William and Kate's visit highlights Canada's weirdness

[CHIMO]

By the time the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge touched down in Ottawa, rain was threatening from high clouds. Some time just after 1.30pm the plane carrying the royal couple circled Ottawa, drifting from east to west above Parliament Hill, where performers rehearsed for the Canada Day celebrations on Friday. Minutes later they had touched down. So it began, this historic trip, or whatever it is. It might be worth asking what we hope to get from it all.

Speaking to a crowd of about 6,000 outside Rideau Hall, the home of the governor general, Prince William marvelled, as many often do, at the size of the country he and Catherine were about to cross. Then he gave everybody one they could take home: "The geography of Canada is unsurpassed and is famous for being matched only by the hospitality of its peoples," he said. The crowd swooned, basking in the brief favouritism of a celebrity prince.

Canada is kind of a weird place. The stereotypical pleasantries of its peoples are there, but they rest on the edge of mass insecurity, just this side of a fully fledged personality disorder. Speaking moments before William, Stephen Harper, the prime minister, told the couple that on their trip they would "encounter the pride of a people brimming with confidence about the limitless destiny of our great nation". Sort of. A confidence of some kind might be there, but we mask that with a manufactured self-deprecation.

It would be difficult to say with any certainty what it is, exactly, that Canadians hope to get from this visit. Some in the crowd will no doubt be monarchists and royal-watchers who were awake in the wee hours two months ago to toast the newlywed couple. Others, as Ottawa Citizen reporter Claire Brownell opined, are simply soaking in the remembered tween dream of marrying the tousle-haired boy prince William. They are perhaps equally desperate to see the girl who had the fairytale ending that their suburban, boxed-wedding-and-dream-home combo deal hasn't quite managed to equal. In both ways, Will and Kate serve as a legitimising force for a fabricated history, the embodiment of nostalgia.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jul/01/william-kate-visit-canada

[ClusterFreak]

1. More tabloid rag garbage from a bitchy, uptight British columnist.

Some leftover bitterness and sarcasm from those who were poo pooing the Vancouver Olympics. Yawn.

[Dutch]

2. Colin Horgan is Canadian, and the Guardian is hardly a tabloid.

But I'm sure your rush to post abusive remarks without even checking the most basic facts in no way reflects any kind of insecurity...

[ClusterFreak]

3. So I didn't know the guy who wrote this condescending claptrap...

...was Canadian. So what. I didn't look it up. British, Canadian, Armenian, from Mars...what he wrote in my opinion qualifies as tabloid garbage. The guy wrote it with a specific intent to look down his nose at Canada...and curry favour with his media masters in the U.K. Mission accomplished. This column is of a piece with the same kind of sarcastic tomes put out by columnists in the British media during the Vancouver Olympics. People who put other people down are the insecure ones. People who fight back and don't allow themselves to be condescended to, aren't.