Dr. Carolina Calmdown on Hybrid Concerns

Half-Human, Half-Yankee on Edge as a Transplanted Canuck

Dear Doctor Calmdown,

I suffer from a very embarrassing birth defect which I try to cover up as much as possible.  Much to my humiliation, I am half American.

It's not my fault, it's a hereditary skeleton I try to keep hidden in the closet but it often escapes and scares people.

I have tried many ways to conceal this defect including saying "eh" at the end of all my sentences, saying "sorry" twelve times a day (I have a quota),         

 and by making sure when anyone asks me to recite the alphabet I say "zed" at the end loud and clear.

Sorry to add to your workload but I am desperate to pass myself off as a sane Canadian.  That's not too much to ask, eh? 

Please don't suggest I carry around a can of beer everywhere I go.  Alcohol just makes me want to lay down and catch some zeds.

How do I break free of the American in me?

                     Please and Thank You,       

                                                                  Half Human / Half Yankee

Dear Half & Half,

You are not alone. Take solace in this fact. Canada gained what many would call the cream of the crop (sorry, puns are my weakness along with salted caramel crunch Chapman’s Ice-Cream) when McCarthyism and the Vietnam war sent floods of kind, intelligent, well-educated, peace-loving Americans over the border in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. In fact, a long-time real estate agent on Quadra Island could tell when life had soured stateside by how many requests she had for available properties on idyllic islands off the coast of British Columbia. The war in Iraq, 9-11, and the recent election resulted in her queries rising by 30% in the following four weeks.

To this day, some transplanted Americans really 'get' Canada while others simply do not quite have it figured out. Understandably, our friends from south of the border like yourself are sensitive about how much Canadians truly loathe snooty Brits calling us colonial primitives or Yankees (from the North, South, East or West, sorry, you are all tarred with the same Yankee brush, moniker-wise) belittling us for being too polite and circumspect, aka publicly reticent to express negative thoughts.

There are certain ingrained cultural and religious understandings, educational privilege or barriers, class consciousness or a complete lack of such and/or learned social/political behaviours among every population but the two things to keep in mind are 1. do not generalize an entire population based on the behaviour of a few pushy New Yorkers or gracious Southerners or New Age Californians or evangelical wild-eyed cult leaders from …you fill in the blanks and pick somewhere other than Idaho or Texas okay? and 2. do your best to be self-aware of those traits you suspect annoy other people, like workers in the grocery store. It may not be the fact you were born in Michigan or Maine. It might just be you being your blunt self, speaking right to the point instead of pussy-footing around, faux politely, like many a born and bred Canuck when a giant bag of frozen peas splits open on the conveyor belt.

A typical older Canadian lady shopper might say, “Sorry, excuse me but I’d like to replace that bag and I don’t want to hold up the line. Please charge me for it and the rest and then I’ll run get another one if that works for you?” (Which is code for, ‘Oh FFS! Cheap *&%@! plastic bag! If you don’t call someone to grab me a new bag on the double, I’ll stand here holding up the line politely dithering until you do the right thing and move this show along, please and thank you!)

Whereas, like some of my Dutch relatives who are as blunt as baseball bats, you might have come out with, “Well, I’m not buying those peas rolling around down there. God knows what’s been on that belt today. Can you call for someone to get me a new bag over in the frozen aisle? I’m in kind of a hurry today.” No ambiguity here. Boom. There you have it.

Note the tendency to name the problem, define the extenuating issues and provide a solution…whether the Canadian worker at the till needs to hear it or not before s/he suggests it first which would let him/her/they save face and act responsibly, which is very important to them as competent problem-solvers on the job. They didn’t make the faulty plastic bag, after all. So perhaps you could experiment with letting others come up with solutions, hanging back just a little while they save the day. No harm in that and really, it’s all about the tone of the voice we use whether we complain to a neighbour or make a political statement in a tense town hall meeting. Work on sounding just a little more tentative and apologetic, add ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to nearly everything as well as keeping up with your dozen daily ‘sorries’ and the all-inclusive ‘eh?’ There’s a reason Lester B. Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize for his diplomacy with the Suez Canal crisis. A quintessential determined Canadian peace-maker and no push-over whatsoever. We could certainly use more Lester B. in the Middle East these days. But I digress.

The very fact you’re aware of your hybrid tendencies is a positive thing in itself. I suspect you’re closer to Whipping Cream than you think, my Half & Half friend, and who doesn’t adore whipped cream? Just add a little maple sugar and a pinch of cinnamon for zip and vanilla because it’s yummy and you’ll blend right in!