What does it mean to be Canadian?

We Canadians live in a blind spot about our identity. We have very strong feelings about who we aren't but only weak ones about who we are. We're passionate about what we don't want to become but oddly passive about what we should be.--John Cruickshank

This question's been vexing me a little more than usual of late. It's always in the back of my mind; one of the stock definitions of a Canadian is someone who frets about his national identity. When's the last time you heard a resident of Spain musing on what it means to be Spanish?

Complicating matters, I belong to that tribe of people known as "proud Canadians". Many people, including many Canadians, believe my tribe doesn't exist...or if it does, it shouldn't. National pride is seen as a quintessentially American, and therefore distasteful, trait. Meanwhile, my tribe numbers in the millions. I'd suspect most people who hold Canadian citizenship are, on some level, proud to. Our pride is a quiet, measured thing. It lacks Yankee exuberance; it need not be shown publically to be deeply felt.

This bout of navel-gazing was first triggered by this weekend's NHL All-Star Game, or more specifically, the "SuperSkills" competition the night before. Eva, who doesn't particularly enjoy hockey, likes to watch this competition, and I've tuned in every year it's been held. This year, for the first time, they concluded the night with a "Breakaway Challenge": a quasi-shootout in which each attempt at a goal was judged for style and creativity. Basically, it was a license to show off.

I say "quasi-shootout" because, while hockey players are certainly encouraged to be creative, one thing they are never encouraged to do is show off, or show up other players. In this as in much else, hockey perfectly mirrors the Canadian character: we are an exceptionally tolerant nation, but something about showboating rubs us the wrong way.
And so we saw player after player break down the ice, most of them staying within the bounds of accepted shootout protocol. It finally dawned on the final two players that the whole point of this exercise was to hot-dog, and so they tried it. You could read their discomfort just below the goofy smile on their faces. It got me to thinking: the Canadian character isn't as modest as it appears to an outsider. We consider ourselves damned special, thank you very much. What makes us virtually unique in terms of national character is that we don't think ourselves any more special than anyone else.
As proof, we invite the world to come share the Canadian experience. Your colour, class or creed means nothing: all that matters is your willingness to accept that basic tenet: you're special, damned special...but no more special than anyone else.
We judge our celebrities harshly if they act like celebrities, if they bask in their fame and good fortune. We hated Brian Mulroney in no small part because of his perceived arrogance; most of us accepted or even adored Jean Chretien because he was so successful at keeping his arrogance (of which he had at least a Mulroneyful) so thoroughly masked, so utterly submerged beneath the facade of le p'tit gars de Shawinigan.
There's a Crown Royal commercial extolling "the noble spirit": long live the player who knows that an assist is worth as much as a goal. That's as Canadian as it gets.

As I write, the Toronto public school board is considering the establishment of an "Afrocentric" high school. This initiative has been dogged by controversy at every turn. Proponents note that fully half of black students in Toronto either fail or drop out, and surveys show they would be more engaged with an Afrocentric curriculum. Those against say that this is exactly the sort of thing Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, among many others, fought long and hard to abolish.

I see both sides of this...sort of. Actually, after a great deal of thought, I see one side and credit good intentions on the other.
What exactly is an Afrocentric curriculum? I can see how that term would apply in history class and in the literature component of an English course...and that's about it. How "Afrocentric science" differs from "Eurocentric science" mystifies me. Is phys. ed. any different if the students have more melatonin in their skin? How about mathematics? Does 2+2 equal something else in certain parts of the world?
Okay, history and literature. I'd be the first to admit both were whiter than sour cream when I went to high school. By the logic of those surveys, the overwhelmingly white students in my classes should have been fully engaged.
They weren't. Not unless they found the material intrinsically interesting. And when they did, it sure as hell didn't have anything to do with the race of the people under discussion. (In fact, one of the few novels I can remember many of my fellow students really enjoying was To Kill a Mockingbird.)

I understand the objective here: to get more black students succeeding in school. I'm just not sure an Afrocentric curriculum would achieve that goal. Certainly having more black teachers to serve as role models would help. But an all-black student body? Isn't the whole idea to get the kid out of the ghetto?

A particularly Canadian compromise I'd suggest would be to broaden the curriculum for everyone. Certainly our geography and history courses could do with a little reality injection: the world is, after all, round. As for literature, I know of no better way to get into someone's head than through a well-written book. Interesting plots and characters have universal appeal.

Bringing people together. That's what education is about. And that's what being Canadian is about, too.