News and commentary from the cross-platform scripting community.
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Mail Starting 12/8/97 | |
Last year I started working for a firm in Toronto. Now I spend one week a month there. It has changed my impression of Canada a lot. Of course, I always knew I liked Canada when I visited, and I knew that my Canadian friends had a kind of thoughtfulness and lack of bluster, relative to Americans, that was refreshing.
From: phood@aimnet.com (Phil Hood);
Sent at Mon, 8 Dec 1997 17:26:56 -0700;
Re:EmpowermentBut it is so much more. Stop in the bookstore in a Canadian airport and the first display you'll see will be quality fiction by Canadian authors. Stop in a U.S. airport bookstore and the featured rack will be gossip best-sellers. We are talking here about a cultural difference.
Canadians support culture in general at a higher degree than Americans and they support multiple cultures with real gusto. It's a basic tenet of their government, their laws. It's an attitude they share as Canadians. Tolerance, diversity, fairness. Not a bad stance to take in a world where people still kill one another because of ethnic background.
Canadians are aware. Any Canadian newspaper beats any U.S. newspaper for coverage of world events. Canadians can more easily name their city and provincial representatives than Americans can. They are engaged in their society.
Canadians--perhaps it's the French influence--have a little more style.Walk through the airport in Montreal and Toronto and you'll see lots of cool coats and cool shoes. They know how to look good.
Canada has a pretty good foreign policy. It led the fight to ban land mines, which the U.S. is still hesitant about. By and large, Canada doesn't invade small Carribean nations unnecessarily.
At the same time, Canada is the U.S. best ally. On important issues we usually stand side by side. We are each other's biggest trading partners. We share the same space in the world, the same mountain chains, the same fisheries, trees, air, rivers. We share the same Native American culture and influences, too.
Canada has Eskimos and caribou and towns with names like Moosejaw. And, Canada is, along with Finland, the most wired country in the world, with 20 percent more networks per person than the U.S.
Canadians sometimes see themselves as a nation of people who are a little too polite. Saying "sorry" and "excuse me" comes easy to Canadians. That's okay.
Unlike the U.S. Canada never rebelled against England., was never a revolutionary nation. They don't have a mythology built around violent revolution as we do? They don't have a second amendment as we do. They prefer to work out issues nonviolently, whereas the U.S. prefers to solve problems through violence sometimes, as do U.S. citizens. Canada solves problems through patience. In the end, they have ended up just about as free as us. Who's to say that revolution is better than patience?
Yes, let's have a Canada Appreciation Day.
I, too, have a lot of respect for Ed and what he's doing, but it sounds like he exaggerated a bit in the comments you attribute to him below. It is true and a credit to Citrix that their market capitalization is *close to* Netscape's (about 90% of same), but--based on the numbers--it does not exceed it (unless Citrix issued a few million new shares in the past few weeks).
From: jeffbh@netscape.com (Jeff Barca-Hall);
Sent at Mon, 8 Dec 1997 13:15:33 -0700;
Citrix mkt cap: exaggeration?As a Canadian living in the United States I have the best of all worlds (at least when it comes to Thanksgiving). I do it twice! Once with my family in Canada, and 6 weeks later again with my American friends. Canadian Thanksgiving is in the middle of October (which, historically, is when the US Thanksgiving used to be) timed with the harvest festivals that the original North American immigrants had coming from Europe, like Harvest in England, and Oktoberfest in Germany. American Thanksgiving is unique in that the date is different from other harvest festivals, but that's all really. It's all the same holiday celebrating the same things.
From: alecs@microsoft.com (Alec Saunders);
Sent at Mon, 8 Dec 1997 13:14:54 -0700;
Re:EmpowermentAs far as Canada Appreciation Day goes, why not celebrate Canada Day on July 1 with Canadians? Some Americans already do this. King FM, which is the local classical radio station in Seattle, plays music by Canadian composers on Canada Day, just like they play French music on Bastille Day. Canada Day is a bit like Independence Day in the US, except that Canada never fought a war to become its own country -- it was created by an act of the British Parliament on July 1, 1867.
