Last week, I spoke with John Ralston Saul on his book A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada. This is the interview. Please note he is referring to his appearance at the Ottawa International Writer’s Festival, which was this past Sunday.
Saul is an excellent author: he creates prose that is engaging and interesting, drawing the reader in even if regardless of whether they buy the argument. That’s at least where I am- A Fair Country, at least in the first third, is a book about the origins of Canada’s political culture. There are a couple of broad thoughts as to how Canada’s political culture was formed: the first looks at ideas being imported by people that come to the country (so, the loyalists brought a deference to authority, as an example), the other looks to the evolution of attitudes based on events (the Act of Union forces English and French Canada to work together, producing bi-culturalism.) I tend to think the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Saul takes a different approach: Canada, he says, is a Metis Nation, suggesting that the aboriginal influence on Canadian political culture is as important as all the rest, if not more important. Essentially, most of the modern things that we take pride in as Canadians, such as cultural cooperation, he ties back to an aboriginal influence, with more or less a straight line.
And I just don’t buy it. Certainly, Canada’s aboriginal population played an important role in Canada’s early development- remember that through much of the 17th century, New France had a direct commercial relationship with aboriginals, and relied on them to help expand and defend the colony. But really, I think much of Canada’s cultural identity, at least as we know it now, really doesn’t start to emerge before a couple of hundred years ago, as you saw massive migration into the country of European settlers. And I don’t just mean loyalists and Quebeckers, because by the beginning of the 20th century Canada was quickly filling itself with people from all across the world (or at least all across Europe), and, with a country that largely still needed to be built we had to quickly figure out ways of working together.
Also (and perhaps a bit flippantly), given that Canada put its best efforts, to say the least, into diminishing the role of Aboriginal culture for much of the last 300 years, if you accept Saul’s argument it certainly did take a while for the aboriginal parts of our culture to benefit Canada’s aboriginals.
None of this should be taken that the book is bad, it’s just that I disagree. The role of public intellectuals like Saul isn’t to feed an intellectual echo box, it is to introduce new ideas into the discussion. Saul takes a different direction than most, which get’s us all talking about why we think and act the way we do. That’s always a good discussion to have, so that’s the value in the book.
It should be noted that he pivots in the second half of the book, which becomes more of a lament for what Canada should be, outlining a series of various faults from ineffective elites, who are unwilling or unable to set us in the right direction, to a chapter criticizing Ottawa that has lead to predictable responses from the usual suspects. This is the more interesting part of the book, and I think raises some useful insights into contemporary Canada. That said, I’m not sure part two can exist or be properly appreciated without part 1, so don’t skip ahead.
Fun Tuesday Special Blend fact: I think it is fair to say that of all the interviews Adam and I have done, Saul is probably the only person that has lived in a house important enough to justify tour guides.