Notes on the Canzukian Schism

I: EXIT THE CRACKERVERSE

My official nationality is “Canadian-American.” That means I was born and raised in Canada, but I’ve spent most of my life living in the United States. This experience has given me a particular, distinct perspective on media.

The vast majority of all Canadians live within one hundred and fifty miles of the United States, which makes the border very accessible not just by car, but by antenna. During my childhood, every radio and television set I had access to could pick up just as many American stations as Canadian ones. Being able to flip back and forth between them at will was like being able to deliberately shift between two very slightly different realities. Over time, I started to get better at noticing what made each one distinct from the other.

Noticing those kinds of details is kind of a classic Canadian trait, I think. We all grow up being told that being Canadian is an essential component of our identities, but in order to develop any understanding of what the word “Canadian” is actually supposed to mean, we have to wade through the unrelenting torrent of American, British, and French cultural products that surrounds us at all times. We must all puzzle out for ourselves the reasons why America had to fight a revolution against Britain and we didn’t, or why the Québécois go to all the trouble of saying “chien chaud” when the French are perfectly happy to say “hot-dog.”

I think that’s how you get someone like Marshall McLuhan. Maybe experiencing television for the first time in a place like Toronto, where he could pick up both Canadian and American broadcasts, helped him to perceive the impact that the medium of television itself has, regardless of the the content of the programming. Maybe there’s something about the particular position that Canada occupies in the anglosphere that encourages this kind of thinking.

Another iconic Canadian is Drake, a perennial outsider that obsesses over regional rap scenes in America and Britain with the zeal of a Discogs power-user who wields unlimited disposable income. As the internet made the world a smaller, more interconnected place in the twenty tens, Drake’s popularity soared as he brought multiple scenes and sounds together under one transatlanticist umbrella. Now, at a time when the U.S. is shifting towards protectionism and geopolitical isolation, former collaborators from America are citing the exact