Well, it started a long way back with Sir John A. MacDonald. He was the very first prime minister of Canada, as well as the drunken maniac that united this crazy country of ours. He started it all. Yes, when he died in 1891, Canada started dying with him. Sure, it was a bit tough to tell at first. I mean, the country had only been drunkenly jury-rigged together since 1867. No one was expecting it to start dying so quickly.
It wasn’t until the 1970s that a clever young woman named Margaret Atwood figured it out. She was a poet and author—i.e., she had a lot of time to sit around and think about things that other people might not think were so important—and she wrote a book called Survival: A thematic guide to Canadian Literature. The theme was surviving. And she figured that Canadian literature was all about just that: surviving. Of course, everybody knows the themes of literature are just the same themes that confront us day to day—tidied up a little, granted—right? So Atwood had figured out what Canadian culture was all about and had been about since 1891…
No one ever mentioned it, but it wasn’t too tough to figure out. I mean, you survive… right. But what happens after you’re done surviving? You move on to dying, of course. Thankfully, even after Ms. Atwood’s book, things moved along quite slowly. Canadians went on doing what she said they were doing, surviving… but just barely. Things went on as they had before, more or less, but as the new century dawned things kind of changed.
In September of 2000, Pierre Elliott Trudeau passed on. Sure, everyone had forgotten about him and his meagre contributions to Canadian culture and politics, but as soon as he died people started making a whole lot of hoopla. In the song and dance of the ensuing media circus, he was transformed into a Canadian institution (it was a CBC conspiracy), but, more importantly, he was dubbed “top Canadian newsmaker of the 20th Century.” What serendipity. I mean, he was a major Canadian newsmaker and he was dead… and he was dead… coincidence?
Then, in the summer of 2001, Mordecai Richler joined the dearly departed club. Once again, folks had sort of forgotten why he mattered—other than the grade-school gauntlet of being forced to read The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. Ernie Coombs’s (a.k.a. Mr Dressup’s) passing in September of that same year (somewhat overshadowed by… well, terror and mayhem) marked a new low for Canadian culture. Once again, death = Canadian Culture was the equation of the moment.
So now that Peter Gzowski has passed away, is there any question that this whole silly Canada thing has really run its course? I mean, we might as well tell Neil Young that we live in his true homeland after all. I mean, really, guys. Thank god this silly charade of pretending we’re a real country is finally over. We can all finally release that great northern sigh of relief. Wheeeeeeeeeeeeooouuuuu!
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