Chiquita Canáda

Last month we had a visit from Eliz­abeth Anderson, who hails from Min­neapolis, Minnesota, where she is a grad­u­ate stu­dent at the state univer­sity. Her field of study is Canada, and she also writes about Canada for Utne Reader. We wanted imme­di­ately to know what there is about Canada that might con­sti­tute an object of study, and she said peo­ple always laugh at first when she tells them that. (We too were laugh­ing.) And then she said: why is that, do you think? She had other hard ques­tions for us, too.

“People laughed at me for two years,” she went on to say, “but now some of them are start­ing to think that I made a very smart move by dis­tinguishing myself in this way from my col­leagues. No one else, you see, knows any­thing about Canada, and Minnesota is a bor­der state, after all. So I have become a sort of spokesper­son for Canada amongst my col­leagues, and no mat­ter how inac­cu­rate my knowl­edge of Canada might be, peo­ple ask me the ques­tions now, and — well, I’m the local expert.

“When I knew that Canada would be my focus, I had to find some Cana­dians, so I went to see the Canadian con­sul in Minneapolis. He turned out to be an American doing cul­tural PR for Canada, but he was great: he was able to iden­tify a few Canadians for me right away. For exam­ple, there was a Canadian over at Ogsberg College near the University. Right from the start Canadians proved to be really friendly, and quite will­ing to talk about it.

“My inter­est started with a friend in col­lege who had lived most of his life in Canada, although he was born in Brazil. He was the first per­son to tell me any­thing about Canada, and then I have some rel­a­tives in Quebec through mar­riage. Three years ago I spent a sum­mer at Laval in Quebec, in French immer­sion. That was my first chance to meet a lot of Canadians. Most of the time I’m starved for Cana­dians, of course. Where are they — where are they? I say to myself. But just recently an authen­tic Canadian joined the English depart­ment. Her name is Helen Hoy and I’ve sort of hooked up with her. I’m very glad she’s there.

“I tell peo­ple my research is on The Construction of Canadian National Cultural Identity. I love using the word con­struc­tion in my titles, and I like colons too. I just wrote a paper on I Heard the Mermaids Singing and La Femme de l’hôtel called ‘Objectivizing Reality: Identity Construction.’ My big sub­ject is the National Film Board, both as a national insti­tu­tion and as the site of dif­fer­ent ini­tia­tives — the women’s stu­dio, the French unit and the Challenge for Change program.

“The first time I came to Canada I was four years old at the Montreal Expo in ‘67. Since then I’ve been to Montreal a few times, Toronto once, and now Vancouver. That’s it, so far. The only Canadian ac­cent I am aware of to date is the Peter Jennings accent on TV.

“I have no idea what Canadian iden­tity means, of course, but I’m fas­ci­nated by the pub­lic debate here, which seems to be hap­pen­ing right out in the open. At first I didn’t know Canada was mul­ti­cul­tural, but with all that immi­gra­tion in the eight­ies — I’m very inter­ested in how that works out. That’s what excites me about this place. There seems to be a more seri­ous debate going on here.

“There’s a cer­tain pair of shoes that I love wear­ing: Fluevogs. John Flue­vog is a Canadian and I’m try­ing to get hold of him. He lives in Vancouver, you know. I love his shoes.

“There seems to be a pretty strong reac­tion here to the American cul­tural pres­ence. I mean American pop cul­ture, which to a cer­tain extent back home is con­sid­ered resis­tant to the main­stream. That doesn’t seem to be the case here, while any­thing British seems to be okay, its “high cul­ture.” Do you know what I mean? Actually. I can’t believe how I defend America when I’m talk­ing to Canadian nationalists.

“Another thing that’s hard for an American to under­stand is the con­nection to the royal fam­ily. I mean the Queen on your money and your stamps and stuff. Don’t you find that embar­rass­ing? Do you actu­ally pay her? Taxes or levies, things like that?

“And here’s another mys­tery for you. You see this Chiquita Banana sticker? Look closely and you’ll see it has a Canadian flag on it. Now I found this on a bunch of bananas in a Minne­apolis mar­ket. I have no idea what it means. Has this got some­thing to do with free trade? What do you think?

“I’m very inter­ested in cul­tural ex­change. One day I’d like to open up a cul­tural cen­tre. I think what I’d like to be is a cul­tural attaché for Canada. That’s what I’d really like.”