Sentience in a seed-pod

Mark recently sent me an e-mail describing Canadians as passive aggressive. Over the week or so I’ve been here, I’ve been struggling to get to grips with how things function over here. The physical differences are fine – the different climate, time zone, currency, more foreigners than you can shake a stick at (even if they’ve been naturalised) and the hectic traffic going the way I don’t expect. What really gets me are the people, friendly as you like, but strangely distant. So I got to wondering: what is the collective personality of Canada?

In a Subway Sandwich on Yonge Street the other day I struck up a conversation with the server, a young Indian man who has lived in Canada for ten years. After heavily criticising my use of the word ‘bottomless’ to refer to a soft drink you can refill at your discretion, he plucked up the courage to ask me about my country.
“What are coloureds?” he asked.
I explained that it’s a silly distinction put in place by the famous institutional racism of the last forty years, but that it’s led to the evolution of a cultural identity that is as real as it is problematic.
“Oh,” he said. “Well, how do you like Canada so far? It’s different right?”
“Sure,” I replied, “Lots of things are strange here.”
“What’s the strangest?”
“That old ladies dress in miniskirts.”
He changes tack: “But we’re friendly, right?”
I explain that while people in Canada are helpful almost to a fault, and friendly on the face of things, they really don’t like to get involved. Ask someone about the sights in Canada and they’ll provide you with directions, viewing times and insider tips, but they’d sooner nail their foot to the ground than offer to accompany you anywhere. I consider myself a pretty outgoing person, and after a week in the country, still not a single person I’d consider writing e-mail to once I go back home. At this point I realise that this is sounding like an indictment on this poor fellow, chained to his counter and unable to offer to take me anywhere. So I qualify with: it’s a lot like back home.
It’s true – people in Cape Town are hard to get to know. A loner in Cape Town gets in only by dint of great effort and, let’s face it, an introduction. But there’s a difference, though I can’t put my finger on it. There are a lot of parallels between Toronto and Cape Town actually. Both are cosmopolitan societies with a liberal, famously gay friendly nature. Both are close to water, and have “beaches” even if Toronto only has Lake Ontario to stand in for the ocean. Both are pricier, trendier, and brasher than other sites in their respective countries.
Suddenly, it occurs to me that perhaps the differences I see have more to do with me than with the dynamics of culture. In Cape Town I have friends, and probably 95% of new people I meet are friends of friends. In Toronto I know no one other than the old Mississauga (read: suburb devoid of life or character) residents I work with, and I don’t even know them well. Moreover, I haven’t directly asked anyone to do anything other than give me advice, and I’ve got such advice in abundance. So I must ask: am I too passive aggressive for Canada?

I think about all the other places I’ve been where the people have made the experience worth throwing some favourable epithets at, like Brazil, like Thailand, Nigeria, and Laos. These countries are full of warm, passionate, outgoing people who are much more willing to get involved with strangers than I. People who invited me out at the mere mention of my far away Patria. I did no work whatsoever. I was passive, and they were aggressive. So perhaps I’ve been spoiled in my previous travels. I’ve come to expect a level of hospitality I’m not willing to extend myself. How rude.
So what can I say about Toronto? It’s a world of really nice people. It’s a world of some pretty cool things to see. But it’s not an easy social ride. Do some work Geoff!