21.5.
Last night, Nathan, Lisa, and Brandon took me to Bugaboo Creek, the Canadian Rockies–themed 'steakhouse,' for my half-birthday. This particular Bugaboo Creek, located across from the Wal-Mart in Seekonk, MA, features mechanical 'talking' animals, faux-vintage posters of Mounties, and exactly zero vegetarian entrees. Needless to say, I had difficulty containing my excitement.
While I was away from our table so that the others could convince our waitress to subject me to the Bugaboo Creek birthday ritual (which culminates in the victim being asked to kiss a stuffed moose puppet), I had a minor revelation: The reason I like Canada so much is that it offers me an appealing alternative to American masculinity. Ice hockey instead of football, peacekeeping in place of invasion, politeness rather than machismo--oh, and trade unionism.
Figure 1: Ken Dryden, the Montreal Canadiens goalie who studied for a law degree in his playing days, and has now become the Liberal MP for York Centre.
But this theory quickly unravels. First of all, I find it grating when people talk about moving to Canada to escape the Bush administration--it really is a more bland and boring place, and hardly a social democratic utopia, not least with the impending crisis of the health care system. And also, my imagined Canadian masculinity doesn't really hold in Québec, or in the rodeo-loving, free-market west, despite its pockets of NDP-and-Propaghandi radicalism. Really, I'm only thinking of industrial Ontario--places like Windsor, where my maternal grandfather was born. But he wasn't a very nice guy, and I'm not sure I can blame that on the fact that he moved to the United States.
While I was away from our table so that the others could convince our waitress to subject me to the Bugaboo Creek birthday ritual (which culminates in the victim being asked to kiss a stuffed moose puppet), I had a minor revelation: The reason I like Canada so much is that it offers me an appealing alternative to American masculinity. Ice hockey instead of football, peacekeeping in place of invasion, politeness rather than machismo--oh, and trade unionism.
Figure 1: Ken Dryden, the Montreal Canadiens goalie who studied for a law degree in his playing days, and has now become the Liberal MP for York Centre.
But this theory quickly unravels. First of all, I find it grating when people talk about moving to Canada to escape the Bush administration--it really is a more bland and boring place, and hardly a social democratic utopia, not least with the impending crisis of the health care system. And also, my imagined Canadian masculinity doesn't really hold in Québec, or in the rodeo-loving, free-market west, despite its pockets of NDP-and-Propaghandi radicalism. Really, I'm only thinking of industrial Ontario--places like Windsor, where my maternal grandfather was born. But he wasn't a very nice guy, and I'm not sure I can blame that on the fact that he moved to the United States.
posted by ch at 2:36 PM
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