North of Victoria, Vancouver Island is mostly small towns. Some of these have small-minded people in them. Case in point: Lynn Welburn, who writes a column called “Womb With a View” for the Oceanside Star. (Oceanside is marketing-speak for the Parksville-Qualicum Beach area. I’m told most of the locals hate the name.)
Welburn read an article in the National Post that made her pretty mad, and she used it as an excuse to tee off on G.W. Bush and some Americans. Her editors made matters worse by putting her column under the headline: “What Canadians Hate about America.”
I have not read the article (actually the third of three parts of a series called “Australia Rules”) that set Welburn off. The series describes Australia’s recent rise on the world stage, and the third part includes a description of the close connections between the Aussies and the Americans on the Iraq War. Australia, of course, has been a part of the “Coalition of the Willing.”
Welburn’s column starts with resentment to what she interprets as the Post’s rebuke to the Canadian government (and perhaps to Canadians generally) that their stand against the invasion of Iraq is hurting Canadian-American relations. She then proceeds with a number of ad hominem attacks on G. W. Bush and Australian Prime Minister John Howard. (The most outrageous of these attacks runs thusly: “If Howard has his reasons (and no doubt he has) for happily performing a lingual prostate exam on the American ruler, well, so be it.”)
In the final part of her column, she claims to have no biases against Americans as such, but…
What we hate is AMERICA… the logo.
What we hate is American the corporate-led, Nike-shod, monolith of insular provincial racism that takes government health care as a pinko plot to undermine the youth of the nation.
What we REALLY hate is America as personified by the homo-phobic, gun-toting GI Joe action figure, the Bible tucked into his knickers, wrapped in the Stars and Bars, humming America the Beautiful as he stomps around the globe (or at least in the UN) demanding that people be on his side, damnit!
(I don’t know if the “Stars and Bars” comment is an error, and she meant “Stars and Stripes,” or if she thinks there’s a big contingent of Americans who long for the Confederacy, or if she just hates the South.)
Well, this could all be pretty discouraging for an American living in Canada, especially one who supports the invasion of Iraq. But then, happily, in the next edition of the Star, the entire letters section was filled up with three letters from readers who found Welburn’s article to be appalling, despicable, and shocking.
I’ll say it again here: the Canadians I’ve met, pretty much every single one of them, have been friendly and polite. Most, when I say I’ve moved up from Washington state, reply by saying they hope I like living here. But this is the third article I’ve read in the seven-and-a-half months I’ve been here that casts doubt on the health of the Canadian-American relationship.
I’d like to link to Welburn’s column, but it doesn’t appear to be on the net anywhere, so here’s the full text:
What Canadians hate about America
WOMB WITH A VIEW – Lynn Welburn
One might be a little worried if one were to take as gospel everything one read in a certain large Canadian newspaper. I won’t say which paper it was, but the name rhymes with Passional Toast.
In a three-part series titled Australia Rules, the paper looked at Australia’s rise on the world stage (perfectly reasonable) but in the final article which ran Friday, the paper focussed on Aussie PM John Howard’s relationship with US president George Bush and how the Australians might be “stealing a march on Canada” by cozying up to the Americans.
Author of the piece – Peter Shawn Taylor – talked about how delighted Dubya was to have this political bedfellow, noting how he called him by his first name in a press conference. As opposed, I suppose, to the fact that Bush calls Canuck PM Martin that “fairy-lovin’, pot-smokin’, peacenik” or words to that effect.
At one point Bush even apologized for using Howard’s first name so often in front of the cameras by saying, “We’re close friends” and even referred to Howard as a Man of Steel for his forceful resolve in sticking with Bush over the war on Iraq.
“Better to be called a Man of Steel by the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth than not to be called at all,” was how Taylor summed up the difference between Bush’s fondness for the Aussie leader compared with his cool aloofness to Jean Chretien and Paul Martin.
Well, it may be that the folks from Down Under are chummier with the US than we Canucks are. No doubt living half a planet away from them helps that relationship no end: Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that.
And no doubt Dubya is delighted to have someone on his side these days.
As time goes on, world leaders are lining up to denounce the so-called war on terrorism for the work of revenge-filled, oil-fuelled barbarism that it is.
Members of the coalition of the willing (yeah, right…) are falling by the wayside, ticked off that they fell for the US rhetoric about soldiers being greeted with open arms by grateful Iraqis. (Not so much…)
With an election looming, even the droning repetitions of “we did the right thing in invading Iraq” are falling on huge numbers of deaf voter ears as even the government’s own documents show that there really never was a good reason for the war.
And so, a beleaguered Bush falls gratefully into the arms of Howard like an unpopular nerd in high school mysteriously befriended by a good looking cheerleader.
And, apparently, based on this article, we Canadians should be shuffling our feet, looking at the ground in shame for having been so nasty to our neighbour.
Imagine calling him a moron! What were we thinking? We should know better! And we call ourselves the peacekeepers of the world. Well, we should just turn in our damned blue berets in heartfelt humiliation.
NOT.
If Howard has his reasons (and no doubt he has) for happily performing a lingual prostate exam on the American ruler, well, so be it. I prefer the old saw about how if you lay down with dogs you will get up with fleas. Or how about: you are known by the company you keep? These are the things I think of when I see a certain frostiness between Martin and Dubya. And I’m pleased and proud that our nation will most likely legalize gay marriage and did not rush blindly into war on some impoverished nation that has already suffered under a mad leader (and by this I mean Iraq, not the US).
I have been asked several times by American friends (yes, I do have some of those and I’m not ashamed of it) why Canadians hate Americans so much.
And I have to say I don’t think we do. Not as individuals anyhow. We don’t hate Americans one on one, or at least not necessarily. We meet them one on one and determine from that individual’s actions whether we can be friendly or not. And for the most part when I visit the States I’m charmed by the people I meet. Many of them are polite and pleasant and bright and the kind of people I would willingly have over to my house for dinner (and my standards for that are actually quite high).
What we hate is AMERICA… the logo.
What we hate is American the corporate-led, Nike-shod, monolith of insular provincial racism that takes government health care as a pinko plot to undermine the youth of the nation.
What we REALLY hate is America as personified by the homo-phobic, gun-toting GI Joe action figure, the Bible tucked into his knickers, wrapped in the Stars and Bars, humming America the Beautiful as he stomps around the globe (or at least in the UN) demanding that people be on his side, damnit!
As they say, with friends like that, who needs enemies?
You can contact Lynn via email at lwelburn@island.net.
And here are the letters to the editor that the column sparked:
YOUR LETTERS
Anti-American column angers some Star readers
Dear Editor:
I was appalled at Lynn Welburn’s hateful anti-American rant in the Oct. 16 Star.
I submit that Ms. Welburn does not speak for “Canadians” but for herself and possibly some extreme left wing homosexual radicals and just maybe Jack Layton [leader of the New Democratic Party].
It is time to debunk this myth that Canada was not part of the coalition of the willing. We had 4,000 sailors and our entire fleet (such as it is) in the Gulf, to prevent Hussein and his friends escape and foreign help to arrive.
We also had 2,500 of our soldiers in Afghanistan. Canadian officers were in command in both theatres of war. Our sailors and soldiers were there in harm’s way and not to get a suntan.
Eighty percent of everything we produce in Canada, we sell to the USA, they could shut down our economy at will. I can’t help but wonder if the roles were reversed, how loud the howls would be from the left demanding that we punish the Americans.
Let me suggest that the anti-American rhetoric by Chretien, Parrish, Layton and yes, the likes of Lynn Welburn is not helpful to Canadian workers.
The Canadian position on fighting terrorists is at best hypocritical, on the one hand, we join the American effort, quietly on the other hand we slag the Americans and allow terrorists in our midst to raise funds and recruit terrorists.
It is well documented that Canada has been an exporter and a supporter of terrorism for years.
Our terrorists have killed and maimed the innocent in Israel, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India, and Chechnya. Before we lecture Americans, let us look at our own sordid record and stop this hypocrisy.
Ivor Cura
Nanaimo
Dear Editor:
Regarding Lynn Welburn’s column Oct. 16 – I have not read a so despicable diatribe from the time I was forced to study communist propaganda in a Soviet Colony.
Really shameless. Are there not anti hate propaganda laws that your newspaper has to respect?
Ted Vitanov
Qualicum Beach
Dear Editor:
What a shock to open my Oct. 16 Star to find from Ms. Welburn that I, as a Canadian, hate America and by extension Americans too, although she jumps through hoops to avoid saying she hates Americans.
I’m sure we all feel better knowing Ms. Welburn knows a few nice Americans whom she would be happy to invite to her home for dinner. But after reading her column, would they feel welcome?
Do Canadians, all of them, hate America? I doubt it.
Hate is what the Islamist terrorists feel for America and Israel and surely is not a word to be used about a friendly neighbour.
I, for one Canadian, respect America for its honest stand against those who slaughter innocent people and am grateful America is here to defend us when we are apparently not prepared to spend the money to defend ourselves.
America is our largest trading partner and Canada is theirs and it is not therefore stretching a point to say that we owe our prosperity to them.
It is only common sense to try to maintain good relations in such circumstances even while having honest differences of opinion.
It is disturbing to read such venomous material in your newspaper as I am sure that were the supposed object of Canadian hatred to be Jews, gays, aboriginals or women you would not have published the article under any circumstances and rightly so.
Why is it then acceptable to publish an anti-American diatribe which uses the word hate?
Shame on Ms. Welburn for using such phrases as “…performing a lingual prostate exam on the American ruler…”
Shame on her for assuming that all Canadians think as she does and shame on the Star for publishing such tripe.
David Gidlow
Nanaimo
