Nationalisms

I do find it awkward holding dual Canadian and American citizenship in this time of tension between these two great countries. I feel like a mugwump.

 What is a mugwump you ask? originally an Algonquian word, the exact definion of which is unknown, it meant something like “war leader,” “important person,” or “one who thinks himself important.”

 Canadians and Americans have taken the term for their own uses. In Canada, it’s the name of a monster that lives in Lake Temiscamingue, which is a swelling of the Ottawa River between Ontario and Quebec. For Americans “mugwumps” was the name a New York newspaper gave to reformist Republicans who refused to support the nominated Republican candidate in the 1884 U.S. presidential election. The mugwumps considered James G. Blaine corrupt and supported Glover Cleveland. Today we call Republicans who fail to support President Donald Trump “moderate Republicans,” though I suppose we could call them mugwumps.

 My American father, Charlie Adams, though whom I inherited American citizenship, had his own definition. A mugwump is a person, or a bird, who perches precariously on a thin rail fence, his mug on one side, his wump on the other. I don’t know where my dad got that definition, but he thought it very funny.

 My father had deep American roots, according to a genealogy book his family held, His line of Adamses went back to a Puritan Adams, Henry, in 1634 in Massachusetts. Ancestors fought in the Civil War on the Union side, and, though his mother, on the Confederate. Dad wasn’t especially nationalistic, but he was definitely American, and served in the U.S. Navy as an officer during the Second World War.

 Peggy Neale, my mother, other on the other hand was proudly Canadian, born in Montreal six years after her father, my grandfather, immigrated to Canada. His career was working for that very Canadian corporation, the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, in their hotels division. Since we lived in the States, each January mother had to renew her “Alien Registration Card.” To my knowledge, she never became an American.  Because father was on an assignment in the Navy, my mother went home to Canada to give birth to her first child, me. I am Canadian by birthright. I grew up in the States – Florida, New Hampshire, and Texas, went to college and university in Massachusetts and Wisconsin, but after finishing studies returned to Canada in my twenties, and have lived in Vancouver for 57 years.

A very early memory is hearing a bugle play at a patriotic ceremony which must have been in 1945 at the end of World War II, after victory in Europe but before the Japanese surrendered, and my father could come home the South Pacific. As a school child with my hand over my heart, I recited the pledge of allegiance “to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation with liberty and justice for all.” In 1954, the U.S. Congress and President Eisenhower added to one nation the words “under God,” so my 12-year-old self complied.

 And there are a lot of things that the U.S. has done that I’m proud of. Playing a major role in the defeat the fascism in Europe, the Marshall Plan that followed, helping create and hosting the United Nations, containing Stalin’s and other Soviet leaders’ expansionism during the Cold War, generally supporting decolonization in Africa and elsewhere, ending legal segregation and the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, raising living standards for many Americans – certainly not all – up to the 1980s. I love so many American authors, poets, and other artists. Many national parks are gems.

 On the other hand, the United States has made many mistakes, foreign and domestic: Vietnam and far too many wars afterwards, and allowing inequalities to grow and fester, leading to its current government which seems to want to destroy almost everything I hold great about America. And Americans elected the current president – twice. Fool me once, and it’s a mistake; fool me twice, and I’m just being stupid.

And I have come to love Canada. How could I not? Canada’s embrace of diversity, especially during the last couple of generations, is key for me. As a Quebecker, at least by birth, I appreciate the tolerance of the Two Solitudes for each other, and the acceptance by most of bilingualism.  International peacekeeping, Medicare, public broadcasting, the arts, especially its musicians, Canadian football, hockey (of course), that its police both R.C.M.P and local don’t tend to shoot people as often, that the country is trying to reconcile with Indigenous peoples  – all these are important. This is not to say Canada hasn’t made mistakes, too.

Like 8 or 9 out of 10 Canadians I support Canada’s current Prime Minister’s efforts to counter U.S. tariffs imposed by the current American administration. I know which side I’m on in the trade war, and I know a lot of Americans also oppose what their country is doing in trade. I haven’t crossed the U.S. border for years, and my wife won’t let me buy American produce in the grocery store.

 I must say my bi-national situation has made me somewhat skeptical of all nationalisms. One has to be from somewhere, and it is good to appreciate the place where one is from. But it seems that nationalism is far to often, and far too easily, exploited by elites. The result can be unnecessary wars, jingoism, and chauvinism. It can be a cudgel wielded against vulnerable minorities. Albert Einstein once put it this way: "Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind"

 Yet I simply cannot renounce love for country – in my case for two countries. I am my father’s definition of the mugwump, sitting on the rail, precariously, this way and that, mug on one side, wump on the other.