Sell it off, sell it ALL off!

Charles Paul Freund writes:

[The Globe and Mail] ran a full banner headline across all six columns alerting Canadians that a "U.S. giant seeks to buy the Bay."

Non-Canadians will be forgiven for reading into that wording an effort by U.S. interests to pay cash for the Canadian landscape. Doubtless many Canadians expect to read just such a story someday, but in this case, "the Bay" refers to a store. Well, maybe "store" doesn't quite capture it. We're talking about Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), a 334-year-old institution that runs a "family" of retail chains (including the Bay), and that has shouldered aspects of a battered and wary Canadian identity. The "U.S. giant" that is reportedly in talks to buy part or all of HBC is Target.

"The sale of HBC," sighed The Globe and Mail in the first of a great many stories on the subject, "would leave Canada's oldest company in foreign hands, relegating to the history books a firm that opened up the country after receiving a monopoly to trade on all the rivers flowing into Hudson Bay, dating back to 1670."

You caught that bit about "foreign hands"? That's an uncharacteristically weak euphemism. No doubt Canadians would be sorry to see HBC controlled by the Dutch or Chinese, too, but the real point of this story is that these particular foreign hands are from the States. Picture those hands as relentlessly grasping, as reaching mindlessly from a vulgar commercial hell south of the border, and probably as featuring ragged and dirty fingernails, and you've got a Canadian view of the matter.

Once again, we find Americans shocked, shocked to discover that Canadians view them in (to be polite) a very ambivalent light. You'd think that we were some kind of foreign country, wouldn't you? Well, you're about half right, anyway.

Anti-Americanism is as Canadian as apple pie, er, maple syrup. It's taught in the schools, although not yet as a full credit course: it's more like a mandatory optional subject. (Yes, we have the mandatory "volunteer" thing happening in our schools, too. Another import from the US, I believe.)

[. . .] a voracious and imperial U.S. continues to gobble up the culture, economy, and identity of a nearly defenseless Canada. The portrayal of the U.S. as the corrupt, grasping, and stupid giant next door seems to be in 24-hour rotation in the Canadian media, in whatever news guise happens to be available.

And any attempt to protray the US in another light is considered to be anti-Canadian and could get you sentenced to being strapped to a seat at the SkyDome being bombarded with Celine Dion music 24/7 until your brains start leaking out your ears. For most of us, that'd be less than one CD worth, but some are tough and might survive a couple of hours before cracking.

Canadian "kul-chah" must be defended at all costs against the evil Yankees! Unlike the actual physical land of Canada, which must be defended by the evil Yankees, because we've spent so much of the Peace Dividend that we can't afford to run the Canadian Armed Forces this year.

Nevertheless, the central thrust of the story remained true to national mythologies on both sides of the border. In Canada, you could measure the myth by the introductory banner headlines about a "U.S. giant," and especially by the "anguished" reception of the story by readers and viewers. As for the U.S., you could measure the countervailing myth by the fact that the story received hardly any attention at all.

And that's really all it merits on either side of the border, but I'm not a Mel Hurtig-style Canadian, so my opinion matters not at all.