The day after Canada Day it dawned on me that I am proud to be Canadian. I never imagined I would think of myself as a proud maple-syrop eating; beer and bear loving Canadian, let alone say it. You might be tempted to think that my newfound pride is just a reflection of my generally under-vacationed state and therefore the longing for some hard earned statutory holidays. Since I am no longer living in the land of the Maple Leaf, I can with in all honesty say - you are wrong! In fact, it has been a while now I have cut ties with anything really Canadian except for an occasional reception at the Canadian Embassy in Paris and even that, I have abandoned last year since the celebration consisted of one euro beer and the kind of music you hear playing at Wal Mart on an average Monday. All in all, my natural patriotic tendencies are low not to say non-existent when left to their own devices. On the contrary, I am proud - even if a little exhausted - of hopping on and off planes, trains and automobiles and like to consider myself a citizen of the world.
And yet, over the past years, my patriotism or perhaps, more precisely, the identification with Canadian values, has grown tremendously, without me even realising it. The irony of the situation is that it has happened over the same years that I have been living on another continent, where procuring maple syrop is about as exotic as procuring hairless kiwis and seeing snow - the real thick and relentlessly unmelting one - is about as frequent as the return of the Messiah. Not that I particularly miss either. Not the Messaih that is.
What I miss is all the other aspects of Canada and its people that while I was living there, I did not identify as distinctly Canadian. The Canadian friendliness which I have realised is almost the quintessence of the Canadian being, appeared just normal and ordinary when I strolled down the isles of Indigo while sipping the very unCanadian Starbucks coffee. The multiculturalism without racism, the American dream accessible without giving up healthcare, the access to education without being indebted "for better or for worse" - these were not concepts I gave much thought to. They were as much "givens" for me, as the availability, and indeed the necessity, of bananas to an average chimpanzee. Instead, I what I noticed more were the reasons I did not "fit in" into the perfect picture of Canadian lifestyle - I couldn't find decent shoes, I couldn't (and still cannot) stand beer, I couldn't (and still cannot) deal with screaming hockey or baseball fans, I loathed the absence of any culture.
And then I moved to the UK and then to France and the picture reversed. Perhaps they are right when they say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but I daresay it's more than that. It is not that I particularly miss Canada, but from hundreds of miles away, I have learned to appreciate the its merits and its values. And yes, I do regret, sometimes quite terribly, that these values are so evident by their absence in Europe, including in the over-romanticised but still incredible country called France.
This is not to speak of customer service which is so appalling that I have now completely switched all the visa-charging activity to the internet. The net can malfunction, it can steal my credit card information, but it cannot ignore me, insult me or worst of all, ask me until when I am staying in France. Here, I suppose I should explain that since my accent gives away my non-French origins, all salespeople think that I am here in the passing and therefore will never come back their store - reasoning that I can be simply ignored.
But in fact, Canadian values touch on much more fundamental and much less superficial aspects of life. As a first generation immigrant to Canada, I can speak from first hand experiences of the difficulties of integration. However, there is nothing, and I mean nothing even remotely similar to the difficulties of immigrants here. In France, the immigrants generally come from the french-speaking Africa and settle in the non-french speaking French suburbs, where they are integrated among themselves but no one else. No one, including the French police, dares to pay a visit to these areas for the simple fear of being shot. That is incidentally where all the famous car burning take place which have by now become known worldwide.
Welcome to South Africa in France: there is them, and then, there is us, protected in a police state firmly installed by our hyperactive President. The new strategy is that the police does not travel to the the infamous suburbs to deal with the problem children, instead they install themselves every two meters in Paris to protect us from them. It may not be the Middle Ages, but we are still in fortress mentality. To be fair to our hard-core on security president, he inherited the problem from the years of socialist governments which failed so miserably to understand the concept of selective immigration which is the hallmark of the Canadian immigration policy. So now, instead of selective immigration, we have not so selective policing, extensive rioting and a clash of civilisations in one country. Hungtington would surely feel relieved.
And this brings me to explain why today, of all days, I feel so proud to be Canadian. Today, as I needed to send some money to relatives in Ukraine, I had an interesting conversation with North African teller at the bank, who in the good old French tradition, was asking me for every piece of official paper that had my name on it, allegedly to prove my identity. When I ran out of cards to show him, he finally ran out of patience and told me straight out that since I didn't understand what he wanted and that he didn't speak Ukrainian, I should just get lost. There I was, since I had an accent and a non-french last name, I had to be Ukrainian - some sort of an underclass to his North African dignity. I don't speak Ukrainian and I did leave, but I couldn't help thinking - what is it that makes the immigration in European countries such a combustive mixture of frustration and mutual dislike? Where are the smiles, even if fake, of the bank tellers and the courteous "what can I do for you, Ma'am?" And it is then, that I really had a craving for a cup of hazelnut so proudly Canadian Second Cup coffee served by a voluptuous African lady who would ask me if I'd like anything else with it.
Just a smile please, thank you.
