It was a cold late-winter night. The cloudless sky made it possible to see the light from stars far away and the light from planes on their way to far away places.
The dog moved on and continued to collect the intelligence of odors as I took in the night sky.
I felt a bit like Tommy Lee Jones' character in "Men in Black" who tries to reconnect with the innocent wonder of stargazing that he lost when he learned that we aren't really alone.
I can recall spending time wondering about the stars. I came of age at the right time. Space was bigger then and a frontier worthy of literal and figurative exploration. It seemed like each new year brought live coverage of the space thing or that.
In those days, the decision to interrupt regularly scheduled programming was taken more seriously. We saw men walking on the moon, learned of assassinations and watched Watergate get investigated. Never once did I see up-to-the-minute coverage of a slow-speed car chase.
As I was scanning the night sky and remembering Walter Cronkite's coverage of space missions, I saw the top of the tree my dog was currently marking and its leafless branches silhouetted against the speckled sky.
Black against dark blue: stark, sculptural, isolated, insulated--like the stars themselves. Sad, lonely, rooted and detached. Of the land, but perhaps not entirely part of it. Seen only in context.
Canadian.
It seems funny to write this after having lived in the States for thirty years, but in that instant, I was suddenly connected to all of those paintings by Canadian artists that I so quickly dismissed as a boy.
What was so frustrating about growing up in Canada was the relentless and exhausting dialogue about identity.
Much as if stuck in a mirror-lined funhouse, the conversation about what it means to be Canadian kept being bounced back and forth, reflected and refracted until it became completely abstracted.
You could almost understand why there are so many of my compatriots in the performing arts: the chance to play a character with a defined identity must seem a welcome relief.
It seems like such a white person's problem to be consumed by questions of national identity. In just about any other country in the world, the question has been long-settled. In Canada, it's been a one hundred and forty-six year-long session of soul-searching and hand-wringing.
And what have we got to show for all this palaver?
We generally agree that we are not Americans..., although it would be rude to point out in precisely what ways we are different.
We bemoan the perceived lack of national unity while celebrating our diversity.
We value our history with England and the many traditions handed down, but we assert our independence even though the Queen continues on our currency.
We can identify with the bleak northern Canadian landscapes so long a favorite subject of our artists even though the greatest portion of our population lives in urban centers closer to our American cousins than to the Canadian Shield.
We are smugly self-satisfied in watching the States wrestle with multilingualism and multiculturalism. We get along just fine with two official languages and our kids do better for having to learn them and yet....
Like a cat making endless loops around its bed, we are unable to settle, to claim the spot that is ours.
Perhaps there is a value to this questing, but is that enough of a nail upon which to hang the national quilt?
This has created a nice market for writers and so I suppose I shouldn't complain. It's the plot against which all are judged: the Canadian identity.
Can we coin a phrase as resonant as "two solitudes"? Can work in references to wheat fields and hockey? You know there has to be some acknowledgement of language--a French-speaking character, or a linguistic bigot.
The eternal question for Canadians is not one of acceptance, but of compromise. In that respect, I think we qualify as the most mature of countries. It's why we have staked out a reputation in the peacekeeping business. It's not too flashy, but it's steady work, you know?
Lacking a national certainty, we work to manage our uncertainty. We make down-payments on solutions, but always renegotiate the terms. We are like non-conformists striving to unionize, terrorists in search of permission. We talk about equality while defining unique-status relationships among our different regions. We reject the celebrity-obsessed American culture, but instinctively identify every Canadian who shows up on Entertainment Tonight.
"They're Canadian, you know?"
To be Canadian is to be at war with yourself, to see both sides of every question, but in a respectful and accepting way. It's war, but it's a civil war. We see the lone pine tree on a barren landscape and know immediately it's a Canadian painting. We think "That's good for a Canadian" and yet we also know exactly what the tree is thinking.
