Oh Canada: Regional Pride through Commercials

Last week's episode of This American Life had a great segment where Ira Glass was talking about the types of ad campaigns on which cities sometimes embark to cultivate good will with their citizens, and the fact that, for the most part, these are met with blatant skepticism.  Ira grew up in Baltimore, where he remembers one particular campaign about Baltimore being the 'Charm City' that was rebuffed by Baltimorians as preposterous, particularly in the 1970s after the inner city had been devastated by a combination of white flight and riots (now I wonder if the Hairspray song is a parody).  His wife remembered that Detroit tried something similar, which was equally unimpressive (I would argue, however, that the Chrysler Superbowl ad for Detroit was a remarkable image of the city, and is certainly worth a look if you don't remember it).  Then Ira interviewed Ken Lima-Cuehlo of Calgary, Canada, who not only remembered his city's song, but remembered all of the words and even remembered singing it with friends as a communal Calgary moment:

Calgary, Lima-Cuehlo explains, was a city experiencing an identity crisis.  The other major city in the province of Alberta, Edmonton, had won the glory of the nation--or perhaps even the world--because they had the Edmonton Oilers, the most successful hockey team of the 1980s and the team that had the legendary Wayne Gretzky.  In this time of crisis, 'Hello, Calgary' was a solace that their city was important, special, and unique.

You can imagine Lima-Cuehlo's disappointment when he learned that the song had been originally written for Milwaukee and adapted for numerous other cities afterward (including Pittsburgh, Atlanta, and Rochester):

[Ed. note: ballet and steel mills?  Clearly the inspiration for Flashdance]

The question that I had in listening to this interview was why had the Calgary song been so thoroughly embraced by its citizens--Lima-Cuehlo does not remember thinking that it was cheesy or contrived--while the others were a lesser footnote of history.  Undoubtedly, in part, this has to do with the image of the city in the first place.  I can imagine that there would be skepticism toward a song singing Baltimore's praises in the 1970s, for example, when the city itself was undergoing such challenging issues.  Calgary did not experience these same problems, of course.  But what also struck me was that the eagerness with which Calgarians embraced this anthem was likely tied to the larger identity crisis that English Canadians were encountering in the 1980s, when there was little to claim as our own.  I touched on this in my earlier post on Canadian identity, when I was remembering that most folk songs I learned as a kid were either French Canadian or from Newfoundland--two cultures that significantly differed from my own.  Something like 'Hello, Calgary' on the other hand could easily be transformed into a point of pride for the part of a nation that was seeking its identity.

Calgary was not the only place to have such commercials.  Ontario ran them too:


Why yes, that was a lion at 0:05.  Why no, I have no idea why.

Incidentally, Ontario license plates switched to say 'Yours to discover' in 1982, around the time this campaign started.

Both 'Hello, Calgary' and the Ontario ads are big on showing off landscape, much like the currency at the time.  Although there are people in both, they seem much more engaged with outdoor activities than anything else.  Also, did anyone else notice a real dearth of women?  I found that odd, particularly when compared to 'Hello, Pittsburgh.'

Montreal also had a series of ads in the 1990s to promote....um....Montreal.  And they ran in Montreal.  I am still missing the basic concept here:



Montreal, the ad proclaims, you are the future.  And indeed, much in this commercial is very future-tastic, such as the prominent scientists doing something with science and someone graduating with such joy that she kicks her heels up in the air.  Montreal!  City that is going places!

I could have sworn that there was a far more sedate, less future-oriented English version, but I am unable to locate it on YouTube. Conspiracy?  Maybe.  But I'm pretty sure that it existed.

Oh Canada: Landscape as Nation and Fake Folksongs

Continuing the discussion on Canadian nationalism, I would like to take a moment and consider the 1954 currency series that was issued by the Canadian Mint:

The other bills ($20, $50, $100) are in the same ilk

If I had to sum up the country from this series of currency alone, I would say, 'Canada: we have landscapes, but no people.'  However, a closer look at these images reveals that in addition to these various panoramas, we also have resources.  For instance, on the $1, we have plains suitable for growing wheat.  On the $5, we have trees, just waiting to be logged.  Even the $2, with its gentle, rolling hills, suggests that some kind of agriculture is taking place since the whole countryside looks so tamed.  While there were some modifications to these scenes made in the next currency series (issued in 1969)--such as the inclusion of a schooner on the $5 and the Canadian parliamentary building on the $1--the $20 retained this idea of Canada as Scenic Landscape Panorama:

Indeed, Canada as land of primary resources and nature was reflected in a very popular series of videos issued by Environment Canada (government entity) and the National Film Board, entitled Hinterland Who's Who.  These short clips would provide a brief documentary about a specific creature that was found in the Canadian wilderness.   These videos have appeared on Canadian television since 1963, and continue to run even today, although they have been revamped for a more modern format.  The theme music is iconic and makes a fabulous ringtone:

The calls have 'come to symbolize Canada's wilderness because of their lonely, haunting quality.'

The impression that one has, between currency and wildlife videos, is that Canada is a vast, lonely place, inhabited by many creatures, but few (if any) people.  This is, in fact, pretty accurate, since Canada is large and, in places, sparsely populated.  But how to represent its people?

One answer came with another National Film Board video entitled, 'The Log Driver's Waltz,' which was also shown on television and in movie theaters.   This 1979 version provided animation for the song written by Wade Hemsworth, a Canadian songwriter who also saw how logging camps operated during the 1950s.  There is a 1955 Smithsonian Folkways album of his music entitled 'Folk Songs of the Canadian North Woods,' although 'The Log Driver's Waltz' is not one of the selections included.  While I would hate to make a generalization about the entire nation based on this cartoon, my suspicion is that most of us believed this song to be much older, one that originated in logging camps and possibly one that was sung by lumberjacks. 

I suspect that part of the popularity of this particular cartoon (and I would guarantee that most Canadians remember it and could even sing the chorus) is that it reflects what are generally viewed as Canadian values--and not just in the Canadian wildlife that appears while the log driver is going down the river (i.e., moose and beaver).  The verse about the narrator having to dance with white-collar men, such as the doctors and lawyers, but preferring the log driver reflects a particularly Canadian idea that all of us are entirely equal.  There is very little concept of elitism in Canada, and certainly elitism is not grounded in education.  So while our narrator's parents might prefer for her to choose a more rich and stable man, she is perfectly content with a blue-collar worker.

I wouldn't make such a big deal about the possible intention of minimizing the authorial influence in favor of a folk interpretation if it wasn't something that happened in a second case as well.  The song 'Barrett's Privateers' might be one of the few that many Canadians would know and consider to be 'a part of our heritage' (as some of the other National Film Board videos would put it).  This song seems to be especially authentic: it mentions actual Canadian locations (Halifax, Sherbrooke); it tells the story of a boat crew and their adventures; and it sounds, well, 'old':

Except that it's really from 1976. 

So then why has it taken a place as a purportedly authentic song?  I would suggest that this song contains some sentiments that Canadians want to think are timeless.  Take, for instance, the chorus, which is repeated multiple times: 'I was told we cruise the seas for American gold/We'd fire no guns.'  What could be more Canadian than that?  'Let's go pillage the neighbours, but not do any harm while we are doing it.  Sorry.'  Of course, things don't go as planned, and it is an American ship (specifically, a 'bloody great Yankee hove') that takes down the Antelope.  Perhaps even worse, the American ship is laden with gold ('god damn them all'), so there is something here about thwarted aspirations--a feeling that Canada seems to know well when competing with its neighbors to the south.

This folk-ish quality also has a long legacy in Canadian music, as evinced in the 1990 song 'Home for a Rest,' by Spirit of the West (this is also the designated song that had to be played late at night in Canadian clubs during the 1990s and a frequent favorite at weddings).  While there was no suggestion that this was some kind of ancient Canadiana, it is hard not to hear the distinct folk roots of this piece in the violin parts and the song as a whole, and I would suggest that it fits with the other selections as something that sounds kind of old, but really isn't:

For more information about Canadian currency:

http://www.currencymuseum.ca/national-currency-collection/

Oh Canada: inventing a tradition for a polite and clean nation

I grew up in a country that regularly featured propaganda videos in movies and on television to teach me about my culture and heritage.  No, I wasn't behind the Iron Curtain or in a place run by a dictator: this took place in Canada on a regular basis.  Government-supported films were created (by the National Film Board) to offer insights into what made us Canadians.  Why was this necessary?  Because Anglo Canadian culture was not particularly well defined, from what I recall.  Sure, we all had to read Canadian literature in school, but I didn't find that Canada had the same kinds of nation-defining events as America (and we are constantly comparing ourselves to America, even when we don't admit it).  There was no real equivalent to American Thanksgiving, for instance, which is a holiday steeped with rituals, formal and informal.  Canada Day had fireworks, but nothing on par with the Fourth of July.  In fact, growing up I think that many of us had the idea that Canada didn't really amount to all that much, in the world, but we were clean and polite.

[I think that this has shifted drastically, but that may have to wait for another post]

This is not to say that all Canadians were walking around with a lack of identity.  Some groups had defined themselves very well.  Take, for instance, French Canada, which had a slew of folk songs, literature, plays, and even television.  In fact, my favorite Canadian television show when I was growing up came from Quebec.  It was called Lance et compte, and it was basically the Canadian response to Dallas, only with hockey.  Yes, it was a primetime soap opera based around the fictional Quebec Nationals team (thinly veiled for the Quebec Nordiques, they even shared a logo), and it was phenomenal.  I remember scenes like one of the Soviet players defecting via the Canadian embassy in Paris.  This was engaging stuff when you were a young Canadian:

I will post more later about French Canadian identity, which is a fascinating and complex topic.  Jewish Canadian identity was also relatively well-defined, and in fact substituted somewhat for Canadian identity as a whole, at least in the realm of high school literature that we had to read.  The only Canadian book that I remember reading in school was Mordecai Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz (1955), which I hated with the power of a thousand suns because I found the main character repugnant.  We were not given any context for his character and this may have been my first exposure to the concept of Jewishness as a potentially separate group within what we had been taught was a cohesive whole.  Perhaps more context would have improved my experience, but in the end, I gained little insight into what it was to be an Anglo Canadian, since Duddy was Jewish and in Montreal, which means he was subject to what is effectively an entirely different culture than my Anglo-Saxon Ontario upbringing.

(You might find it weird that we didn't read Margaret Atwood, who is possibly the most effective chronicler of Anglo Canadian life that I know, with Cat's Eye being her best work in this regard.  I do too.  Maybe she talked about sex or women or some other scary and uncomfortable subject, and therefore could not be included in the curriculum.  Why not Robertson Davies?  There were better options).

English Canada has a bad habit of stealing the culture of French Canada.  Today, you can find poutine hailed as a Canadian dish (French fries, gravy, and cheese curds, YUMMY YUM, even if it is a heart attack on a plate).  However, it's really from Quebec.  When I was growing up, you only found poutine in Quebec, never anywhere else.  To say that it represents Canada as a whole would be a little bit like if New Englanders suddenly appropriated barbeque as their own.  The South would, obviously, rise up, led by irate pit masters.  Canadians may be too polite to rise up, but certainly they take no issue with adopting French (or Canadian-Jewish) cultural icons as their own.  Even the folk songs that I remember from school were mostly from Quebec:

And one from Newfoundland:

I didn't feel any closer attachment to Newfoundland culture than I did to that of Quebec.  However, I do find it notable that I don't remember a single unique Ontario song from when I was growing up.

I should probably point out that I was part of a French immersion program, so I spent more time speaking and learning about French than many Canadian students.  However, I am fascinated with how much Quebec informs Canada's culture as a whole, and how strange the notion of an Anglo Canadian culture was.  This topic will be the subject of future 'Oh Canada' posts.