Ours is Canada Day, July 1st, and the U.S. has Independence Day, July 4th. But it's the same weekend.
The Americans fought a War of Independence, a bloody revolution that lasted from 1776 to 1783 - seven years. American killed and wounded are estimated at about 15,000, not counting those who died of disease; Germans had about 7,500, French about 11,000 and the British about 8,000.
The Canadians fought a revolution against Britain in 1837 that lasted one day in Western Canada, four days in Quebec -- but then Quebec's feisty. Dozens of people were injured or killed. Then the British appointed a commission to find out what the complaints were, and resolved some of the issues, and the Canadians were satisfied with that for the moment.
The United States became independent in 1783 and remained so. Canadian independence was gained in stages. In 1982 the Queen signed the Constitution Act which cut the last legal tie between Canada and Britain -- except that we're all members of the British Commonwealth of Nations -- and we still call Elizabeth our queen.
But everyone agrees that Americans are more revolting than Canadians.
Canada has sent troops under U.N. auspices in almost all of the UN's major peacekeeping operations since its inception. Canada has not undertaken military action against any country unless under U.N. peacekeeping provisions.
The U.S. has undertaken a number of foreign wars or taken sides in existing wars or manipulated foreign nations covertly without U.N. backing, and in some cases against U.N. policy.
(Unfortunately the U.N. seems paralysed now. Still, the principle remains: one ought not unilaterally decide to attack others, whether other persons or other nations.)
The first wave of Americans to come to Canada were refugees from U.S. mob violence and semi-official persecution after 1783. We called them "united empire loyalists". The second wave were escaped American slaves. The third were young American men who didn't want to fight in Vietnam. (My son-in-law is one of them, and all I can say is thank you, America, for sending him up here. He's a wonderful husband and father.)
The U.S. murder rate is higher than ours.
If you ask a typical Canadian how to reduce the murders in Canada, he/she'd likely say, "Get the illegal guns away from criminals."
If you ask a typical American how to reduce the number of murders in the U.S., he/she'd likely say, "Promote gun ownership. If every man, woman and child in the U.S. had a .45 Magnum, or better, a fully automatic weapon capable of mowing down a number of people in only moments, no criminal would dare attack anyone. The murder rate would drop."
I wonder why the apparent difference in the violent potential of individual Americans and Canadians. After all, we have the same sort of background. We all came to North America for lebenraum. And we all found it. ****************************************************** 07-03-05, 08:19 AM FredPuli Yeah,Babs, but Canadians are all Scots (apart from a few wannabee French, stuck in a nostalgic timewarp). Scots never fight anybody (except outside pubs in Glasgow) because it is far too expensive and interferes with a) drinking ( Note:the fighting is when the pubs have just shut) b) making a profit. Americans are made up of a mass of immigrant stock, from all over, who believe the Wild West really existed and act according to the imagined and fictional thinking of that time and place.
[The above post is a joint production of the League of Empire Loyalists and the GWB School of Diplomacy Wink ] ****************************************************** 07-03-05, 10:59 AM newnickname Yes, but Fred, it was Scots who did the actual soldiering for the British Empire, while the English just sat around swilling gin-and-tonics, subsequently drawing crazy borders all over the map.
Possibly it's to do with the trees. There are way too many trees in Canada; they get in the way of a good war, and spoil all the battles. I don't know why we don't cut more of the damn things down.
Or, as some stand-up whose name I forget pointed out, in the Canadian West the Mounties were established at the get-go, while in the Wild West there was only 'gun law'. In the Canadian myth, the cops have always been around.
'The North West Mounted Police were dispatched by the Canadian federal government to maintain law and order in the midst of Klondike chaos. The mounties set up a post along the Canadian-American border at the summit of the Chilkoot Pass. Here, they confiscated guns and maintained written records of every individual who arrived at the summit.' www.yukongenealogy.com ****************************************************** 07-03-05, 02:20 PM FredPuli Ah, NNN that would explain why Scottish regiments traditionally have non-Scots as officers. It leaves the officers' mess for the gin brigade (and free of scotch drinkers who insist on having the stuff neat).
Crazy borders on maps? Heaven forfend.The lines were straight.This is because: 1) The English confused rule, ruling and ruler (government) with rule, ruler and ruling ( straight lines). They were classically educated and so their geometry was basic and curves were beyond their ken, though they understood that rule etc had only one Latin root. 2)The lines of the borders were drawn straight, so as to mark out the field of play. The natives would understand that once they crossed the lines they were out of play and play there was against the rules and did not count. It is the public school way; it is just like rugby. Remember that Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton and rugby was invented at Rugby school, so this was second nature to the English.
It is not the fault of the English if the natives did not understand rugby. None of them ever played rugby** . If anything they played cricket (boundaries are curved, even irregular, vary from place to place, and are traditional to any venue or are agreed by the captains at each match) or polo (no set boundaries for any field of play at all). With games like that no wonder they didn't get it.
** The Aussies, Springboks, Kiwis and even Canadians did play rugby , but they were all Scots too, apart from the Springboks who were Dutch but honorary English. Granted some of the Aussies were convicts and so Irish or English but these don't count. None of them had boundary disputes. ****************************************************** 07-03-05, 04:27 PM babthrower Ah, yes, so fondly I remember the pub brawls of my youth! How I would lay one low with a deft wallop with the weighty end of a pool cue, and then head-butt another right in the nose! Those noses really spurted, and I'd wear my blood-stained shirt everywhere, just for the fame and glory of it!
I'm afraid your colorful explanations don't cut it, boys. Both nations began with an English upper class, and lower classes, mostly peasants, composed of English, Scots and Irish. The continental immigrants, except for some French and Spanish, came later. In the U.S. the rebellion drew a lot of its rationale from English intellectuals! Both countries became nominally classless fairly quickly, the U.S. by rebellion and the Canadians by social change caused by economics. Of course 'classless' just means that one doesn't inherit status, but must claw his/her way up. (Yet even in North America, prestige for the rich is greater if the money goes back a generation. )
So I still don't see why one of us seems to glorify aggression and violence, and the other seems so passive. Heck, the Mounties were there, all right, but it was ridiculous: there would be a post with maybe two men covering a territory of thousands of square miles. The mounties could not have enforced anything unless the people really believed in law, order and non-violence in the first place.
MACDUFF'S SON:
What's a traitor?
LADY MACDUFF
Why, one that swears and lies.
SON
Do all traitors swear and lie?
LADY MACDUFF
Every one that does so is a traitor and must be hanged!
SON
Who must hang them?
LADY MACDUFF
Why, the honest men.
SON
"Then the liars and swearers are fools, for there are liars and swearers enough to beat the honest men and hang them." ****************************************************** 07-03-05, 06:11 PM mozart56
quote: Yeah,Babs, but Canadians are all Scots (apart from a few wannabee French, stuck in a nostalgic timewarp).
Fred what the heck are you talking about? Go there, visit and then comment. Sans rancune! Roll Eyes ****************************************************** 07-03-05, 06:25 PM FredPuli Mozart ,I understood French Canadians to speak a version of an old French dialect never heard or understood now in Antibes, or anywhere else in France itself, in the belief it is pure French Wink
My mistake, obviously... ****************************************************** 07-03-05, 07:07 PM methos The US did not become classless by revolution. To a large degree, the revolutionaries were trying to maintain the status quo that had evolved, but had been recently up-ended by King George's policies. The colonists, who were used to a large degree of self-rule, were faced with a king who increasingly interfered with the local legislatures (dissolving them, "fatiguing" them) and governors (forbidding them to pass laws without his consent and then "uttly neglect[ing] to attend to them."). Add to this taxes to pay for the French and Indian wars and various abuses by the military (forced quartering and conscription). The future Americans also sent complaints to the King. They were offered no such resolution-finding commission. ****************************************************** 07-03-05, 08:22 PM babthrower
quote: Originally posted by FredPuli: Mozart ,I understood French Canadians to speak a version of an old French dialect never heard or understood now in Antibes, or anywhere else in France itself, in the belief it is pure French.
No French Canadian I have ever known imagines that their dialect managed somehow, among all human languages, to remain 'pure' to its origins. Just as we Anglophones know that our language is not at all like any existing dialact of English found in England. Our English is even somewhat different from U.S. English.
Some French Canadian soldiers during World War II returned to their 'roots' while fighting in France. They knew 'good' French from listening to radio news broadcasts from France. (As you know, each country uses newsmen who speak in a dialect that's most easily understood by the majority of people; this comes to be called 'good' language.) They were astonished when speaking to the country people in various places how much the local French differed from this norm.
Years ago I heard an American academic claim that Appalachian English is "the purest Elizabethan English". I remember thinking that was a bloody silly thing to say. Just for fun today I goodled Appalachia and 'Elizabethan English', and found 297 sites. A brief check showed that linguists deny it, and folksy small-town writers of columns in local newspapers still quote it. But the claim is silly on two counts. First, language, however isolated, does not remain unchanged for decades, let alone centuries. Second, the immigrants arrived much later than the time of Elizabeth: in fact within the two hundred years following her death in 1603.
Co-incidentally my quotes from 'Speare above are in 'Elizabethan English', I suppose. But a quote from Appalachia might be:
"I tell ye ef I had me a gun, I 'ud as leave to shoot the sorry critter [a cow]as no, me a-workin' hard the endurin' day, an' a sight to do atter I gits home of a night, me a-needin' my sleep, an' then a-havin' to git up from the bed an' run her off! Of course, Doke hain't got no chancet to keep his critters up. He's done burnt all his fence-rails for firewood....But Doke, he's got to do somethin' about that old cow o' hisn." (From a novel by Anne W. Armstrong, This Day and Time[i] written in 1930, which was praised for its accurate rendition of dialect.) ****************************************************** 07-04-05, 12:33 AM mozart56 I would like to add up ,that in the 14th Century people in France were speaking 2 dialects or language.One of them was "langue D'OIL" from the North, where most of the "discoverers and heroes " came from to conquer the new world.
People from South of france were mainly speaking "langue d'OC" which was the language adopted in Paris by the king of France at the time, and is still spoken to this day....So imagine the difference, 500 years later, between both dialects. Add to this the English words influence adopted in the language surrounding the province of Quebec.
One thing is sure. Most people from Montreal and around speaks 3 languages. " French Canadian" (langue d'oil), French (langue d'Oc) ,and English. Smile
But none of them wished to be "french wannabes" anymore than New-Yorkers would want to be "English wannabes" as an exemple. No insults intended. See this
This message has been edited. Last edited by: mozart56, 07-04-05 01:13 AM ****************************************************** 07-04-05, 05:41 AM FredPuli Yes, Mozart, I thought there would be a serious answer. Interesting that there is a reference to [i]langue d'oc. I was led to believe that the region called Languedoc, down the coast towards the Pyrenees, was so named because 'oc' was 'oui' in the local dialect and so it was the place where the language was or had 'oc'. Langue d'oc seems to have been the language of the troubadours.
If this langue d'oc became the basis of French now it didn't 'purify' or change a neighbouring tongue. In Provence there is still this other language or dialect.This was formerly much more widely spoken. In fact , more out of sentiment than practicality, the signs at the entry to Nice give the city's name in the Provence language as well as French. It was once quite the thing to name your restaurant on the Riviera with a Provencal name . Tourists can buy Provencal cookbooks with the recipes in both languages, but that's about as close as they'll get to it. The poet Mistral (Nobel prize for literature 1904) wrote in it and it was quite the vogue among the literary set in his time. ****************************************************** 07-09-05, 01:47 PM babthrower Geneticist David Suzuki featured aggression in a broadcast on the Nature of ThingsJuly 7th.
"It is known that children, at around age two, display wild explosions of rage in the form of temper tantrums, provoked by the most trivial reasons. By age three, toddlers have the ability to threaten or hit if they do not get their way, and they possess the motor skills to engage in physically aggressive acts. Physical aggression in children then begins to decrease over time as they develop a level of self-awareness, and experience other emotions, such as shame or embarrassment, which hold aggressive behaviour in check. Origins of Human Aggression: The Other Story reveals various biological, social and psychological predispositions to physical aggression, developed in childhood and, in some cases, during pregnancy."
Dare we conclude that America does not socialize its young people, in fact the opposite, glorifies aggression?
If that is so, does it surprise us that their prisons are full to bursting?
Are we Canadians following in their footsteps? ****************************************************** 07-09-05, 02:01 PM juanruiz
quote: Are we Canadians following in their footsteps?
Ask Paul and Karla. ****************************************************** 07-09-05, 05:23 PM babthrower You had to go all the way back to 1992 to get that one, Juan. Any brutal sex crimes in America in the last thirteen years, do you think?
But it's getting worse here in Canada. Recently there have been violent incidents in Vancouver the like of which we have not seen before.
This message has been edited. Last edited by: babthrower, 07-09-05 05:55 PM ****************************************************** 07-09-05, 07:54 PM Scotty
quote: The Americans fought a War of Independence, a bloody revolution that lasted from 1776 to 1783 - seven years. American killed and wounded are estimated at about 15,000, not counting those who died of disease; Germans had about 7,500, French about 11,000 and the British about 8,000.
Yes and we did not have the bloody pacifist calling it an Illegal war and demonstrating against it. Smile
ps just joking DG ****************************************************** 07-10-05, 08:22 AM juanruiz
quote: You had to go all the way back to 1992 to get that one, Juan.
You are certainly aware babs that my specific mention of this case springs from the events of this past week. The fact is that Canada is not immune to the same violent crimes found south of the border. ****************************************************** 07-10-05, 11:38 AM methos Regarding why the Canadians didn't have (much of) an armed revolt, it should be noted that an estimated more than 40,000 loyalists (I've read estimates of over 50,000 as well) finding themselves... um... unwelcome, migrated to Canada during and soon after the war. They found themselves quite welcome there, being given land, food, and clothing by the British.
From Statistics of Canada, Volume 4: Before their arrival the population of British origin in the latter Province [Nova Scotia] amounted to 12,000 souls, being a decrease from the number by the Census of 1772 in Nova Scotia [British settlers, 17,000], which then included New Brunswick. That part of the Province of Quebec now constituting that Province contained about 10,000 souls of the same origin; that part of Quebec, now forming the Province of Ontario, may be said to have been then uninhabited.
The 40,000-50,000 torries would have made quite an impact on the policies of this small population. The total Canadian population, French included, appears to have been around 90,000 at the start of the Revolutionary War (same source as quoted above).
(without putting too fine a point on it, I'm finding some of these posts more than a bit condescending) ****************************************************** 07-10-05, 12:14 PM babthrower Don't be tiresome, JR. Does this statement of mine sound as if I'm trying to pretend otherwise?
"Recently there have been violent incidents in Vancouver the like of which we have not seen before."
Please don't feel personally offended by my remarks about American agression. Many of your countrymen also feel that the U.S. involvement in the middle east is reckless and ill-advised. Many of your countrymen want tougher gun laws and the teaching of non-violence in the playgrounds of America.
******** Methos, the United Empire Loyalists to whom I referred above as the first wave of refugees were ushered across our borders by barnburners, lynch mobs, cattle thieves and so forth, who were hungry for land and didn't really feel like going west just yet, so they used the fact that the loyalists had not wanted a rebellion against England as an excuse to appropriate their land. (There was also quite a bit of infighting among the Americans over the spoils. And some pro-revolution Americans were accused of being loyalists -- witch-hunt style -- so that their land could be grabbed. So there were some unwilling loyalists who came to Canada, too.)
These loyalists had a very important effect on Canadian history and I have no doubt that their tales of the excesses of bloody revolution, especially as the American revolution was so soon followed by the horrors of the French revolution, persuaded other Canadians to seek democracy by evolution rather than revolution.
The British were certainly worried about Canada's stability. They had moved many thousands of Acadians to Louisiana in 1755 and ff. because they distrusted them. They were not worried that the acadians would join the Americans in a revolution, but that they would join the Quebecers in a French Canadian revolution! (Ironically they made those Acadians into Americans! I'm sure the Cajuns fought on the American side during the revolution.)
And when they captured Quebec, they promised the people there the right to religious freedom and official recognition of their language. This move also was aimed at keeping them from rebelling.
A French Canadian friend canoed down the Mississippi and when he reached Louisiana he looked up the Cajun communities. He said that the French he learned in school in Quebec was much more 'standard' French than the Cajun French, and he attributed that to the unbroken system of French education in Quebec. The Cajuns had been sent to English-speaking schools and after 200 years of the oral tradition, the Cajun French had drifted quite a bit from standard. It would be an interesting subject for a linquist, and I'm sure it has been done, to compare Quebec French (which differs from any dialect in France) which has an oral and written tradition and Cajun French which has only an oral tradition. ******************************************************
07-10-05, 12:25 PM newnickname
quote: I'm finding some of these posts more than a bit condescending
Canada and the US are often compared and contrasted. I guess it's like those twins-separated-at-birth situations which arise now and again, and which geneticists and others leap on with glee. There are so many similarities and yet so many differences between the two countries.
Canada does however seem to be more pacific than the the US, in general.
Here's an interesting (and unpatronising) take on it:
'Overshadowed in many ways by the colossus beside them, Canadians report facts and repeat assumptions about themselves. Canadians observe that they are less nationalistic, less pushy, less extrovert (some say duller), less daring in business and social relations, less morally corrupt than their southern neighbours. All those statements are open to question. Indeed, groups of people who exist in relation to more powerful others very often claim moral and spiritual superiority, being unable to claim physical and military superiority. They may, at one level, be right. The larger, dominant power is more likely to exert sheer force, brutally and irrationally, to gain its ends simply because it has the power to do so.
No better instance of that tendency is provided than the so-called Boer War (1899-1902) between Britain and two Afrikaner republics of South Africa. Many Canadians now assume that the South African War was an unjust war, an imperial adventure of Britain's - as many French Canadians claimed it was at the time. The manoeuvring's of the British government to prevent an independent Afrikaner nation, the claim of Britain to have legal right to intervene in the country on behalf of immigrants, its determination to go to war to secure South African wealth were very largely undertaken to satisfy British commercial interests.
Canadians fought for "the Empire" in South Africa in that war. Many Canadians died or were wounded. Not having the power to initiate such wars, Canada has been able to keep its slate clean of hostile, first-strike invasions of any country. Existing beside and in subordinate relation to imperial nations through all its history - imperial nations who use invasion and war as ordinary instruments of diplomacy - Canada's clean slate cannot but give many Canadians a feeling of satisfaction. Some see it as indication of a more reasonable people, a more humane civilization in Canada.'www.ola.bc.ca ****************************************************** 07-10-05, 12:32 PM juanruiz Babs,
In the long time we have been acquainted, I can't think of an instance where anything you have said offended me. I simply find many Canadians whose knee-jerk response to anything untoward happening in the Great White North, "But this is Canada!," to be somewhat naïve. Whether is be Paul and Karla, motorcycle gangs in Quebec, or school shootings (Nevermind the Sponsorship Scandal or a First Nations leader's comment on Hitler).
As for Cajun; there have been several studies on it. As with Judeo-Spanish, it tends to be very conservative, reflecting linguistic traits dating back to the Arcadians' expulsion. ****************************************************** 07-10-05, 12:57 PM FredPuli NNN: The Boer War. How is it the "so-called Boer War" ? In what way was it not a war ? ****************************************************** 07-10-05, 01:09 PM newnickname Apparently, we could also say 'Transvaal War' or 'South African War'. en.wikipedia.org Maybe the article was written by a South African. (Or maybe s/he thinks it was an exciting war?) ****************************************************** 07-10-05, 02:20 PM babthrower I'm glad you weren't offended, JR, because it was not my intention to offend you or any individual, decent American. Smile Indeed, we Canadians went to war for Mother England more than once. Even our entry into WWI and WWII was a knee-jerk response. We declared war the day after Britain did in both cases. (The U.S. didn't join until 1917, three years into the first war, and 1942, three years into the second. In those days, the U.S. certainly could not have been called a warmongering nation!)
We saw ourselves as members of the commonwealth, and an enemy of one was an enemy of all. Certainly WWI was unnecessary, it was a stupid bloody war, and we were stupid to join in. The only thing it accomplished was to reduce the population of Europe and there are better ways to control population than war and starvation.
My aunt, by the way, protested Canada's part in the Boer War and was roundly criticised for it, too! Eek So there were pacifists way back then, too. And they weren't popular with the jingoists then either.
Methos, I'm sorry you find these posts patronizing, I made them in the spirit of how can attitudes be changed? and I think it's fair to point out that there are differences in two nations so alike in many respects. The differences are not just in my opinion. Statistics back me up. Since WWII we have fought in Korea and other sites where the U.N. sent peacekeepers. But we have otherwise been unwilling to invade any country which did not attack us. Wanting U.N. approval before going to war is a gesture toward the concept of international law. It's not always right, but neither is any legal system. But it beats anarchy.
We gave up our knee-jerk response to British imperialism. We will not replace it with a knee-jerk response to American imperialism. We have been harshly criticised by Americans of the 'them that aren't with us are agin us' stripe, as if neutrality is not possible. ****************************************************** 07-10-05, 03:43 PM FredPuli NNN We don't call the 'First Boer War, the Transvaal War',as in your link, a Boer War Smile We only think of The Boer War as from 1899 and there was only the one. It was a proper war, with declaration of war and everything It's the war with all the Boy's Own Paper style fun in it; the sieges of Ladysmith and Mafeking viz. heroism against the odds ( the odds being created by the incompetence of the generals, but we glossed over that at the time); the invention of the boy scouts etc ( Oh, and of concentration camps, but we don't talk about that) ****************************************************** 07-10-05, 03:51 PM newnickname 'We'? Were you involved, Fred? Smile ****************************************************** 07-10-05, 04:36 PM juanruiz
quote: Wanting U.N. approval before going to war is a gesture toward the concept of international law. It's not always right, but neither is any legal system. But it beats anarchy.
Alas, Canada has discovered that even the UN is not always the answer, as Romeo Dallaire will attest. ****************************************************** 07-10-05, 06:19 PM FredPuli
quote: Originally posted by newnickname: 'We'? Were you involved, Fred? Smile
Not personally , though I do have a handwritten menu card for the Christmas Dinner 1899 in the Ladysmith siege. ( I really must update my filing cabinets some day ) The officers in Fly Kraal Camp listed, inter alia, "salmon, sauce Lyddite; Fragments of Shell; Mauser bullets to taste" This must be the famous British sense of humour Roll Eyes. ,but then they were under stress. Christmas fell about halfway in the siege ( November 2nd to February 28th) so at least they still had some food to joke about. ****************************************************** 07-10-05, 07:19 PM babthrower JR said: "...the UN is not always the answer, as Romeo Dallaire will attest."
No, the U.N. is not always the answer, and democracy is a terrible system of government, no better than mob rule, really, and humans are tragically, irreparably flawed, but...
do we have an option to keeping on trying to make things better? We have to start somewhere. No one else will do it for us. ****************************************************** 07-10-05, 10:25 PM newnickname But, Babs, isn't the Canadian approach to foreign affairs a case of making a virtue of necessity? Canada can't arbitrarily 'kick butt' around the world - so of course we're not going to promote that as a model.
(Although, of course, the US is currently finding that the bull-in-a-china-shop approach can cause more problems than it solves. When the dust settles - 12 years from now, according to Rumsfeld - will we have a kinder, gentler US?) ****************************************************** 07-11-05, 01:13 AM babthrower NNN says: "Canada can't ...'kick butt' "
Too true. I think the main reason the U.S. wants us on board is for propaganda reasons. But we don't want to send men and women, and it seems we don't want the 'kick butt' image which association with the U.S. would give us. That's the point.
The last great power that ruled the world was of course Britain. Thatcher and Blair didn't get kinder and gentler. There's a sense of entitlement that powerful nations get, and they seem outraged by what looks like a lack of respect from other nations. When this happens, they get dangerous. For a country that's past its prime, the action may be mostly symbolic -- e.g. the Falklands. But for a country which has an incredible array of weapons of mass destruction, the threat is real. And among those in great danger are its own citizens. ****************************************************** 07-11-05, 01:34 AM newnickname Hmmm. I'm not sure I agree with that, either. There have been wars and border disputes between small and relatively powerless countries all over the globe, throughout history. Every nation seems to be able get outraged at a lack of respect, at some point or another. Some just lack the means to do anything about it. Or maybe the recklessness.
Maybe it's recklessness that's the difference. Look at the start of any conflict, and there's bound to have been some twit in charge who thought "it'll all be over by Christmas". Given the decision to make over again, would Bush invade Iraq? Surely not, knowing how it would turn out. Just the same with Galtieri and Las Malivinas, or Hussein and Iran, or Hussein and Kuwait.
The trouble is, outspending every other nation by a ridiculous amount on 'defence', and having incredible technological superiority, the US administration clearly felt that its latest war would be 'a cakewalk'.
The 'great danger' maybe arises when politicians (of any nation) fall under the spell of their own braggadocio. When it comes to military reach and power, the US does have a lot to brag about, so the temptation must be stronger. (You'd think that the lessons about "asymetrical warfare" would have well-learned, after Vietnam, though, wouldn't you?) Knowing that the airforce, for example, has to scavange parts from half-a-dozen other aircraft to get one into the air, is what makes Paul Martin more circumspect. ****************************************************** 07-11-05, 08:41 AM juanruiz Don't forget that under Chrétien Canada's military went into the dumpster: Sea King coffins, ships that get called back to port a day out at sea, used subs bought from Britain, F/A 18s with obsolete avionics, poverty-level salaries...Canada was reduced to a peace keeping nation because that's all it's military can do now. That, and the certain knowledge that any aggression directed toward it would be countered by the US. ****************************************************** 07-11-05, 09:29 AM newnickname What about levels of aggression and violence among the general population? The popular impression is that the US is a scarier place and the statistics seem to bear this out (but, you know statistics...):
"Comparison with the United States
Compared to the United States Canada has far lower rates of violent crime such as murder, assault, and rape. Through the 1990s, the homicide rate in the United States was three times higher than it was in Canada, while the American rate for aggravated assault was double the Canadian rate. The rate for robberies was 65% higher in the United States.
Rates of property crime are more comparable with higher rates of motor vehicle and bicycle theft in Canada and similar rates of shoplifting. Canada also has a much higher rate of arson. Some of this may be connected to Canadians being more likely to report property crimes to police than Americans. A 1995 survey by the International Crime Victim Survey found the gap between the countries shrank when the population was directly surveyed about their experiences.
The United States has about triple the per capita number of arrests for drug related crimes. Actual rates of drug use are quite similar however, but in the United States far more law enforcement resources are dedicated to the War on Drugs.
Other Comparisons
Canada's crime rate is close to the average of Western Europe. Canada has a fair bit more crime than Japan. Canada has a lower crime rate than almost every country in the developing world."en.wikipedia.org Canada has about the same level of property crime and illegal drug use, then, but people in the US are more likely to be killed, assaulted or mugged. I think that's back to Babs' original question, "I wonder why the apparent difference in the violent potential of individual Americans and Canadians."
(And why are the Japanese so law-abiding? I teach many Japanese students - and many are not prepared for the level of dishonesty in North America. They think nothing of leaving bags, cameras, even wallets unattended.) ****************************************************** 07-11-05, 10:12 AM methos Not that I think that it accounts for all of the difference, but I wonder if any of this could be related to population densities. I haven't looked at the statistics, but it's certainly commonly held that densely populated areas have higher murder and some other crime rates. The population densities of the two countries are obviously different. ****************************************************** 07-11-05, 10:13 AM juanruiz I don't think there's any doubt that, overall, the US crime rate is higher. I'd be interested, though in a comparison of the big Canadian cities (Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, Calgary, Vancouver) to see if they witness an inordinate amount of Canadian crime.
As for Japan, there have been a number of factors proposed: strong sense of family honor, a tradition of obedience, a homogeneous population, to name a couple. ****************************************************** 07-11-05, 12:17 PM babthrower Japan's population is densely packed in certain areas.
quote: Canada's lowest crime rate is in Newfoundland.
Perhaps due to the language barrier? ****************************************************** 07-11-05, 09:02 PM newnickname "China's image is now better than America's. Canadians lead those who think of Americans as violent. The biggest reason cited for the widespread anti-Americanism is Bush and his policies." Toronto Star
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Posts: 6414 | Location: British Columbia, Canada | Registered: 06-11-02
