catapult magazine

I’ve been gone for awhile, but I’m back. I know reside in Canada, so all you Canadian’s beware, there is yet another American amongst your midst. I am here to mooch of your free health care, steal you women, and not return your overall politeness. Bewah-ha! The Barbarians Invade!

Actually, no. I am enjoying Toronto quite a bit and have greatly appreicated good ole fashioned Canadian hospitality. I’m wondering who the Canadian *cino members are and if there are any in the Toronto area. Anyone?

Oh! Completely uncalled for Iowa bashing!

Grant disses Canada, so you come back with an Iowa slur, Sarah? What!? Grant’s not even from Iowa, he just went to school there! I’m from Iowa, baby, and I’m SUPERBLAND. The real deal. Grant’s just a poseur.

…but I was joking!

I assumed Grant had a level of facetiousness to what he was saying, so I returned in kind (and I didn’t choose Iowa because I thought Grant was from there—it’s where I also lived, and I wanted to provide a contrast to Chicago within the US).

Really, I don’t think anyone can ever generalize about a region. I agree that the African-Americans add a flavour to Chicago that I like (although I don’t like how the train turns from black to white because it’s only another reminder of segregation and gentrification). But in Abbotsford it was Punjabis who added this flavour.

Oh dear. We have the Canada/US issue once again. I guess that I will have to break my long silence in order to defend my country. Having lived in both Canada and the US, I feel that I am qualified to speak. Grant, I wonder how you can adequately judge Canada from visiting only a few times. Chicago is of course interesting because there are people to see and places to go. I love Chicago, but I also love Vancouver where there are people from all over—China, Japan, Korea, and India to name a few. My point is that just because you love what you are used to in Chicago does not disqualify the importance of other places and peoples. So Canada is different than what you’ve experienced in the states—does that make is a less worthy country? I realize that your post was in jest, but be careful what you jest as you are talking about peoples’ homes.

Facetiousness is sometimes hard to catch through the medium of type. I certainly wasn’t offended by the Iowa comment. But I will certainly defend Iowa’s honor! Even though I left it and moved to New York City.

FYI, Toronto is the most multicultural city in the world, if I am to believe NPR. And I am.

Also, I think the term “African-American” is acceptable and useable when referring to either Canadians or US citizens of African heritage. African-Canadian works too.

Canadians rarely use Afro-American when referring to Canadians of African origin. My impression is that Canadians tend to be more specific in indentifying people with black skin colour as Haitian Canadians, Ghanian Canadians, etc. An African-Canadian culture per se is hard to identify here, which is what Grant misses when he’s here.

I KNEW you were out there, Margaret! I agree with all you fine citizens of all these nations, countries, states and towns! I’m glad to hear what I’m hearing. I was just starting to sense another romanticizing of Canadian culture creeping into this topic, so I wanted to point out some of the things I think I’d miss from U.S. urban culture if I moved to Canada.

And I wasn’t basing all my judgments on my brief trips to Canada. I am currently living with a Canadian who has been living in the U.S. for over six years now, and I’m drawing some of my conclusions from his experience as well.

And I want to vehemently deny the implication that I like the danger of having African-Americans on the same train. That’s really an awful thing to suggest. And I don’t see what’s so horrible about finding joy, and even entertainment, in the fact that people have their own cultural characteristics. AND I’m perplexed by the limited interpretation of the relationship between bad city planning here in Chicago and African-American culture. Is African-American culture something we shouldn’t celebrate because it is born out of ghetto-ization? I suppose we should stop encouraging rap artists to speak in ghetto slang because it only proves that they haven’t been integrated into the bland “one-man” of the globalized cosmopolitan society. You were joking, right?

And, finally: I think, perhaps, I felt somewhat like Sarah the first couple of years I was in Iowa, but then I met Jason!

I wasn’t joking. Good or bad, the distinctness of African-American culture was and is nurtured in the parts of town where whites don’t go. No such thing exists in Canada.

I AM CANADIAN!

For those of you who haven’t experienced Canadian beer-hockey culture the popular beer, Molson Canadian, hijacked Canadian patriotism with its outstanding beer commercials.

I’m a Canadian citizen who has lived in the US for 8 years now. I still say EH but I’ve been americanized enough to laugh at Canadian television and its unslickness. And the Canadian accent is hilarious. Its unrefined and unpretentious. I’m generalizing of course.

As far as racial tension is concerned, there was plenty of it in my small town of Duncan BC. I have a friend who used to work the late shift at a gas station where guys would bring their injured and wounded to clean them up after fights between Punjabies, Chinese, Natives, Jocks, Shrubs, and Skaters.

In Duncan the East Indians live in a separated part of town with a Sikh temple. The Natives lived in a reserve on the opposite side of town. I’d like to say Canada is more integrated but I have yet to meet a single East Indian or Native Indian from Duncan. Not that I didn’t want to. We just ran in different, very distinct cultures.

Eight years?! Wow. But you’re missing the point if you think I was talking about DANGER. The thought of “danger” had not crossed my mind when I used the word “tame”. The emphasis should have been on “reserved”. I was merely referring to train culture, like the fact that trains are said to be quieter in England because the people are more “reserved”. Please please please do not associate danger with what I was saying about African-Americans. It makes me so embarrassed even to see such an implication on this site! Ouch.

I didn’t meant to turn this into an argument about which country has the best minority groups. I was merely making a personal comment about what I like about living in Chicago and in the U.S.A. So, maybe I should just start my own “so this is what America is like” and leave this topic to the Canadians, because there is something unique about African-American culture in America, just like there’s something unique about Pakistani culture or Japanese culture or Dutch-American culture. That’s all. I am not talking about the fact that there’s more “difference” here than in, say, Iowa. Because Iowa is very different, too. I’m saying that I’ve really grown to love African-American culture, like I’ve been learning to appreciate German culture. Or like someone can start to love Russian culture. Is that so wrong?

And I still want to take issue with trying to explain the uniqueness of Afro-American culture away merely with some theory about ghetto-ization. Though those factors are in play, America’s slave history has much more to do with the difference between Canadian Africans and African-Americans, and then there are so many other factors (and some elements that couldn’t even be called “factors”). But, reading my post over again, I can see how I gave the impression that I liked the fact that blacks were confined to the South Side and that I could take a fun little train ride into another world whenever I wanted. I edited that a little because that’s not the impression I intended. I think I’d better start spending more time on my posts again.