Queen" (which really isn't about Canada) and "Hockey Night in Canada" (which as far as I know has no words), I haven't heard of any of them. And I'll bet most of these were commissioned for various milestones in Canadian history.

3) Canada defines it self in contradistinction to the United States, and you can't wax poetic (or rhetorical) about a lack.

*****

In case you were wondering, here's more about Canadian Girls in Training:

World War II didn't start the uniform trend for women. Far from it. But the pseudo-military uniform, outside of wartime, was usually meant for girls and teenagers who were encouraged to join clubs and training groups, I think. I belonged to Explorers and then to Canadian Girls in Training. Both were kind of nautical-themed. In Explorers, we had to wear a white blouse onto which we sewed these different badges. I think you had to get six of them, for things like memorizing the Explorer creed or what have you. Then you could move up to CGIT, where you got to wear a sailor blouse called a middy (see left). The uniform also entailed a "lanyard," which I think was some kind of white rope thingy. I forget. The whole point of these organizations was to emulate the premier group, the Girl Guides, who were in turn emulating either the American Girl Scouts or the British Girl Guides. I wanted to be a Brownie (precursor to Girl Guide), in part because they had a cute brown uniform that they got to wear to school on Remembrance Day. We didn't wear our Explorer uniforms on Remembrance Day.

Aside: The whole episode is kind of representative of my childhood. Whenever I asked for something, my mom would give me a reasonable facsimile, which she thought was better. But I just wanted the original. So, for instance, I wanted a Mr. Potatohead and asked for one for 7 consecutive Christmases. Instead, I got this kind of dumpy, flat, pear shaped plastic thingy that came with a bunch of different Colorforms for hair, eyes, and clothing. Not the same as a Mr. Potatohead. I'm not knocking Colorforms or anything, though. In fact, if I had this set I'd probably still play with it. It's very mod.