Canada [antikvár]

Introduction Mr. Brian Moore does a needed service in this book about Canada. He writes with sure knowledge and sympathetic understanding of our northern neighbor, and the pictures interlaced with the text capture the broad sweep of Canada, its beauty and its loneliness. For most of us in the United States, Canada is not really a foreign country. And failure to grasp this simple fact accounts for much of the difficulty which growingly attends our relationship. If we are to understand Canada—as in our deepest self-interest we must—then we have to accept the fact that Canadians want to be Canadians and not "Americans." They want to cultivate their own distinctive national personality and culture—which is under the casual but constant bombardment of a nation 10 times more populous and 13 times richer. The fact that this steady bombardment of the printed word, of movies, radio and television, of labor unions, of capital seeking investment and of ideas in general is wholly casual, and not the calculated penetration of Canada by the United States government for a political purpose, has really nothing to do with the case. The Canadians are where they are—next to us—and in order to resist the pressures to which they feel subjected, they will perpetually amaze most of us in the United States by their reactions to what we do or say to them in all innocence. Even more difficult for most of us to understand is the fact that they feel most injured when we do or say nothing to them— for then "we are taking Canada for granted." It is because of this abyss of innocence— even ignorance—on our side of the border that Mr. Moore does such valiant service. He better enables a wide audience in our own country to understand something of the proud history and the uncertain, troubled vision of a distinctively Canadian destiny held by our friends in that rich, varied, empty, beautiful country that is Canada. The penetration of the wilderness by the early voyageurs; the opening up of the rich prairies; the achievement first of Confederation in 1867 and then in 1931 of independence under the Crown; the legendary heroism of Canadians in two world wars and more recently in Korea; the industrialization that has come in recent decades; and the remarkable role that Canada began to play on the world stage after World War 11, in the United Nations, in the Commonwealth, in NATO and indeed everywhere that a few nations gathered together— all these constitute a tribute to the character, the ability and the independent-mindedness that Canada breeds. Different as Canadians are from us and as they are determined to remain, many readers of this volume (and this introduction) will no doubt continue to cling to the belief that their Canadian relatives and business associates and vacation companions could not possibly be so unfriendly as to fail to take pride in being mistaken for "Americans." If, however, even a few readers are led to re-examine this conviction, this book will have done its part to serve well the future relations of the two peoples who by geography, history, trade, science and modern communications have been made truly interdependent. Livingston T. Merchant former U.S. Ambassador to Canada