Wikipedia:Wikimania 2017/Vortreffen/Eigenheiten Kanadas

Die Eigenheiten Kanadas

Vortrag beim Vorbereitungstreffen zur Wikimania 2017 am 11. Juni 2017 in Berlin:

CANADA

You will get ample information about Montreal and Quebec from the organizing committee respectively in the welcome package once arriving – at least that is what experience tells me. So today I would like to rather focus on the country. It is an enormously big country by size. But please don't feel frustrated if you only have the chance to see a tiny bit of Canada. I always like to quote what Rudyard Kipling said about India: India is so big that you could not see the whole country if you traveled around for your whole lifetime. So it does not matter if you only stay there for a few days. It's always worth it and far better than not going at all. The same applies to Canada.

NAME

The first European explorer was Jacques Cartier. He asked the local natives what the area was called. They answered “Kanata” and the term was subsequently applied to the northern half of the North American continent. Only later it was discovered that the word actually meant 'a small fishing village'.

The country though is a conundrum (oxymoron, contradiction):

A savage land « » with gentle people
An enormous territory « » but sparsely populated
A wilderness « » at the forefront of technology
A culture « » defined by the lack thereof
They have a rogue province (Quebec) « » which happens to be the biggest

CHARACTER

“It is only by our lack of ghosts that we are haunted.”

“If some countries have too much history, Canada has too much geography.”

HOW THEY SEE THEMSELVES

Canadian identity is defined about what they are not. It's important for them that they're NOT Americans. In Quebec that counts double, because they're NOT Americans and NOT English. This being a definition by a negative shows itself in popular Canadian political bestsellers with titles such as “Canada on the World Stage: Is Anyone Listening?” or “The Future of Canada: Does Nationalism Even Matter?”

HOW THEY SEE THE WORLD

There's rather an indifference which might stem from living in such a large country. People in western Canada for instance feel minimal connection to events happening a mere 3,000 kilometres away still within their borders. So it is no surprise that Canadians have a kind of “Over There” perspective on anything that happens overseas.

HOW THEY WOULD LIKE TO BE SEEN

Canadians would like to be seen as rugged pioneers, industrious workers, accomplished outdoorsmen and environmentalists. But at the same time Canadians are grounded in reality. A competition run by a radio show asked readers to complete a sentence that began “As Canadian as...” The winning entry was: “As Canadian as possible under the circumstances”.

POLITENESS

Canadians are noted for being exceptionally polite.

A woman suffering from amnesia was discovered aimlessly wandering the streets of Los Angeles. Not knowing her own identity, police had only one clue: the woman was polite. So polite, in fact, they figured she had to be Canadian. Sure enough, when an all points bulletin went out across Canada, it turned out that indeed she was.

FOOD

The national dish of Quebec is poutine. That's basically potatoes – French fries dripping with gravy, special sauce, and (most importantly) cheese curds. Sometimes ketchup is thrown into the mixture for good measure, thus eradicating the possibility of ingesting the mess with any degree of grace whatsoever.

ALCOHOL

Attitudes to alcohol vary from province to province, not only on the legal drinking age but also on how late the bars stay open. But there is a fair number of Canadians who do not drink at all, especially in the rural areas of the Prairie provinces. But in Quebec, by contrast, not drinking is tantamount to blasphemy. The only time the Quebecois have ever voted “Yes” to a referendum was in 1919, when the question was whether or not they should end prohibition.