(no longer) LOST IN JAPAN

The nature of Canadians

This school shooting at Dawson College has caused me to wonder about a lot of things. I'm often told that Canadians are basically indistinguishable from Americans, that we don't have a distinct culture, that we all have inferiority complexes... I'll agree that Canadians are indeed very similar to Americans. We sound the same (generally), we look the same, we watch the same TV, listen to the same music... So yes, perhaps our pop-culture is very similar. Canada is a young country with little history compared to Europe or East Asia... But I think that one of the things that really sets us apart are our values...
Dr. Helen Smith (the Instawife) calls us clueless because people in Dawson originally thought that it wasn't real. Hollywood does make movies in Montreal after all... it happens. And Dawson does have a very good arts and theatre programme. But all that aside, Canadians are generally not a violent society. We didn't gain our independance through bloodshed, we never gave people the right to bear arms, Wal-Marts in Canada don't have a gun aisle... And I think that's a fundamental difference.
There are 2 million people one the island of Montreal. It's is a big city yet it is a safe city. There are fewer murders per capita than in Toronto... and less violent crime too. Montrealers are too busy smoking pot (but that's a whole other debate)... I would safely say that the majority of people in Montreal have never even seen a real gun, much less heard one.

The kids at Dawson are 16, 17, 18 years old for the most part... Personally, I find it refreshing that they don't know what a real gun sounds like. It means that they've never had to deal with it. And is that a bad thing? Should we want our kids to have to deal in a constant fear of violence like in America? Have people in the United States become so accustomed to violence that they need to train their kids to deal with this kind of emergency? We already have to tell our girls not to walk alone at night, tell our kids not to talk to strangers, do we really want to have to start telling them about school massacres too? And in all honesty, I don't think it's that ridiculous to assume that in the United States, teenagers wouldn't have acted in the same way... No one ever thinks that something like this is going to happen to them...

For better or for worse, Canadians are peaceful. We value peace-keeping over policing. We haven't become desensitized to our young men and women coming home from Afghanistan draped in the Red Maple Leaf. Perhaps, as a society, Canadians are naive. I don't know about you but I'd rather live in a society where children don't know what a real gun sounds like than live in one where children are exposed to gun violence every day.

posted by Samantha @ 2:10 PM