At the beginning of every summer, Maclean鈥檚 publishes its Canada Day Survey. It is an early start on seasonal silliness, as filling as a Popsicle and as sturdy as a sandcastle.
So, don鈥檛 take the magazine鈥檚 sixth annual exercise in self-congratulation too seriously. Consider it an opportunity, though, for 91原创s to sashay down the runway of nations, svelte and sexy, basking in the applause of a world grateful to share the planet with us.
That鈥檚 because, if you didn鈥檛 know it, we are the Chosen People. We are prosperous, healthy, humorous, smart, industrious and cosmopolitan, and that鈥檚 just for starters. Why, according to Maclean鈥檚, there鈥檚 no one quite like us 鈥� at least not in North America.
MacLean鈥檚 doesn鈥檛 just think this; it has the numbers. It always has numbers 鈥� some more persuasive than others 鈥� and year after year, they say the same thing: we鈥檙e wonderful! Now, surely we can brag on our birthday, like everyone else does on theirs. We have much to celebrate and appreciate.
As satirist Tom Lehrer used to sing, what good are laurels if you can鈥檛 rest on them?
This year, Maclean鈥檚 again examines the United States and finds 鈥�99 reasons why it鈥檚 better to be 91原创.鈥� The paint-by-numbers portrait is a Valentine to ourselves: We live longer, we are happier, we divorce less, we kill ourselves less, we are healthier, we are smarter, we drink less, we are cooler about homosexuality. We even have bigger houses, which must really offend the Americans.
Didn鈥檛 you know that we鈥檙e better at special effects than the Americans? Or that we are less fat (one-quarter of 91原创s are obese in contrast to one-third of Americans)?
Didn鈥檛 you know we are more peaceful? We鈥檙e leaders in fecal transplant therapy (鈥渉oly crap,鈥� says Maclean鈥檚) and our weather is better than their climate of tornadoes and hurricanes, which is surely news to our many snowbirds.
You get the point, though, especially that we鈥檙e funnier.
And it is funny, or it would be funny, if surveys like this didn鈥檛 reveal just our irrepressible inferiority complex. If it endures in us, well, it鈥檚 understandable. We live next to the world鈥檚 most successful people. It鈥檚 hard.
After all, we have Stephen Harper and they have Barack Obama. We have John Baird and they have John Kerry. Before Kerry, they had Hillary Clinton and we had Lawrence Cannon.
We have hockey; they have baseball, football, basketball. Olympics after Olympics, they present the greatest athletes in the world. In the Olympics of the Mind, they produce the most Nobel laureates.
We have the Royal Ontario Museum and Montreal鈥檚 Mus茅e des beaux-arts, good as they are. They have the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum, unique as they are.
We have the Trans-Canada Highway, which goes in two directions, in two lanes. They have the Interstate highway system, which goes in all directions, in four lanes.
They were late to both world wars, which we don鈥檛 let them forget, but their intervention won them both. In the 1940s, they rebuilt Europe and fostered the international nomenclature that emerged from it.
They have made mistakes, some pretty awful, but they have a remarkable capacity to recover. They embrace ambition and celebrate success like no other people. They know how to dream.
Ultimately, these differences make America a great nation and Canada a good nation.
Maclean鈥檚, though, is right: 91原创s are the luckiest people in the world 鈥� if only because in the lottery of neighbours, we drew the United States of America.
Andrew Cohen is a professor of journalism and international affairs at Carleton University.
