Stalking the Elephant
my discovery of America
James Laxer

Living next to you is like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered the beast, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.
Pierre Elliot Trudeau

There's another book in my library with "my discovery of America" in the title. That one is by Farley Mowat, and was moderately famous in 1985. Mowat illustrates the paranoia of the US in the calls and letters he received after he was refused entry at the border. At least Laxer manages to get into the US, and we're the richer for his travels. Many people outside North America have generally favourable thoughts of Canada, when they think of it at all, and generally unfavourable thoughts of the US, and they have to think of it all too often. Yet the two countries are probably more alike than any other pair of countries.

We both speak slightly different variants of English, but outside a hard Newfie accent or a really deep southern drawl, we have not the slightest problem each other's words. Our thoughts and attitudes are something else altogether. Ostensibly we both have democratic forms of governments, with everybody abiding by the results of regular elections. We watch much the same television shows, see the same movies, read the many of the same books and magazines, eat the same foods, and drive the same cars. However, nearly to a person, Canadians are horrified at the prospect of being taken for Americans. In many ways, we define ourselves by what we are not.

Many people have attempted to define Canada and Canadians from within the country, and everybody argues about how well they may have succeeded. Laxer takes the position that "it's become utterly artificial to analyze Canada without taking into account the immense American influences on the country." We are firmly in the US orbit, and unless we make some deliberate choices about ourselves, the default result will be whatever the US wants. In order to understand ourselves and make future plans, we need to better understand the US.

Stalking the Elephant has a prologue, 14 essays, and an epilogue, all of which illustrate some aspect of life in the US. These are well written, amusing though somewhat unsettling. However, there is a serious message here. What Laxer shows us is repugnant to many, perhaps even most Canadians. In spite of the protests about the gun registry program, nobody here wants to see guns more readily available than they are now. While a slight majority of Canadians say in polls that they want to see a return of the death penalty, there isn't (Olsen and Bernardo aside) any real push to do so. We might sneer at the poor turnout of voters, but our voting trends are on the way down. Medicare (the five principals of which are public administration, accessibility, accountability, universality, and portability) is one of the programs that practically defines Canada. We may argue about what should be done to improve service, but almost any changes are seen as leading to an American system, which by definition is bad. Americans admit that our health care system is better than theirs, or at least, is so for everybody but the very wealthy.

Laxer inserts some numbers and statistics into his essays, but they aren't the least dry. At the risk of adding more numbers, it would be very interesting to see the relevant figures for Canada. The numbers support the story, and the story is, do you really want to go there?

But Laxer takes a wider view of where that "there" really is, and where it could be going. He looks at America's place in the world, contrasting their impact on every other country with their sometimes not so latent isolationism. The US has always used the menace of an outsider to fuel the spending on their military, in between bouts of isolationism. Most recently the menace was the USSR, and prior to that Germany, Japan, and Spain took their turns. He points out the next "enemy" of the US is liable to be China. The recent spy plane incident supports this idea.

Where does all this leave Canada? Laxer doesn't specifically say, beyond implying that we may wish to leave the American orbit. It isn't clear how that could be achieved. None the less, with a flair reminiscent of John McPhee and Tim Cahill, Laxer shows the dangers of being in bed with the elephant. Canadians have an awareness of the US already; how could it be otherwise? Yet maybe we don't know enough. If we want to work towards a stronger Canada, we need to know exactly what we're up against.

Viking 2000
ISBN 0-670-88641-6