MY EX-FATHER-IN-LAW is the only true conservative I’ve ever met. Why? Because he believes that the American Revolution was a mistake. That is, as a true believer in law and order, he abhors unlawful violence of any kind, even that used to overthrow unjust and oppressive governments.
I think of him every summer as we prepare to leave on our annual two-month emigration to Canada. Not that he has much admiration for our northern neighbor. As a rock-ribbed Republican, he disapproves of Canada’s pacifist foreign policy and socialist institutions such as universal healthcare, but his anti-revolutionary stance helps me understand the feeling I get every time we cross the border that we are entering a kind of parallel universe, one in which Canada represents an alternative history that the United States might have had.
In my view, much of the disparity in the national character of the two countries, it seems, stems from the difference in their origins: on one hand, our violent revolution against the British Empire, and on the other Canada’s non-revolutionary, peaceful, and orderly independence from Great Britain acquired about a century later. Our “Glorious Revolution’’ created a large chip that we have been carrying on our national shoulder for more than two centuries.
This chip has taken the form of a need to justify our violent origins by believing, with a quasi-religious fervor, that we represent the world’s “last best hope.’’ That is, we have taken the Puritan Fathers’ vision of their New World settlement as a “City on the Hill’’ and transferred it to the Founding Fathers’ vision of America as a Light to the World, the Beacon of Democracy. The rise of democratic governments over the past two centuries is seen as a justification of our self-image as a pioneering world model. And where such governments have not arisen of their own accord, we have seen fit to “nudge’’ them in that direction by means ranging from covert interference to outright war, always in the name of the unstoppable, historically inevitable rising tide of freedom.
Canada, on the other hand, has never thought of itself as any kind of savior. Rather, it has adopted the role of a global peacekeeper, willing to join in what it regards as justifiable conflicts, but never fomenting or leading them. Cynics might claim that this is because, compared with the United States, Canada is a small and relatively inconsequential country, and thus suited to more “gentle’’ roles on the international stage. But this misses more deep-seated differences between the two cultures, differences that seem to find their roots in their very different creation myths.
Take guns, for instance. For a state conceived in violence, guns (and their extrapolated weaponry) have a special status. The right to bear arms (however one interprets it) is enshrined in our Constitution. There is a collective sense - enshrined in such legends as “The Price of Liberty Is Eternal Vigilance,’’ engraved on our national monuments - that we must always be on guard from the threat of invasion, from within or without. For Canadians, guns have a very different place in their culture. As Michael Moore pointed out in his movie “Bowling for Columbine,’’ Canadians possess more guns per capita than Americans, but the rate of gun violence is extremely low by comparison. In America, guns are central to our culture as powerful symbols of individual freedom and protection, with all the dangerous misuse to which passionate symbols can be put. For Canadians, guns are just another, and not particularly special, part of the culture, used for recreational violence against non-humans, perhaps, but not against one another.
In any case, as we drive to Canada this month (from which we will now need a passport to return), we will once again enter a country where freedom was achieved not by a revolution but by measured, parliamentary debate. “O Canada’’ may not possess the memorable, militaristic imagery of the “Star-Spangled Banner,’’ but I have to say I find it more and more singable.
Robert Finch is author of seven books of essays and a weekly NPR commentary on WCAI, Woods Hole. 
