All nations are artificial constructions in that it was a series of deliberate events that went into each of their creations. Great Britain was created after many a battle, including those to unify Mercia, Wessex and Northumbria, these battles not ceasing until the Battle of Culloden, in 1745, and the question of Scottish independence still looms for a post-Brexit Great Britain. The United States assumed its now “natural” shape after a period of self declared Manifest Destiny which enabled it to create a continental sized nation, its parts, whether the dividing line is drawn between North and South or coastal and interior, still not having found ways to overcome their differences. Nations may claim to be united by a language or an ethnicity or a point of view, but their nationhood never ceases to be a hard sell. Ask the Yugoslavians.

So it is no surprise to think that Canada is an artificial nation, pieced together from French and British colonies, ninety percent of its population living within a hundred miles of the American border, very culturally and economically dependant on the United States, and bound to have become part of the American Union if Benedict Arnold had had some better luck. There are many explanations for why Canada was able to forge a distinctive identity for itself, one that was not a part of the American identity. Some say it was because of the building of the Canadian Pacific Railroad, which tied the country together east to west and so avoided the pull across the border, though that is hard to say because Alberta cowboys have more in common with the Wild West than with their Toronto co-citizens. Some would say it is because of the distinctive institutions Canadians set up, such as a cabinet system responsible to Parliament, or a national health insurance plan, even though these institutions are shared by all or most Western societies. It is also difficult to explain a Canadian identity because the settlement pattern of immigrant ethnic groups from Western and then Eastern Europe (Scots and Irish and Brits and then Italians and Slavs and Jews) was the same in Canada and in the United States; it was just that more Europeans went to the United States, and Canadians still just can’t believe that they did so because the weather was better further south.