REALITY CHECK
Don Pittis
Attack ads and the benefits of living elsewhere
Last Updated: Monday, May 25, 2009 | 8:10 AM ET
By Don Pittis, CBC News
Don Pittis, senior producer of CBC News Business A TV channel I often watch has been running the Tory attack ad picking on Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff. It would seem the Conservatives hope that voters will begin to see the Opposition leader as smug and effete, a kiss-blower, an ivory tower egghead. He may be. The only time I met him, at an Oxford University event, he snubbed me when I confessed to being a journalist and not a clever graduate student like most of the people in the room. I try not to carry a grudge.
The ads have not convinced me that Michael Ignatieff is a bad man. But, even if Canadians reject the Tory ad campaign, eventually we will find something to dislike about him, especially if he gets to be prime minister for a few terms. We always do.
Nonetheless, there was one thing about that ad that I especially disliked. That was the dissing of Canadians who spend time outside the country and then bring their experience home.
From Sam Champlain to John Macdonald, some of our best leaders came with foreign experience.
People from all over the world who bring their business skills, their art, their culture to Canada make it a better place. The list of well-known entrepreneurs born abroad — Thomas Bata of Bata Shoes, Magna's Frank Stronach, Research in Motion founder Mike Lazaridis, Michael Lee-Chin, Paul Reichmann, Terry Matthews — goes on and on. There are literally millions more who have succeeded in a smaller way.
Among Canadians born here there is also a great tradition of heading off to see the world before settling down.
'One of most important things you learn about living abroad is that it doesn't make you less Canadian. It makes you more Canadian.'
I remember as a young traveller taking "a year off" to see the world, we Canadians vied with Australians for being the most footloose. Why those two nations were over-represented in the hostels and trains remains a mystery to me. Canadians were rich in world terms, but so were Americans and Swiss. My guess is that it was a combination of being outward looking, and having a feeling of security that blowing the earnings of a summer job on travel would not limit our prospects.
Whatever the costs, there were benefits as well.
The most important lessons were the little ones. The sudden realization that the conventions of "normal" were merely arbitrary. That people ate garlic rice porridge or baguettes for breakfast instead of cereal and milk. That French workers started the day with a glass of vin rouge and the Spanish with a small glass of brandy, rather than O.J.
As a budding economist, I noticed that conventions of value and pricing depended on culture. That in places like Korea and Switzerland alcohol was cheap and coffee expensive. That unlike in Canada at the time, students could not pick up a $200 car and drive it. That for most of the world at that time, cars and many other things Canadians accepted as commonplace, were a luxury.
Travel teaches you that the world is not full of scary foreigners, but regular people who do things a little differently.
Actually living abroad adds a deeper layer of familiarity. It is the difference between visiting the zoo and living in the forest.
First alone, and then with my academic wife, I have spent a total of more than 10 years outside Canada. For periods of three months to five years, I've lived in France, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the U.K., and Belgium. It wasn't to escape Canada. Really, it was just a case of progressive wanderlust that started with Timmins, Atikokan, Thunder Bay, Yellowknife, Resolute Bay, Montreal, Ottawa and Regina.
One of most important things you learn about living abroad is that it doesn't make you less Canadian. It makes you more Canadian.
Canadians who stay at home are less Canadians than they are Quebecers or Westerners or Torontonians. We're from Yorkton or Sydney or Sarnia. Statistics tell us that in cultural choices we are more American than Canadian, watching huge amounts of U.S. television, cop shows, sitcoms, the NFL and NBA. We may do a few things that are distinctly Canadian, like use the word deke or eat french fries with cheese and gravy, but we hardly notice the differences.
Canadians who live abroad are Canadian all the time. Canadians living abroad shun the maple leaf pins and flags sewn on backpacks, part of a vain attempt at camouflage. But everywhere you go, whoever you meet, you are relentlessly, incessantly Canadian.
In England you can sometimes be mistaken as Northern Irish. If you wanted to, you could fool new acquaintances into thinking you were from the U.S.A. but where's the profit in that?
I discovered that even in my bad French, I don't just have an English accent. Apparently it is noticeable Canadian. When we lived in Belgium for a year, my nine-year-old son was known by his first name to a few friends, but to the rest of the school he was Le Canadien.
When you are introduced, people don't say you're from Vancouver or Charlottetown. You are just plain old Canadian.
Unless you want to spend a lot of time explaining, no one wants to hear that you are from Corner Brook, Newfoundland, and therefore not really a Canadian at all. French speakers, who are surprisingly well informed about Canada through their linguistic listening post of francophone Canada, just assume you'll understand them.
In conversation, people don't want your opinions about your civic mayoral race, they want to hear about bears, "Aren't you afraid to walk in the woods?" and the French-English question, "What will happen to Canada if Quebec separates?" (As if it would be carved off and floated out into the Atlantic.)
'Living abroad allows Canadians to see the great things about this country that stay-at-homes take for granted.'
In pre-internet days, many co-national friends kept a Canadian Almanac to brush up on handy Canadian facts. How big is Lake Superior?
Suddenly, whether you were once an urban Calgarian or from rural Quebec, Conservative or NDP, you are now part of a special club. When you meet other Canadians you notice the similarities more than the differences. Visiting with Canadians, strangely, gives you a little break from being publicly Canadian. In our first years in Hong Kong, our best friends were francophones from Quebec.
And even those who live outside Canada for a long time seldom lose touch. They read articles in the local papers about Canada, if only to scoff at the misperceptions. Before the internet, Canadians would go miles out of their way to find a shop that sold The Globe and Mail.
It's true that the choice to live abroad excludes some types of people and draws others. It is self-selecting. You are less likely to find the kind of girl who says "like" too much, or the guy whose only goal in life is to own a hot truck. And there is one thing that is almost universal among Canadians who live abroad: A fond, maybe even rose-coloured view of Canada and the things it has to offer.
Living abroad allows Canadians to see the great things about this country that stay-at-homes take for granted.
And along with that rose-coloured view is an intention by those who have been successful abroad, people like Norman Jewison and Michael Ignatieff and many others, to one day return to Canada and give something back. To use their experience, their different perceptions, their skills, their capital, to make this country an even better place.
And while you may or may not want people like that to lead your country, the sentiment should not be held against them.
Don Pittis has reported on business for Radio Hong Kong, the BBC and the CBC. He is currently senior producer of CBC News Business.
