Full Comment - The open-minded Canada I immigrated to is no more

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00:01:58.720 Hello, I'm Anthony Fury.

00:02:06.060 Thanks so much for joining us for the latest episode of Full Comment.

00:02:08.880 If you haven't already, please consider subscribing.

00:02:11.840 The concern that Canada may be losing its identity,

00:02:15.440 that the country is changing in not always good ways,

00:02:19.860 that it's not what it once was,

00:02:21.500 well, that is seen as an old stock complaint, right?

00:02:24.420 Some old-fashioned, out-of-touch old guy going on about the past, right?

00:02:27.840 Well, maybe not.

00:02:29.480 Maybe not always.

00:02:30.800 Maybe more and more immigrants to Canada are feeling like 1.00

00:02:33.920 what they're experiencing here isn't necessarily what they signed up for,

00:02:37.580 that the things that first attracted them to Canada

00:02:40.020 may be under threat, may be changing.

00:02:42.660 These sorts of themes are addressed in Lydia Perovich's new book,

00:02:45.480 Lost in Canada, an immigrant's second thoughts. 0.99

00:02:49.040 Lydia came to Canada in 1999 for Montenegro,

00:02:51.760 and now works as a freelance arts and culture journalist based out of Toronto.

00:02:56.200 She joins us now.

00:02:57.700 Hey, Lydia, welcome to the show. 1.00

00:02:59.420 Thank you so much for having me.

00:03:01.040 Yeah, I'm looking forward to this conversation.

00:03:03.020 Congratulations on your book.

00:03:04.120 It just covers so many themes of arts and culture and politics in general.

00:03:10.880 It's an impressive scope.

00:03:13.140 Absolutely.

00:03:13.600 And personal life, of course, because what age you are,

00:03:16.200 it matters in these things.

00:03:18.060 Yeah, a very good point.

00:03:19.820 And on that note, I mean, tell me about your immigrant experience,

00:03:23.040 what year you came.

00:03:24.180 I said you came in 1999, but how old you were and sort of what you came for

00:03:28.740 and what attracted you to Canada, why you chose Canada.

00:03:32.860 So I came when I was 25, and I have no family here.

00:03:36.680 So I was quite, wow, I'm just a jock.

00:03:38.860 I'm just going to go out on my own and reinvent my own life.

00:03:42.100 And my country back in the Balkans was falling apart in the Civil War

00:03:46.400 and just had NATO bombing has just completed over the war in Kosovo,

00:03:51.340 in Serbia, in Montenegro, and Miloši, which was still in power.

00:03:54.780 And the institutions were falling apart.

00:03:56.620 It was really, really grim, grim time.

00:03:59.040 And there are hundreds and thousands of people, educated people,

00:04:02.040 have left the region and unfortunately still keep leaving.

00:04:06.180 And I got a scholarship to do an MA at Dalhousie in political theory

00:04:10.980 and politics.

00:04:11.660 And I just jumped at the opportunity.

00:04:14.220 And after that, I found a tiny job in a publishing company,

00:04:17.600 and then I just stayed.

00:04:20.520 And, of course, what interested me about Canada was its stability,

00:04:28.380 its kind of agnosticism about ethnic background.

00:04:31.940 There's not a lot of countries like this.

00:04:33.820 Most of the countries are ethno-nationalist or even worse,

00:04:37.540 theocracies and so on.

00:04:38.960 But there's maybe a handful of countries where it really doesn't matter

00:04:43.220 what your ethnic background is.

00:04:45.640 The idea is that your sex doesn't matter, 1.00

00:04:47.900 that how you dress, what your sexual preference,

00:04:51.440 that doesn't matter either.

00:04:53.520 And so that was an interesting plan and project.

00:04:56.380 And I think it's still a worth project to pursue.

00:04:58.760 And then what attracted me was like the usual set of liberties,

00:05:03.040 which, for example, charter spells out so precisely,

00:05:06.420 the freedom of assembly, the freedom of speech,

00:05:09.300 and inquiry in universities.

00:05:11.960 Universities had freedom of inquiry as one of the top ideals.

00:05:15.560 And also, it was a country that was interested in its culture.

00:05:20.220 It had extensive arts journalism.

00:05:22.640 It had long-form culture writing.

00:05:24.460 It was interested in its project.

00:05:27.360 And all these three things that I mentioned,

00:05:29.700 I don't think they're as strong or some are actively on the way out in my view.

00:05:36.700 So that's like a short, short, short summary of how I think Canada changed

00:05:43.240 before my eyes in the last 20 years.

00:05:45.820 Well, let's pick up on a few of those threads.

00:05:47.540 I do find it interesting that you say issues of race and gender and sexuality

00:05:53.820 just aren't as prominent here as they are in other countries.

00:05:56.460 You point out there are so many ethno-nationalist nations out there.

00:05:59.680 And I hear that from many people who come from other countries.

00:06:02.320 And I think if you just travel the world, you see it.

00:06:04.160 And yet at the same time, in recent years, we've heard a lot of how there is incredible racism

00:06:10.360 all across Canada, systemic racism, pervasive happening all the time.

00:06:15.940 And of course, I'm sure we'd all agree, yes, if there is racism, let's tackle it.

00:06:20.520 But this idea is if we are even worse than those nations that you point out

00:06:23.920 are ethnic nationalist countries or countries that are deeply racist in many respects.

00:06:29.500 No, I think we're trivializing these words.

00:06:31.980 And that's quite dangerous.

00:06:34.160 I mean, everything now is fascist, everything is homophobic, everything is transphobic, 0.96

00:06:38.620 everything is racist and even genocidal. 0.84

00:06:41.860 And I think that's incredibly unwise because, I mean, it's not accurate, for one.

00:06:48.820 And second, we're trivializing these words.

00:06:51.420 I mean, these things still exist.

00:06:53.080 But to call Canada a country where there's ongoing genocide in 2022,

00:06:58.460 that's just, that person cannot be serious.

00:07:01.160 One thing that troubled me so much as a person who's appeared on radio and television programs

00:07:05.620 to just talk about general public issues and public policy is, I remember the other year,

00:07:10.860 there was a discussion, is the RCMP systemically racist?

00:07:14.380 And there was somebody who went on CBC and said, no, it's not.

00:07:18.620 And they were removed.

00:07:20.120 They've never gone on that network again.

00:07:21.720 They had some opportunities taken away.

00:07:23.820 And it made it clear that you can't say this.

00:07:25.740 I thought, well, why did you ask the yes or no question if you were going to basically ruin the person

00:07:30.340 for giving either the yes or the no?

00:07:32.660 And they didn't know which was the right answer.

00:07:35.080 And is this not something we can at least have a conversation about,

00:07:38.020 even if we disagree with what the person said?

00:07:40.120 That's absolutely true.

00:07:41.500 And nobody explains the terms of reference.

00:07:44.000 When people say systemic racism, what do you mean?

00:07:46.300 So that could have been an opportunity to explain what people mean by that.

00:07:49.480 But no, I think that happened in December of 2020,

00:07:52.680 when the entire world had Black Lives Matter protests 0.84

00:07:56.540 because of something that happened in the U.S.

00:07:59.140 So it's fascinating how their culture wars spill out into every country.

00:08:03.880 And especially in Canada, I don't think we've ever been more American.

00:08:07.640 And I don't know what you think who grew up here, but I don't think since I've been here,

00:08:11.820 I don't think we've ever been more American.

00:08:13.900 And so obsessed with it and so interpreting ourselves with that American vocabulary.

00:08:19.720 Lydia, you mentioned freedom of speech is one of the things that is not what it once was in Canada.

00:08:27.100 That's right, unfortunately.

00:08:29.860 What are the ways where freedom of speech is being eroded?

00:08:34.420 Well, we have a where do you look first?

00:08:37.260 I mean, it's happening in all what we call now the meaning-making institutions,

00:08:45.080 the media, the universities, the public schooling system, the arts organizations.

00:08:50.300 In all of these, freedom of speech and expression is not the top value anymore.

00:08:55.860 There are some other values that override it.

00:08:58.700 So, I mean, in university, you have this invitation of speakers.

00:09:02.680 In publishing, you have staff uproar over authors who bring, for example, a lot of money to certain

00:09:10.820 publishing companies.

00:09:11.900 But for some political reasons, junior staff are in the uproar.

00:09:16.060 And sometimes they prevent publication.

00:09:18.180 Then you have people protesting, feminists renting rooms in libraries. 1.00

00:09:25.860 I mean, I'm stunned.

00:09:27.740 Pride parade.

00:09:28.540 Pride parade now in Toronto is against libraries and against comedy.

00:09:33.340 So you have pride parade making statements and press releases that are against comedy and against libraries.

00:09:40.780 This is unbelievable to me.

00:09:42.940 This is unbelievable to me.

00:09:44.780 It has been so disturbing to see in the case of various library events going on,

00:09:49.380 attempts to ban people who are having conversations about transgender issues in a way that does not conform to what the activists want.

00:09:57.160 It's like, okay, you don't care for this person's book?

00:09:59.020 Fine.

00:09:59.300 Don't buy it.

00:10:00.040 Or write an op-ed saying why it's a bad book. 0.87

00:10:02.120 Write a review saying this book sucks or what have you.

00:10:04.800 But the idea that the library's got to shut it down and do the credit of the library, they did not. 0.64

00:10:08.940 So then we got a riot in front of the event to block people from going in.

00:10:13.080 Yeah, it's very strange.

00:10:14.140 And it's speech within, I mean, hate speech does exist in Canada, but it's not that.

00:10:19.760 That is not it, what they were protesting.

00:10:23.420 So it's a debate.

00:10:24.640 It's a conversation.

00:10:26.220 And basically, one of the speakers we're talking about, for example, is Meghan Murphy.

00:10:32.120 Like 90% of Western population believed what she still believes now, which is that you don't change sex by declaration.

00:10:39.920 It's not enough just to say, I am a woman, and from tomorrow, everybody should be treating you as a woman.

00:10:44.900 This is what we used to all believe.

00:10:47.200 But now, suddenly, that's, what is it, extreme right-wing dog whistle?

00:10:54.140 Like speech, free speech in general is extreme wing.

00:10:57.100 It's extraordinary.

00:10:58.080 And then you have, you have stuff happening like, I think it happened in Vancouver Sun a couple of years ago, when an op-ed was unpublished.

00:11:07.420 So I think that's an interesting precedent and very, very strange, because it was an op-ed about questioning the levels of immigration

00:11:14.900 and quoting Robert Putnam's study that I also mentioned in the book about how high, high level of ethnic diversity very fast have a temporary effect of reducing social trust in big cities, for example. 0.89

00:11:32.140 And a lot of sociologists have studied this in various contexts.

00:11:36.640 And they did, a lot of these studies did show that, temporarily at least, until we start intermarrying and getting a little less weary about other ethnic groups, the social trust goes down.

00:11:47.660 So anyway, one of the arguments in this op-ed was this, and it was kind of diplomatically suggesting, oh, should we, I mean, I disagree.

00:11:57.640 I think Canada needs a lot of immigration, but it was suggesting, what are we, is this wise 200,000, are we doing enough to integrate them and so on?

00:12:06.940 And no, that was suddenly beyond the pale and it got unbuckished.

00:12:12.060 So that, that was, that was shocking to me.

00:12:14.680 Well, I guess when it comes to immigration, you'd give another example of something where we just can't even have a conversation.

00:12:19.880 So for years, it was 250,000 immigrants we brought in, and it was brought up to 300,000 by Justin Trudeau.

00:12:25.300 And right now, the plan is to exceed 400,000 a year.

00:12:29.000 And we'd previously heard, I remember when we brought in Syrian refugees, the support agency said, well, hold on, slow down.

00:12:34.600 There's just more people coming in than we can absorb.

00:12:37.880 And it's like, there are legitimate conversations to be had about the number of housing spaces available, support groups.

00:12:44.660 I know different church groups and different voluntary groups support people, but they're like, well, there's just too many for us to support.

00:12:51.180 But then the politicization is, you're saying too many people of this religion or of this skin color, or how dare you, you're this and you're that.

00:12:57.620 And they're like, no, no, we're simply talking about logistics as well.

00:13:00.300 Yes, yes, yes.

00:13:01.400 No, I mean, our immigration is completely agnostic about what an ethnicity you are.

00:13:05.560 But what's, I mean, what's lacking is extensive infrastructure for these hundreds of peoples.

00:13:12.060 I mean, what happens is on municipal level, the decisions had to be made.

00:13:17.160 And I mean, look at our situation with housing.

00:13:19.360 Look at a Toronto.

00:13:20.300 Do you live in Toronto?

00:13:22.360 I do.

00:13:23.100 I live in the east end of Toronto.

00:13:24.700 And I can tell you, that's the one thing, as you know, that everybody talks about.

00:13:27.740 If you're a homeowner, you talk about, oh my God, I can't believe this is the price of homes or how much, why is my home worth this much?

00:13:33.520 And if you're a renter, you talk about, will I ever be able to afford a home?

00:13:36.260 And look at how much rents have gone up.

00:13:37.700 It's crazy.

00:13:38.420 Yeah, and I mean, the new, let's say we need, I mean, you know how zoning is organized in a lot of our cities.

00:13:45.320 Not, for example, in Montreal, but in Toronto, you have a tiny area, let's say two kilometers square, three kilometers square, where you can develop.

00:13:52.260 And then the rest is detached housing.

00:13:54.600 And detached housing, the so-called yellow belt, they don't want any degree of densification.

00:13:58.740 So where do you put, like, I live in the highly tower-bent area in Upper Jarvis, and I had four or five different new condo towers coming up.

00:14:10.160 So we're all on top of each other, right?

00:14:12.520 So our public schools, do they have enough spaces?

00:14:15.640 Do we have that infrastructure?

00:14:16.640 So what I'm saying is, I suppose, I'm fine with high levels of immigration if you have systems in place. 0.97

00:14:23.560 Because, I mean, I went through this, and let me tell you, it's not easy to integrate yourself in Canada.

00:14:29.800 It's kind of pretty different culturally.

00:14:32.240 Like, it's not like the U.S. where you join and then you have all kinds of narratives about the country.

00:14:37.560 And I don't think we're particularly, as I mentioned earlier, we're particularly proud in our culture or read it and watch our movies.

00:14:44.000 There's none of that.

00:14:45.400 So you have to figure out your own way.

00:14:47.240 And a lot of people just hunker down with their own ethnic group because there's already infrastructure, right?

00:14:53.720 So I think I'm saying in the book that that's gotten a little worse, too.

00:14:57.180 Because a lot of us, especially in large ethnic groups, just hang out with our own because there are pre-existing infrastructure, support, social services organizations, and so on.

00:15:08.480 It's something that I wanted to avoid, and it doesn't exist for my small ethnic group. 1.00

00:15:13.960 So you have to do it on your own and figure it out on your own.

00:15:17.780 And, Lydia, you write very movingly about your own personal story, your personal situation, coming as an immigrant individually, as yourself.

00:15:24.700 You didn't bring siblings or a spouse or children or parents along with you and talking about making friends, making meaningful connections, which we know a lot of times we do that when we're a teenager or first years of university, and you stick with those people as your close friends for years.

00:15:41.560 When you move in your 20s or in your 30s, you will abandon those friends or not see them as frequently.

00:15:48.160 And there's a lot of challenges in the immigrant experience, in the urban experience, in a place like Toronto.

00:15:53.640 You know, you said that there's just people all over you in terms of all the new high-rise developments that have been built.

00:15:59.600 But then at the same time, one can also be very lonely, you know, alone together.

00:16:03.880 Absolutely. Absolutely.

00:16:05.180 But I think this happens.

00:16:07.660 I mentioned in the book other examples from the U.S. and from Britain.

00:16:11.760 People are starting to talk about this.

00:16:14.340 It's just, I mean, you have a full-time job, you have a family, and that's it.

00:16:18.960 That's your life.

00:16:19.600 There's simply no room for new people.

00:16:22.500 And I keep meeting people through freelancing and through other means.

00:16:26.880 It's just nobody has time for new people in their lives.

00:16:30.420 I think, I don't know what cutoff point is, but I think it's by the end of 20s, early 30s, perhaps.

00:16:37.000 I think you're done.

00:16:38.080 Especially if you start your own family.

00:16:39.840 You're done making new friends.

00:16:41.700 So now you have these adults coming as immigrants. 0.97

00:16:44.180 And again, they hunker down to their own ethnic groups. 0.67

00:16:47.320 And if you don't want that, or if you can't do that, because you don't have a big ethnic group, then it's tricky.

00:16:54.080 You know, and you also point out it's even what your interests are in or in what your family makeup is in, in terms of you talking about how lesbian couples with children are now less likely to be close friends with lesbian couples without children or a single lesbian lady without a child.

00:17:10.060 Because I guess the ones with children are just talking about what it's like taking the kid to hockey practice.

00:17:14.140 So even there, there's a cleavage in those associations.

00:17:17.360 Absolutely.

00:17:17.920 You'll see when you talk to any gay person, it's big, big, big division between, I think it's a little less with gay men.

00:17:25.160 A lot of them have open marriages, so they keep out going out, meeting new people and so on.

00:17:30.260 I have a friend who's almost 70 and he goes cruising.

00:17:33.920 He's happily partnered.

00:17:35.060 He goes cruising every weekend, basically.

00:17:37.420 But it's, that's a minority, even among the gay population, that's a minority.

00:17:42.400 They also kind of settle and their life gets settled and cocooned and it's complicated.

00:17:49.800 We get so picky with new people though, right?

00:17:52.520 So it has, if you meet a new person as a friend, they have to get along with your kids, your partner, you have, so it's all these things, right?

00:18:00.040 And we get very finicky as adults and picky and it gets hard.

00:18:03.180 I find it fascinating that our conversation has so quickly just drifted into so many different, we've covered like 20 issues in a period of like six minutes, but it's all very organic.

00:18:12.920 They all do very much connect.

00:18:14.680 And to go back to the headline of the book, Lost in Canada, how can one be found in this scenario?

00:18:21.820 Because I know you're talking about the newcomer or the immigrant experience.

00:18:25.380 I won't say newcomer because I know you came to Canada over 20 years ago, but we're saying it applies to almost everyone this day and age.

00:18:34.060 The disintegration of society, is that the phrase?

00:18:39.260 Yes.

00:18:39.540 And we keep changing jobs.

00:18:41.000 We keep moving.

00:18:42.220 Like it's normal here.

00:18:43.300 That was a new thing for me because I grew up in a communist country.

00:18:47.180 You didn't change your apartment every couple of years.

00:18:51.120 You weren't on a ladder going up and up and up and up.

00:18:53.940 You just settled for 10, 20 years in the same place.

00:18:56.480 Here, people keep moving.

00:18:58.180 Everything changes.

00:19:00.000 We drop perhaps too easily.

00:19:01.660 We drop relationships.

00:19:02.820 We drop marriages.

00:19:04.340 We drop jobs.

00:19:05.940 We drop people.

00:19:06.860 We always better, better, better, grasping for more, grasping for more.

00:19:10.080 And so our relationships will suffer.

00:19:12.800 Yeah.

00:19:13.300 But politicization has become a real hotbed thing these days.

00:19:19.420 I feel like we hear more and more of people who just can't talk to that person or associate with that person if they don't share the right views.

00:19:27.220 Those famous polls that said, well, I'm a Trump supporter and I would never have lunch with a Hillary supporter.

00:19:32.020 I'm a Hillary supporter.

00:19:32.960 I would never have lunch with a Trump supporter.

00:19:34.620 That was sort of most acute.

00:19:35.720 They did polling on it.

00:19:36.620 But do you feel like that's going on in society writ large now?

00:19:41.540 Yeah, absolutely.

00:19:43.100 Absolutely.

00:19:43.520 And that does not help with the connecting among people issue either.

00:19:47.580 Especially in certain professions, there's a lot of group think shockingly in academia.

00:19:56.080 Like I thought in liberal democracies, there's less of that.

00:19:59.180 But no, apparently everybody's careerist as much as in the less democratic countries.

00:20:04.000 And they don't want to share rock the boat and just continue with their life.

00:20:09.060 So it's a stable life.

00:20:11.000 So, no, we definitely need to talk to each other.

00:20:15.320 I mean, I know people block each other.

00:20:17.440 And the social media does not help with this.

00:20:20.940 It helped in the polarization.

00:20:22.300 And we just choose who we want to follow.

00:20:25.280 And if somebody says something we don't like, we unfollow or we block.

00:20:30.340 And in real life, we don't, very few of us, constantly mix with different kinds of people.

00:20:37.940 If you have a stable job, you'd just be meeting your co-workers at your workplace.

00:20:42.780 And maybe your kids will bring new people into your life.

00:20:46.520 That's one way if your life is stable as a married person.

00:20:50.280 So, no, there's a lot of economic conditions that just, and also technological conditions that just keep us apart.

00:20:59.580 And we, by inertia, we don't counter them.

00:21:03.560 We'll be back in just a moment with more full comment.

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00:21:47.020 Stop wondering.

00:21:48.780 Start winning.

00:21:49.680 Winners.

00:21:50.260 Find fabulous for less.

00:21:51.660 It's interesting.

00:21:54.220 You bring up academia.

00:21:55.300 There's been lots of discussion about how bizarrely close-minded and non-liberal the liberal arts have become.

00:22:01.520 I know you know the arts and culture world well.

00:22:03.520 I'm always surprised by how increasingly dogmatic that realm has also become.

00:22:07.920 One would think it should be free-spirited, open ideas.

00:22:11.520 There's supposed to be a lot of oddball characters, so I guess you never know what views people are going to have.

00:22:15.980 It's all, you know, any sort of art is about exploring the deep human condition, so you would feel like rigidity of view is not really a thing that happens in those worlds, but it is.

00:22:25.580 I feel like they're so dogmatic now.

00:22:27.720 It's very strange.

00:22:29.220 You can add this to my list of surprises, but I hear from people who leave academia on social media, and they've riped about it, too.

00:22:41.080 I mean, we know of cases like Professor Boghossian, who just decided, realized, I just cannot teach anymore because he offers different points of view in his teaching.

00:22:53.000 And I'm sure there are many, many more cases that are behind the scenes, people just giving up on life in the academia.

00:23:01.180 It's extraordinary.

00:23:02.460 I wish I knew the solution.

00:23:04.500 I wish I could say more of you could, I mean, I could say more of you should speak up, more of you should disagree, more of you should do something, but it's not really happening.

00:23:15.600 They just want quiet lives, and that's how, I guess that's how large swaths of population conform to noxious ideologies. 0.65

00:23:23.660 It's very strange.

00:23:24.620 And I think perhaps one of the reasons you're able to see this more clearly, or at least write about it in a more open way, coming from a country that was less free, you've had these battles before, haven't you?

00:23:39.520 Yes.

00:23:40.320 Yes, I did my politics degree in Belgrade, and that was just as communism was ending and ethno-nationalism was on the rise.

00:23:50.860 And there was, like, the liberal Democrats were a tiny minority.

00:23:57.400 So you really had to brush up your arguments.

00:23:59.660 You actually were in classes with a wide ideological spectrum of other students who may be refugees from Bosnia, who may be Serbian nationalists, who maybe still regret that communism fell apart.

00:24:18.380 So that's the kind of conversation that you would, I mean, it was extremely stressful because you didn't know which way the country's going to go and whether the authoritarianism was going to return and stay for good.

00:24:29.260 But you kind of, yeah, you kind of brush up, you get used, you work the muscle, you work the muscle, you talk to all kinds of people.

00:24:38.040 And so when I see that there's, when I'm in an environment where there's a consensus about most issues, it's very strange.

00:24:47.480 It's very strange.

00:24:48.160 Lydia, I'm sure you're familiar with Justin Trudeau's famous phrase that Canada is the world's first post-national state.

00:24:54.780 And a lot of people responded with great hostility to that.

00:24:58.120 And, you know, he said there's no core underlying identity, I think he was saying.

00:25:02.300 And people took that to mean he wanted that to be the case, and I think he probably does.

00:25:06.840 But he might have also just been attempting to describe what's going on here.

00:25:10.540 And as much as I don't like the idea and I'm against it, I mean, is he on to something that that is actually kind of what ails us right now?

00:25:19.760 Well, I would, had he said post-nationalist, I would have co-signed.

00:25:25.420 But I think, as I mentioned in the book, I think the nation state is a kind of solidarity that I think it's still worthy of existing.

00:25:35.360 And it cuts across so many regional differences, regional resentments, lack of interest for each other.

00:25:43.040 I mean, what, you could argue that we are effectively about five or six countries.

00:25:47.840 And Canada has always been kind of a messy, messy project.

00:25:51.140 And highly decentralized, two languages, now with the indigenous languages, things are getting complicated even more.

00:25:57.960 And all the large ethnic groups have their own institutions as well.

00:26:01.220 So you have institutions in Cantonese, you have institutions in Hindu, Hindi.

00:26:07.420 And so, I mean, it would be good to have something that encompasses all this.

00:26:15.780 And if we say we are post-national, that means we're just, we've given up on this great solidarity among all of us.

00:26:26.140 We've given up in advance, I think.

00:26:28.200 And what actually happens now with that, we're losing interest in our own culture, what we used to be called national culture, which is, let's just call it culture.

00:26:37.120 And my theory is because the arts now have this ideological demand before them that they have to be solving racism, they have to be solving sexism, social problems, which the arts did not create.

00:26:52.940 Now we have to deal with, the arts have to deal with.

00:26:56.140 And so Canadians are, I think this is my theory, are less and less interested in their own arts and just like American culture much more. 0.98

00:27:05.680 The arts is becoming increasingly insular, perhaps.

00:27:10.360 Yes.

00:27:12.080 Except towards America.

00:27:14.120 So we get a lot of stuff from America.

00:27:16.760 We respond to a lot that's happening in the U.S.

00:27:19.660 But about the rest of the world, yeah, that's probably true.

00:27:23.020 That's very inward looking at the moment, yes.

00:27:25.880 Canadian music has always done pretty well.

00:27:27.980 We've always had icons of Canadian music.

00:27:30.360 Either they move to the U.S. and are famous there or they stay here and they remain pretty famous and tour here and tour all around the world.

00:27:37.060 Other cultural spheres, not so much.

00:27:39.920 Although we see that so many of these popular Netflix and Amazon shows, they're now filmed in Toronto, they're filmed in B.C.

00:27:45.800 And maybe for the most part, the main people are Americans, but so many Canadians involved.

00:27:50.660 And I think some of them, the Canadians are writing them.

00:27:53.180 Are we seeing a new democratization where the cream of the crop is rising to the top, that the voices that have something important to say are being said and heard?

00:28:02.280 But only in the U.S.

00:28:04.200 Is that what you're saying?

00:28:05.880 Well, I don't know.

00:28:06.800 I mean, what's your sense of the landscape?

00:28:10.140 I think a culture.

00:28:11.540 I don't know if you know the choreographer Crystal Pipe.

00:28:14.420 She's based in B.C.

00:28:15.720 And she has this company called Kid Pivot.

00:28:18.880 And she and the collaborator, playwright Jonathan Young, do like every five years, they do something.

00:28:27.360 And so their last work is called The Revisor.

00:28:29.500 And a country that it's been touring around the world, whatever they do, everybody in the world wants to see that.

00:28:36.040 So a country that produces Kid Pivot and Crystal Pipe is doing something extremely right.

00:28:42.880 So I like that you still have, I mean, we have incredible opera singers who, of course, leave the country so they can have a career because we are too small a market.

00:28:52.520 And I don't know what's happening with the current crop of literary writers, but we had a previous generation, of course, the boomer generation, which left the mark around the world with Alice Monroe and Atwood and so on.

00:29:07.720 So I don't know what's going to happen, what's going to happen next with literature.

00:29:12.200 Lidia, the subtitle of Lost in Canada is An Immigrant's Second Thoughts. 0.88

00:29:16.480 We've been talking about all these disconnected but still connected threads here.

00:29:22.120 And you're giving the immigrant experience, and I'm relating to you as a person who is not an immigrant.

00:29:26.280 When you talk to other immigrants, though, whether they're from the same country as you or from other countries, are you getting the same sense?

00:29:33.400 What are other immigrants and even new immigrants saying based on what they thought they were getting out of Canada in terms of a free speech place, an affordable place, a place where everybody would be commingling, and what they're actually getting?

00:29:48.800 Yeah, that's a huge question.

00:29:51.320 I think it's easier if you immigrate in your 20s or in your teens.

00:29:55.640 And if you come over in your 30s or 40s, it's going to be much harder.

00:29:59.840 Again, it's easier if you have kids here.

00:30:03.520 So the kids bring all kinds of different social issues and different people into your life.

00:30:09.180 So it depends.

00:30:10.020 And again, it depends whether you're a small ethnic group or really important ethnic group.

00:30:14.480 Let's say you're from China.

00:30:15.820 So all these variables affect how your experience will be.

00:30:20.440 But a lot of us have similar experience.

00:30:24.760 That we're finding the society very pampered, if that's the word.

00:30:32.020 We're extremely sensitive, very pampered, slightly, well, yeah, let's say very pampered people who have forgotten what actual fascism was and what genocide is.

00:30:43.600 And they're using it too easily.

00:30:45.200 I suppose maybe you get too bored with your stable life in a liberal democracy, and then you want crisis, you want romance of something.

00:30:54.480 So like a tiny conflict is very serious.

00:30:58.260 So I think that sometimes we kind of tease, gently tease our fellow older Canadians, native Canadians about these things.

00:31:08.580 What is a crisis?

00:31:09.380 I mean, I have a weather app that has extremes.

00:31:14.600 They send me these extremely loud notifications of possible rainstorm, like 70% rainstorm.

00:31:22.800 It's a panic.

00:31:24.300 Run for your lives.

00:31:25.520 I know, I know.

00:31:26.800 So we have different understandings of what risk is, what danger is, and what pain is.

00:31:32.000 I mean, I remember when I went to, just got a first package from Dalhousie, and I mean, I came from, I just told you about what was happening in university.

00:31:43.100 It was a really, really heady time and very tricky.

00:31:45.860 But the country fell apart in civil war.

00:31:49.020 We had NATO bombs.

00:31:49.940 We had hyperinflation.

00:31:51.140 And you had to finish your degree through all that.

00:31:53.840 And then I get a package from Dalhousie that tells me, you really, when you come over, you should not be wearing any scented products, because it'll upset blah, blah, blah, or people are.

00:32:03.960 So, you know, you see, it's two different, very different notions of what is inconvenient, what is painful, what is dangerous.

00:32:11.000 How do these second thoughts that immigrants are having manifest itself in terms of what they do moving forward?

00:32:20.080 Is it a sort of quiet resignation and acceptance?

00:32:23.840 Is it, oh, tell everybody else, you know, I can't, it's not actually that amazing.

00:32:26.780 I know we were bragging about it for years, but, man, it's so-so.

00:32:29.320 Go party in Berlin.

00:32:30.680 It's more fun there, whatnot.

00:32:31.940 How is, what's the word on the street now in terms of how we're looking?

00:32:37.700 Well, it depends.

00:32:38.740 Again, it depends what you're doing.

00:32:40.440 I mean, if you're retired, I have this friend who immigrated with her family from Bosnia, just as the war in Sarajevo was starting.

00:32:48.780 And they were in their 40s.

00:32:50.120 The kids were teens.

00:32:51.580 And they had a much harder time than I did.

00:32:54.460 And the husband has recently died.

00:32:57.340 And the kids are now adult women. 0.93

00:32:59.740 And she, my friend's probably going to come back.

00:33:02.960 Because, I mean, now she's retired. 1.00

00:33:04.520 And what's my project now?

00:33:06.700 My kids have grown up and my partner's gone.

00:33:08.920 And you see how shallow your roots have been in the last 20 years, right?

00:33:15.800 So, but, I mean, I know people who have married a local person.

00:33:19.620 And that's a whole different story again, right?

00:33:22.600 So, I mean, when it comes to my second thoughts, that's probably referring to the more personal side of the book, which is, I hit the middle age.

00:33:31.500 And then my last parent died.

00:33:34.240 And I realized, whew, I really should have spent more time with both my mom and my dad.

00:33:40.460 Because when you're young, it's all about you.

00:33:42.280 It's about freedom.

00:33:43.180 It's about being free from constraints or your family and your ethnic group.

00:33:47.340 And the Balkan is oversaturated with history.

00:33:50.280 And then when your parents are gone, you just think, wow, well, I should have maybe recalibrated some of that obsession about freedom with something else.

00:34:01.240 Maybe I should have just had spent more time with them and that kind of stuff.

00:34:06.500 Where do you see these problems trending in Canada?

00:34:09.100 Is this a blip that we have to figure out, the isolation that comes with technology, the lack of strong communities, and we're going to get over these hurdles?

00:34:18.560 Or are these things worsening or moving towards the science fiction horror story matrix scenarios?

00:34:26.140 I'm picking extremes here.

00:34:27.700 You can pick a middle.

00:34:28.840 Please do.

00:34:29.600 I know, I know, I know.

00:34:31.300 That's the toughest.

00:34:32.720 That's a tough question.

00:34:34.100 I certainly hope when it comes to these things about the liberties and how we are against free speech and all that, I hope that's a trend.

00:34:42.960 I hope that's going to just has its thing and blow over and we're going to start realizing that actually we should have freedom of speech.

00:34:52.740 We shouldn't question it.

00:34:54.760 People should be allowed to rent rooms in libraries, even if you don't agree with them and things of that sort.

00:35:00.680 So, I sometimes hear, like, I'm listening to an interview with somebody new, with a journalist in the U.S. recently on a podcast, and she's in her early 30s.

00:35:11.260 She's one of those people who think it's already too late, that institutions have been captured with this new post-roliberal ideology, and then what we're having now, it's just the last resistance, basically, from old school oldies, old geezers, geezer liberals like myself, Gen X and older.

00:35:35.880 I think that's very bleak, and I don't think that's warranted.

00:35:40.720 I think there's still things to be done.

00:35:43.220 When it comes to optimization and all that, that's a big one because the forces are economic, right?

00:35:50.140 So, we're more and more precarious, and there's a lot of us who are freelancers, and two years of COVID and shattering of businesses did not help.

00:35:59.500 So, that I don't know if I'm very optimistic about.

00:36:05.840 We will be either, we will stay this much atomized, or it's going to get even worse.

00:36:13.780 So, people hunkering down within their own ethnic groups and the rest, people living on their own.

00:36:19.460 I mean, remember when Theresa May was prime minister in the UK, they had a special minister for loneliness.

00:36:27.460 So, the people are noticing these social trends and trying to address them, but I'm not sure what's going to happen in Canada.

00:36:34.620 I think for an immigrant who has not started their own family, I think volunteering is a great way to kind of grow roots.

00:36:43.900 Yes, and I've been volunteering in an adult literacy college, which was absolutely great.

00:36:50.460 So, things like that can help, and also joining sports leagues and soccer pickup and chess, a neighborhood chess club and that kind of stuff.

00:37:01.760 Lydia Lost in Canada, An Immigrant's Second Thoughts is a very fascinating read.

00:37:06.260 I found it really enjoyable and informative.

00:37:08.900 Thanks so much for joining us for the discussion today.

00:37:11.420 Thank you. It was my pleasure.

00:37:12.460 Full Comment is a post-media podcast.

00:37:15.220 I'm Anthony Fury.

00:37:16.340 This episode was produced by Andre Proulx, with theme music by Bryce Hall.

00:37:20.320 Kevin Libin is the executive producer.

00:37:22.780 You can subscribe to Full Comment on Apple Podcasts, Google, Spotify, and Amazon Music.

00:37:27.820 You can listen through the app or your Alexa-enabled devices.

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00:37:34.420 Thanks for listening.

Full Comment - August 08, 2022

The open-minded Canada I immigrated to is no more

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