Fox News Controversy

In the past day or so, Canadians here have expressed outrage at comments made by a satirical show on Fox News that played up inaccurate stereotypes of Canadians. See here:

Toronto Star

While this show is supposedly satirical, I find myself sharing the opinions of Canadians with regard to the asinine “jokes” at the expense of the Canadians. One comic on that show confessed that he did not know that Canadians were fighting alongside American troops in Afghanistan. On a per capita basis, Canadians have lost more troops over there than the U.S. have (remember, Canada has a smaller population than the state of California).

The display of Canadian patriotism in honoring soldiers who gave their lives in Afghanistan is quite impressive. There is a “Highway of Heroes” procession that takes place every time a fallen soldier returns home. The procession proceeds on Highway 401 from Trenton to Toronto and is lined with multitudes of citizens paying tribute as the procession goes by. There are 50 bridges over the highway from Trenton to Toronto. Every single one of those bridges are packed with folks, firefighters, and policemen waving Canadian flags in tribute to those fallen soldiers. That kind of display should put those Fox News guys to shame.

I recently received an e-mail containing a 33 picture slideshow of this procession and it is VERY impressive. If you’d like to see it, just e-mail me and I’ll send it to you.

I’d like to take a moment to point out that there is much that binds Canada and the U.S. historically, linguistically, economically and geographically. There is far more similarities than differences between the two countries. Yes, there are some political and cultural differences The reality of life is that one country cannot do without the other. That is why, historically, the first foreign trip taken by a U.S. President has usually been to Canada as President Obama did last month.

Unfortunately, there is some degree of ignorance on both sides of the border and that contributes to misunderstandings or mistaken assumptions about the other country. To cite a couple of examples, I remember a co worker of mine in Columbus (and who has travelled to Canada frequently for summer vacations) telling me that a mutual friend of ours once asked her “do Canadians use the same money ?” Fer crying out loud !! What was amazing about that is that Columbus is just 3.5 hours from the US-Canada border (through Detroit). Another example is when a friend once asked me “do they ALL speak French up there ?” Uh, no !!!

The Fox News guys may have been operating from long held inaccuracies about Canada in general even if they were “joking.” On the other side of the coin, I have encountered some ignorance and some anti-Americanism up here. Fortunately, they are in a very small minority.