By Alex Beam Globe Columnist | Tuesday, September 25, 2001
CHESTER, Nova Scotia - The view into the harbor is a picture of perfect calm. Only a few boats hang behind the bright orange moorings scattered across the placid water. The summer people, of whom I am usually one, have forfeited this tiny resort village back to its inhabitants. It would be no exaggeration to say that this hamlet 40 miles south of Halifax is one of the most peaceful places on earth.
Canada has taken to calling itself "the peaceable kingdom." The term was popularized by the Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye, although I first encountered it several years ago in a newspaper column written by Norman Spector, who had just returned to his homeland after a stint as Canada's ambassador to Israel. The comparison between the two countries - one of them on a constant war footing, the other continually reducing its armed forces - struck him as particularly stark.
The peaceable kingdom, like our own country, has been roiled by the events of Sept. 11. Canadians initially reacted with a dramatic outpouring of concern, sympathy, and material aid. Of course, they had a huge emotional investment in the tragedy. Not only did at least 40 of their countrymen die at the World Trade Center, but - our many differences notwithstanding - millions of Canadians love and respect their bumptious, muscle-bound sibling to the south.
Not the least of the country's contributions was the generous hospitality afforded the 9,000 airline passengers stranded in Halifax by the FAA's emergency grounding of airliners two Tuesdays ago. Harvard's Own Stephen Jay Gould, en route from Milan to New York, was forced down in the Nova Scotia capital. He wrote a lengthy, over-the-top ("May it be inscribed forever in the Book of Life: Bless the good people of Halifax . . .") thank-you letter published in the Toronto Globe and Mail. Gould ended his effusion with the line, "So Canada . . . I stand on guard for thee," revealing that he is the rare American who knows the words to Canada's national anthem.
But Canada would not be Canada without a full-fledged identity crisis precipitated by events in the United States. A portion of the country, clearly a minority, is eager to ally itself with George Bush's military "crusade" against the Islamic terrorists. But here are the facts of life in the peaceable kingdom: This lion has a gentle roar. One commentator suggested the country's fighting forces could barely fill a hockey stadium; in reality they could barely fill a high school auditorium. Canada boasts 3,000 infantrymen, 1,600 of whom are on peacekeeping duty in Bosnia.
Just 10 days after the attacks, Canadians were already evincing doubts about the "war fever" in what were once called "the Boston states." Hudson's Own Paul Cellucci, the American ambassador to Canada, has been lobbying hard for a "northern perimeter" border policy, in effect asking the Canadians to harmonize their immigration laws and border regulations with ours. Canada could use tighter immigration controls. They are much slower to deport undocumented refugees than the United States is, and they know terrorist cells have taken root in the Toronto area. But in the end I think this will prove to be a dead letter, because Canada seeks to be less like America, not more.
The biggest news on the day I left Chester was Bush's omission of Canada from the list of countries he thanked during his speech to the joint session of Congress. He mentioned a gathering of South Korean schoolchildren but glossed over one of the largest and most moving post-Sept. 11 remembrances in the world: an assembly of 100,000 Canadians, many of them in tears, who observed three minutes of silence and later listened to our national anthem sung on Ottawa's Parliament Hill. Many Canadians thought Bush's omission was a deliberate affront to a neighbor deemed too peaceable for his mission of revenge.
More likely it was an oversight. And that is the unkindest cut of all. Yet again, America has acted as if Canada wasn't there.
Alex Beam's e-dress is beam@globe.com