from which...
Canadians and Americans still dress alike, talk alike, like the same books, television shows and movies, and trade more goods and services than ever before. But from gay marriage to drug use to church attendance, a chasm has opened up on social issues that go to the heart of fundamental values.
====================
What fills me with wonder, of a sort, is the assumption buried within the piece that Canada's cultural difference from the US is startling news.
I can't recall ever reading a similar *report* about our immediate neighbour to the south.
Well, there are all those stories - fictional and non - about corrupt Federales, mountain villa and chrome kitted SUV buying narco-trafficers and assorted other obsessions of true-crime adventure crazed Americans, but nothing with this isn't-it-passing-strange-they're-not-entirely-us' subtext.
*But,* someone might say, *Mexico's culture is influenced by imposed Spanish and indigenous influences very dissimilar from Puritan America so of course they're different. Canada, on the other hand...* Uh huh.
The most precious bit from the piece for me:
Not all analysts see a big, lasting divergence. Some like Peter Jennings, the ABC News broadcaster who was born in Toronto and became a dual American and Canadian citizen in May, believe that Canadians have actually drawn closer to Americans. Nevertheless, Mr. Jennings said Canada had become *a socially more relaxed kind of place.*
...
When did Peter Jennings become an *analyst*?
By the standard apparently applied, that cup of rapidly cooling black tea on my desk can be an *analyst* too.
DRM