Canada 101
from AP

BURLINGTON - For a quarter of a century Andre Senecal has been trying to get Americans to understand that Canada is more than polar bears, red-coated constables, hockey and long winters.

He introduces students to Quebec literature, and he leads delegations to Ottawa, where they visit the Gothic revival Parliament building and learn some of the intricacies of the European style of government. He works with other academics, high school teachers, anyone who can help spread an understanding of the second-largest country in the world.

"It is very much like us, but the differences are critical," said Senecal, the director of the University of Vermont's Canadian studies program. "It is those differences that have things to teach us."

I saw your mom on the Rue de Pussies

More

The ties between the United States and Canada are many. The two countries are each other's largest trading partner. They share the longest undefended border in the world. They share a common European heritage and, except for French-speaking Quebec, the English language.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Canada and the United States have formed even closer alliances as the militaries and intelligence agencies of the two countries work together to fight terrorism.

Yet the Canadian outlook toward the world is distinct. Last year, then-Prime Minister Jean Chretien angered the Bush administration by refusing to support the war in Iraq. Canada has universal health care and strict gun control laws, and the nation is defined by accepting the differences between the cultures that make up its population.

"It acts as a mirror for understanding the United States. When you cross that border you are in a familiar landscape and culture, but then when you turn around you are in another place," said Stephen Hornsby, the director of the Canadian-American Center at the University of Maine. He works with Senecal and colleagues at Plattsburgh State University in New York as part of the Northeast National Resource Center on Canada.

What makes it difficult to get Americans interested in studying Canada, though, is how similar the two countries are.

"Canada is always the continuation of something that begins in the south," said Senecal, a French language professor who on paper spends about 10 percent of his time on Canadian studies. In practice, he says, it's more than half.

Senecal tells of fighting for funding for his program and to get authors of textbooks and online education packages to include more information about Canada. He said he once met the governor of an American state, which he wouldn't name, who didn't know that Canada's largest city, Toronto, was in Ontario.

"It seems like (Americans) see Canadians like a desk in their room," said Marie-Claude Linteau, a UVM graduate student from Trois Rivieres, Quebec, who is working with Senecal as she writes a master's thesis on Quebec literature. "They know it's there, but they don't really pay attention."

It's not that the academic world ignores Canada. Across the United States about 50 colleges and universities belong to the Association For Canadian Studies in the United States. There are about 825 individual members.

The Canadian Embassy in Washington, eager to promote understanding of Canada in the United States, helps fund the UVM Canadian studies program.

"It's important that we reach out to students. These are future adults, future decision makers, people in government," said Jasmine Panthaky, a spokeswoman at the Canadian Embassy. "If we can ensure that at least some of them have an understanding of Canada, then we are accomplishing our goal."

When you get near the border, studying Canada is easier than it is for schools farther south, said Christopher Kirkey, the director of Plattsburgh State's Center for the Study of Canada.

Before moving to Plattsburgh, he studied Canada at a state college in Massachusetts. "It was more of a selling job," he said.

At Plattsburgh State, 20 minutes from the border and an hour from downtown Montreal, about 20 percent of the school's 5,500 students take courses with some Canadian content, he said.

"I think we have a lot of people with whom Canada resonates," he said.

The consortium of UVM, Plattsburgh State and Maine promotes the study of Canada at all levels, including encouraging elementary school teachers to teach young students the basics, like Canada's immense size, second only to Russia in land area and just bigger than the United States. At roughly 30 million, the population of Canada is about a tenth of that in the United States. About 80 percent of Canadians live in a handful of big cities within 100 miles of the border.

At the master's and doctoral level, students at the three schools examine why Canadians have held on to more of their European heritage than have residents in the United States, as well as the inner workings of Canada's two main political parties.

"I really want them to come away with a sense of the country, a sense of how the United States is not the only place on the North American continent," said Paul Martin, an assistant professor of English at UVM.

Martin, who is not related to the new Canadian prime minister of the same name, begins a Canadian literature course by looking at the geography of the country and then the history. It is then that he moves to oral histories before reaching the classics or contemporary Canadian fiction, considered to be among the world's best.

"The dominant metaphor of the United States is it being a melting pot," said Martin, an Alberta native who moved to Vermont last summer.

"Canada talks about itself not as being a melting pot, but as a mosaic. 'Yes, we're Canadian, we're the western Canadian, Asian Canadian.' Everyone keeps that sense of identity. There is not that push to homogenize."

posted by prof_booty | 09:16 AM