Reflections on the Canadian Anglophile

What does it mean to be an Anglophile in a place like Canada? Ostensibly Canada, at least the English-speaking regions, still bears many remnants of Empire. Our British heritage, no matter our various individual nations of origin, is a common thread, even if often unnoticed. The Queen is on our stamps, banknotes, and in pictures in the Post Office - of course. The monarchy is respected in a measured Canadian way. We embraced Wills and Kate last summer without the cynicism of the Aussies or the Brits, and equally without the celebrity-enthusiasm of the Americans. These are the more obvious slices of British tradition. There are also cultural, military, and governmental ones. There is perpetual talk about the weather. A tendency towards self-deprecation. All this is true.

But for the true Anglophile, there is another level of appreciating British culture (beyond Jane Austen and castles) that often gets lost when conversing on this continent. The BBC Quiz shows: Have I Got News for You, 8 out of 10 Cats. The brilliance of David Mitchell. The significance of being a Daily Mail reader vs. a reader of The Guardian. The sadness of Nick Clegg. And the posh buffoonery of Boris Johnson. The vagaries of British transport. The controversies of Top Gear. The way in which rows over pasties become an art in political absurdity. The tabloids. The Royals. The Hooray Henrys and the Tatler set. The appreciation of sandwich shops, M & S, and how sometimes everything is just "brilliant" or "rubbish."

We three friends, the dramatis personae of this blog, seek to peruse some of these topics, in a probing but lighthearted manner. Because when it comes to appreciating British culture from afar, to borrow a slogan from Tesco: Every little helps.

(@idlehistorian)

Indeed, as my learned friend the @idlehistorian has articulated, reminders of Canada's ties to Britain are everywhere. But, until recently, it has never been apart of any government's agenda to highlight and impress upon our younger generations the significance of these ties. If our fearless leader had his way, our school children would be pledging allegiance to the Queen & country in the morning! Perhaps this is one of the reasons (outside of high profile royal visits) Canadians can be rather detached from this aspect of their identity.

As Time Goes By

This Anglophile's tastes were moulded by PBS  in the early 90s (WNED, Buffalo) -- basically programming aimed at ex-pats of a certain age -- which, brought countless British television shows/ tv personalities into my living room. I knew who Helen Mirren and Judi Dench were before Hollywood caught on and made them into "movie stars." As I cultivated my (admittedly) pretentious teenage persona, I explored the rich troves of British music (available through YTV's Hit List, which lulled in audiences first by playing cool Britpop like Blur and Pulp and then descending into the saccharine bubble gum pop of Westlife et al.)

Until the last 5 years (am I exaggerating?), it was difficult to be an up-to-date Anglophile. You needed friends to send you magazines. You needed to special order cds. There was no "British" dvd section at your local HMV and so you read about/ watched clips of new movies/ tv shows, that would never be picked up by international distributors,  rather than get the real thing. And, it occurred to me: the "British" culture that most people had contact with was a particular imagined variety that catered to nostalgic babyboomers. Now, thanks to technology and globalization (and Downton Abbey), Canadians can now quite easily access the full gamut of British tv, music, literature, news, politics now in real-time. We get, therefore, a more complicated image of Britain. Much less rosy than that seen through the lives of our favourite aged Holland Park couple. We live in happy times!

(@SloaneScholar1)

Calling myself an 'anglophile' makes me sound like I spend a lot of time loving up on myself. To describe myself as cattle, I am British born and Canadian raised. My family lives in both countries, and I split my time accordingly. Any dual national or immigrant can attest that when you are from two (or more) places, you feel like you belong everywhere and nowhere. One place inevitably changes while you are in the other, and there is always something you are missing. You are constantly, simultaneously home and away. (Is the title of that Soap much deeper than I previously assumed? Poignant!)

Who's got the bigger mouth?

I'm glad that I have fallen in with a set of Canadians who love the minutiae of British popular culture, and a set of Brits and Londoners who are internationally minded and weirdly appreciative of Canadiana.

The overlapping identities that come with dual nationality are always most apparent when I'm going through customs or meeting new people. "Where are you from?" becomes an existential question! Or at least an opportunity for a treatise on national identity, memory and belonging. (I am clearly hilarious at a party.) So, this is the charge I have taken up as an Anglo-Canadian: to be completely obnoxious about how great British culture is when I'm in Canada, and be oddly insistent about my Canadian accent and pronunciation when I am in England. (It's YouTUBE, not YouCHUBE.) I love hockey and cricket, Pimm's and Keith's, the CBC and the BBC. I hate Don Cherry and Jeremy Clarkson. I love Charlie Brooker and Rick Mercer. I will never pronounce it "aluminium." Lemsip is infinitely better than Neo Citran. Macaroni and Cheese should come in a box with powder. Eggs taste best hard boiled, covered in sausage and deep fried in breadcrumbs. So let it be written.

H.