Look To The T-Shirts

My lovely wife has a friend visiting this week so we had to make the obligatory trip to Niagara Falls. Tip#350 of The Dark Canuck's Guide To International Relations: The Japanese love Niagara Falls. It's in all of the Japanese tour guides of Canada, and the standard four day of North America for almost every Japanese is: Vancouver, Banff, Niagara Falls, New York, then Vancouver again. When I was living/teaching there I was often asked where I was from and I would say 'Toronto', which would receive blank stares until I said '... it's near Niagara Falls.'

I remember Niagara Falls before the casino when it put the tack back into tacky and all the gambling money has done is made the tackiness look more expensive. It has always been an odd little town with far too many wax museums and haunted houses. My wife's friend enjoyed it though as did my wife, even though she has been there more times than I have because of a job that she used to have.

As they were shopping, something struck me as I was standing in one of the many gift shops: are we a nation of nationalist fascists?

Canadians always seem to be bagging Americans for being 'patriotic' but when was the last time you saw an American wearing a t-shirt with the American flag on it? Besides a few Toby Keith-listening truck driver types that I've seen with 'Support Our Troops' or 'Saddam Insane' t-shirts, hardly ever. Caps with the stars and stripes? Socks? Underwear? Yet we have an entire franchise that seems bent on cramming the Maple Leaf down every one's throats. I've never seen a similar American franchise and I definitely didn't see anything of the sort in Japan. Though that's not to say that there isn't a strong nationalist streak in Japan, particularly in the government. The Japanese tend to be very subtle about it though because the last time everyone started wearing the flag, a war was started and terrible things happened.

Besides from the lead singer of Def Leppard, I've never seen anyone else wear a T-shirt with the Union Jack on it. And it's hard to imagine Germans dressing up in baseball hats with their flags on it, as it is for most Europeans. Yet, Canadians do it all the time and think nothing is wrong with it, which I think has to do with the fact that we don't really stand for anything. Yes, yes, multiculturalism, tolerance, hockey, beer, all that, but can you really think of any other country that is so innocuous that wearing our national symbols on or clothes would hardly bat an eye lash in the world? The urban legend is that Americans pin Canadian flags to their backpacks when they travel, and it's very hard to imagine an American wearing a t-shirt with the flag emblazoned across it while walking through the streets of any city in the world without getting, at the very least, called lots of nasty names. Canadians could probably get away with it, because what would people say? 'Go home... Canuck! Take your socialized medicine and your fondness of winter sports out of here! You, you... tolerant believer in multiculturalism!'

So might argue that this is a good thing, but I tend to see it in a more negative light. One of the national fairy tales that we tell each other is that Canada matters on the world stage, that we stand for tolerance and peace and all that, but the fact that we can deck ourselves out in maple leaves means that we are both trying too hard to matter and not mattering all that much.

Full disclosure: yes, I own clothing from Roots, including a hat that I wear quite often. I wear this hat because I have a large, oddly-shaped head and this is one of the few hats I've found that actually fits. It has no maple leafs on it.