Northern enigma: American images of Canada

American Review of Canadian Studies, Winter, 2007 by Paul Gecelovsky

The crashing of planes into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001, altered instantly American thinking about itself and other states in the world. Gone was the view that the United States was shielded from foreign incursions and problems. The tragic events of September 11 "punctured America's sense of invulnerability" (Daalder and Lindsay 2005, 77). This article examines the emergence of a new image of Canada as a security threat to the United States in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It then argues that this new image, challenging the traditional image of Canada as a friendly, benign neighbor, has significant policy implications for Canada, particularly in terms of the making of Canada policy in the United States.

For the most part, Canada is a country that excites little interest in the United States. That Canada is often overlooked by Americans is not a recent phenomenon but rather is a longstanding characteristic of the relationship between these countries. In 1920, upon taking up his position as a staff writer for the Toronto Star, Ernest Hemingway wrote of the "opinions and views of [the] average American" concerning Canada. This "average American," Hemingway noted, had "a vague idea of Canada" (Hemingway 1985a). Twenty-seven years later, Leslie Chance, then the head of the Canadian Consular Division of External Affairs, in a letter to then Under Secretary of State for External Affairs Lester Pearson concerning the opening of consulates in the United States, noted that the "foremost task" of the new consulates was "to lift the Canadian image from its humiliating position" in the U.S. (Page 1977, 62). Dean Acheson, former U.S. secretary of state, in his 1969 review of the bilateral relationship, wrote that "Americans take Canada for granted" (Acheson 1969, 134). Similarly, in 1981, the former Canadian diplomat John Holmes wrote of "one persistent problem" for Canada being that "the US forgets about us" (Holmes 1981, 73). Later, in 2003, John Herd Thompson, professor of Canadian Studies at Duke University, in his review of Canada-U.S. relations over the 1994-2003 period, wrote that "Americans don't know or care very much about Canada" (Thompson 2003, 17). This was followed by Derek Burney, Canadian ambassador to the U.S. from 1989-2003, who noted that "very few Americans spend much time concerning themselves with Canada" (Burney 2005, 48). Finally, David Leal, associate professor of government at the University of Texas, titled his lead article for a symposium on Canada in the October 2006 issue of PS: Political Science and Politics, "Canada: The Unknown Country." In the article, Leal wrote, "I have noticed that asking scholars to care about Canadian politics is like asking them to get a physical or eat more vegetables. Everyone agrees these are probably good ideas, but there is often a certain reluctance to comply." Leal continued: "If you want someone to look at you quizzically, just say 'I've become interested in Canada lately'" (Leal 2006, 813).

Part of the reason for this lack of American interest in Canada is due to a lack of coverage of Canada in the American media (Belch 2004; Flournoy et al. 1992; Husselbee and Stempel 1997). Unlike Canada, where most Canadians live within a narrow band stretching along the border, "only about 5 percent of Americans live close enough to the Canadian border to pick up Canadian radio or television broadcasts" (DePalma 2001, 11). Americans, then, rely on domestic media sources for information concerning Canada. In his examination of the news media in the Canada-U.S. relationship, Brian Buckley noted that there has been "scant" coverage of Canada by the American media and that "serious studies of US media portrayals of Canada and Canadian issues are very rare" (Buckley 2003, 94).

For the print media, a recent study of six American newspapers by Chris Belch found that "overall coverage of Canada was particularly limited." Belch found that the limited coverage of Canada was further reduced due to the fact that most newspapers relied "heavily on wire services to provide Canadian content" (Belch 2004, 75). What this means is that one story on Canada would be carried by numerous newspapers, thereby over-representing the actual coverage of Canada by American papers. In terms of substance, Belch found that "the underlying ethos of American [print] media exposure to Canada seems to be through sports, particularly hockey and auto racing" (Belch 2004, 43).

The overall lack of interest in Canada and the reliance on wire services for content resulted in newspapers not posting reporters to Canada. Most papers "felt Canada does not warrant its own writer" (Belch 2004, 75). When Anthony DePalma was recalled from Toronto as the Canadian correspondent for the New York Times in May 1999, due to a disagreement between the paper and the government of Canada over tax concessions, the paper decided that Canada could be covered by Jim Brooke from the Denver office (DePalma 2001, 335)--despite the fact that Denver, Colorado, is closer to Mexico than to Canada.