Martha Washington's Chocolates

      The History Channel in the US has decided do disinter the fetid corpse of The War of 1812 to put forth the sickening pule of American jingoism.   Oy vey.   My American readers will no doubt have difficulty understanding why the War of 1812 remains a Canadian sore-spot, even if "Canada" as we now know it didn't exist at the time.   Part of it is the extremely selective memories of our neighbours (once invaders), who tend to claim the war was something that it certainly was not, an attempt to liberate the northern colonies from the British yoke. Blech. Pap. Garbage. It was an invasion, a pure old-fashioned land-grab (timed while the Brits were supposedly distracted with the Napoleonic wars), and it didn't take. What few people outside of Canada realize is the extent to which "Canadian identity" was defined by the War of 1812, by the refusal to be a part of America. For all the jokes about Canada being "America Junior," there's no better way to get a Canadian's dander up than to call him or her an American: whatever a Canadian is, a Canadian is NOT an American, a principle held proudly, and sometimes quite fiercely, by most of my countryfolk. And Canadians, almost as a rule, tend to harbour some residual resentment for the War of 1812, a war Americans claim they won and which Canadians claim otherwise, with the latter obviously being the truth (or else, as the satirist Eric Nicol once wrote, we'd be eating Martha Washington's chocolates right now).

      The current spin on the burning of Washington as a terrorist attack roughly analogous to the attacks three years ago is also rubbish. The razing of the White House (still a source of pride for some Canucks) was largely the response of a bunch of drunken Fenians responding to the initial gestures of American *ahem* "liberation." It was tit-for-tat, classic one-up-manship; it was a variation on "the Chicago way," if you remember The Untouchables:

You wanna know how you do it? Here's how, they pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue! That's the Chicago way, and that's how you get Capone!

The principle? They attacked us, so we went for their capital and sent Dolly Madison racing out of the White House with paintings in her hands. The lesson? Don't fuck with us.   Alternately: What goes around, comes around.

      I suppose it may seem tasteless writing about this stuff on September 11th, but there's also a purpose to it. For all of the very sincere tributes to those lost on this day three years ago, there's also a lot of mythmaking and falsification, the deliberate misconstruing of history for alternate purposes. It's a syndrome to which the United States seems perpetually susceptible, whether it's the declaration of a victory in 1812, or the "we-saved-the-world-in-WW2" pap that handily ignores the awfully-convenient American delay in entering the war. The History Channel's butchery of history should serve as a reminder of the dangers of twisting history to the point of inaccuracy (hello, Mr Bush; how are those weapons of mass destruction treatin' ya?). We all have to beware the tendency to see things as want to see them rather than as they were or are. We do a great disservice to those we lost when we distort the truth and indulge in grotesque nationalist vanity.

      As for today, well, I'll just refer you to what I wrote at this time last year. I said then that perhaps understanding is a luxury of the living. I still think that's true, but, as we all know, sitting at our computers surfing the web, even luxuries can eventually become necessities. Understanding may be a luxury, but misunderstanding is a corruption and it lingers and taints the ways in which we look at the world. Damn those unruly facts....

      (With that, I'm remembering Colin Mochrie's lacerating "Apology to Americans" (video here; requires Real Player) that so beautifully typifies Canadian passive-aggressiveness.)

Hello. I'm Anthony St. George on location here in Washington.

On behalf of Canadians everywhere I'd like to offer an apology to the United States of America. We haven't been getting along very well recently and for that, I am truly sorry. I'm sorry we called George Bush a moron. He is a moron, but it wasn't nice of us to point it out. If it's any consolation, the fact that he's a moron shouldn't reflect poorly on the people of America. After all, it's not like you actually elected him.

I'm sorry about our softwood lumber. Just because we have more trees than you, doesn't give us the right to sell you lumber that's cheaper and better than your own. It would be like if, well, say you had ten times the television audeince we did and you flood our market with great shows, cheaper than we could produce. I know you'd never do that.

I'm sorry we beat you in Olympic hockey. In our defence I guess our excuse would be that our team was much, much, much, much better than yours. As word of apology, please accept all of our NHL teams which, one by one, are going out of business and moving to your fine country.

I'm sorry about our waffling on Iraq. I mean, when you're going up against a crazed dictator, you want to have your friends by your side. I realize it took more than two years before you guys pitched in against Hitler, but that was different. Everyone knew he had weapons.

I'm sorry we burnt down your White House during the War of 1812. I see you've rebuilt it! It's very nice.

I'm sorry for Alan Thicke, Shania Twain, Celine Dion, Loverboy, that song from Seriff that ends with a really high-pitched long note. Your beer. I know we had nothing to do with your beer, but we feel your pain.

And finally on behalf of all Canadians, I'm sorry that we're constantly apologizing for things in a passive-aggressive way which is really a thinly veiled criticism. I sincerely hope that you're not upset over this. Because we've seen what you do to countries you get upset with.

For 22 minutes, I'm Anthony St. George, and I'm sorry.