Canada: More American than the United States?

It is this hesitancy, Grant argues, that brought the wrath of the elite class down on his head, ultimately leading to the Progressive Conservatives’ defeat in the 1963 election. The United States, per Grant, is the physical avatar of Enlightenment liberalism: a worldview that he described as celebrating the emancipation of the individual from whatever fetters society might put on them. In Canada, Grant says, this conservatism was “a kind of suspicion that we in Canada could be less lawless and have a greater sense of propriety than those in the United States.” Partnering with the French speakers in Quebec (Lament for a Nation made scant reference to indigenous Canadians), the new country was in opposition to the American vision of frenetic capitalist change.

Author: Zack Beauchamp

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