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Canada & the U.S. 10/4/2016 10:45:54 AM
Musings about the difference between the two countries in which I have citizenship and its people
October 4, 2016. I don’t know what it was that just reminded me – at this age, catching a memory is a celebration – but I said to my son, I just recalled an event of 77 years ago that gave me my first impression of Canada.
We had landed in Montreal on the Duchess of Bedford, a very pleasant cruise ship. It was May 4th 1939.
Dad had looked up a cousin of my uncle back in Romania, the only relative we knew of in Canada. His name was Richard Goodman and he was a smiling, very welcoming man.
Richard’s fiancée was with him, supposedly a full blooded Indian girl, which was exciting to me because I had read all the books by the German writer, Karl May, who was Europe’s Zane Grey – an immensely popular writer followed by generations of readers who read German, which was probably 75% of Europe at the time.
Karl May’s fans included all the children I knew and to my surprise and shock, also Albert Einstein and Adolph Hitler.
Richard Goodman’s fiancée didn’t look like an Indian to me, however. She was tall and blond, doubtlessly with some French Canadian mix.
Goodman was in the fur business. I can’t recall what it was he did in that business but I recall my dad saying to him, “With the vast northern lands in Canada, you must get the best furs in the world.”
Goodman smiled and said, “Well, yes and no. We find them but don’t keep them. The best furs are shipped to the U.S. because Canadians won’t pay for top quality. They’re satisfied with second quality because it’s cheaper.”
Today, with a dual citizenship, carrying U.S. and Canadian passports, I’m still conscious of the differences between the two countries, both of which I call my own, both of which I’m fond of and both of which I often find myself criticizing.
It’s difficult to put one’s finger on the difference between the two countries. More likely one could say the “differences” in many aspects of life and character but no clear overall difference. Greg, my younger son, labels Canadians as “Decaffeinated Americans.”
Others have different angles. In California, in the 1990s, my old buddy, Bill Ficks, who managed a lot of showbiz names, introduced me to Jimmy Rodgers whose records I loved back in the ‘50s. He lived in Woodland Hills or thereabout, where a lot of folks owned horses.
I was surprised by Jimmy’s height, he was over 6 feet and I had imagined him as a little fellow because of his soprano voice. As soon as Bill mentioned we were driving over to meet Jimmy, in my head I could hear, “Oh-Oh, I’m Fallin’ in Love Again,” one of Jimmy’s bigger hits.
Bill had got Jimmy some option money from a producer who wanted to make a film on Jimmy’s bio. I learned to my surprise that this affable, friendly young man had had some violent background and a dramatic experience.
He had been to a party, was driving home slightly inebriated and had been stopped by a couple of policemen or state troopers. One thing had led to another; I have no clue as to what really happened and who needs to be blamed, but the lawmen beat up on Jimmy and gave him concussion.
He ended up being saved by having a plate inserted in his skull and he sued and was awarded a big amount of money.
We got into a discussion about the music industry. At one point Jimmy said to me, “Well, you know Canada, you’re from up there. They like country music; they’re all farmers up there.”
That is not true, of course. In Toronto none of the people I know are fans of country music and when I lived on a farm on the shore of Lake Erie in the 1940s, if the neighbors had time for music, chances are they were fans of Bing Crosby, not Hank Snow.
Actually, country music was popular on a regional basis in Canada - as I learned when I became a DJ in Ottawa, one of those regions. I ran an all-night DJ show at CKOY and would take requests. Country music was big in the Ottawa Valley.
I didn’t know the field or its artists and wasn’t enamored of their nasal renditions. I had played a request and commented on it negatively. That produced a lot of phone calls by irate listeners who promised to bash in my head.
But the rural mentality was a fact and, to some degree, even today among Canadians with long roots, it hangs in.
Some 30 years ago I bought a patent for a device that reduced the toxicity in cigarette smoke, and when I began to seek funds for the enterprise, I contacted the Spitz Wayne, kid brother of Johnny Wayne, of the Wayne & Shuster comedy duo.
Spitz had been a CBC producer but had moved on to Bay Street, Canada’s Wall Street. Spitz fired a lot of questions and I had answers for all of them. Then he said, “This is a good deal and you know what you’re doing. You’ve done your homework.
He then leaned back, looked at me seriously and said, “You’ve got just one problem. You come across too slick. You have to remember this is Toronto, not New York.” He got out of his chair, moved closer to me and leaned against his desk.
“You’re going to meet some rich people here,” he said, “but remember, most of them are just one step removed from the barnyard. If you pop back with answers to them as you just did, they’ll feel uncomfortable; they won’t trust you.”
He moved back to his chair and continued, “You were an actor, so act like a ‘Yep’.” (A “Yep” in showbiz was a cowboy actor who had very little dialogue - like Gary Cooper, Randolph Scott, Clint Eastwood – the other characters would get all the lines and these heroes would mostly say “Yep.”)
Spitz grinned as he instructed me, “Don’t give immediate answers; start some of your sentences with, ‘Well…’ and don’t be embarrassed to scratch your head at the same time. Then they won’t get the sense that you’ll pull the wool over their eyes.”
A few years later, when Ronald Reagan became president, he frequently broke me up because he used that technique – or, perhaps, it was natural with him – but he often started his sentences with “Well…” and that type of man cannot be disliked or mistrusted which is why, perhaps so much of the world is fond of Canadians while much of it despises Americans.
Brad Fischer, an Australian who once worked for me as a copywriter once said, “Hey, Canada is important! The world needs a loser!”
Pat Clever, a very clever German who came to Canada at age 19 with only nineteen dollars and built a mini-conglomerate of thirty six million by the time he was 42 and lost his life to throat cancer, often gave me little lectures.
Pat operated out of Toronto and Montreal but had divisions with offices in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. He frequently traveled back and forth between the two countries. He said, “If in the U.S. they ask me how we’re doing, I’ll lay it on thick – ‘We’re rolling! We’re up 30 percent over last year and profitability has increased dramatically.’ - Now if the ask the same question in Canada, I lower my head modestly and lower my voice practically to a whisper, “We…we’re doing nicely, thank you.”
He added, “Americans like to deal with a winner. Canadians don’t like winners. They tend to be jealous of winners.”
If one took a poll today in Canada on America’s candidates for the presidency, I’m certainly that the majority would vote for Hillary because she puts up a much lower-key front with all her nasty asides while Trump comes across like an aggressive New Yorker, a thing most Canadians can’t handle.
Oddly, though, while the average American is far more outgoing and genuinely helpful when it comes to governments, the American politicians stick it to their constituents while the Canucks lean over backwards to be fair and helpful.
I worked in New York, Boston and Chicago for 12 years and paid into Social Security at the highest rate in force at the time. Two of those years were free-lance and temp assignments and chances are that some of those employers didn’t properly contribute to SS as they were obliged to.
I turned 66 while living in California and when I applied for retirement benefits, Social Security advised I had only 39 quarters as credits and one needs 40 quarters to qualify for benefits. In other words, their records showed nine and three quarter years of contributions and that wasn’t enough.
Of course if any private sector company tried to pull off such an outrage, they’d quickly find themselves in court and in deep trouble.
I contacted my Congressman who was not aware of this unbelievably unfair, illegal rule that his government had. He made some queries among Social Security executives and they came to life and said, well, they could put me through the foreign division because I had probably paid into the Canadian system and there was some agreement with Canada.
So Social Security gave me a token amount in benefits. Out of interest, I contacted Canada’s counterpart to U.S. Social Security, called CPP, Canada Pension Plan. I asked them, “How many contributions are needed to get into the system, to qualify for benefits at retirement?”
The answer was “One contribution – one month.” With a single contribution, the worker is in the system and will receive benefits in ratio to that contribution. It may be only pennies but there will be a payout.
That is an enormous difference between the two countries that shows how the politicians of the two countries treat their citizens.
To be fair, of course, when the slob of a woman at SS told me that I didn’t qualify for any SS benefits, she asked if I needed Welfare. They were supposed to ask that, she explained. I was so outraged at the time that I told her to stick the welfare in her ear and marched out.
When the two countries are compared, it must be realized that the most basic difference is political. Canada, though many Canadians would deny it, is a Socialist country. It has one-payer socialized medicine. Most medical needs are covered and the patient pays nothing.
After 65 most medications are covered, too. The government will cover dental surgery to some extent but not all other dental procedures.
Obamacare, from what I gather, has given a big break to the indigent but is bankrupting the middle class.
In Canada, at least in Ontario, it is impossible to starve after 65. They have OAS, Old Age Security, which everybody gets, even folks who never paid a dime into any system.
The only requirement is to have lived in Canada for 10 years after the age of 18. The amount is modest, a bit over $400 per month but they top that up if the recipient’s other income is below $12,000 a year to bring their income up to that level.
How Canada manages all this only God knows, and politicians are constantly striving and wrestling with shortages in their budgets.
Canada’s gets a break in defense spending since Canada, in a sense, is like the pilot fish which swim with the wales or sharks. Canadians know that if Russia or anyone else attacked it, the U.S. would move in and save the country, so on a ratio basis, per capita or GNP, etc., Canada’s defense budget would be a small fraction of America’s and that makes a big difference.
Getting back to people – this example may be more of a comparison of the mentality of the sexes than national cultures: When we moved to New York, we had left our two baby sons with my mother to first find an apartment and get settled.
After spending a few days in a hotel, we found a furnished room. I would go to work at Rockefeller Center and my wife would run around looking for an apartment. During the lunch hour and after five we’d hunt together. Of course, we were both foreigners and lost much of the time.
There is a point at 42nd Street where all the subway lines meet or cross and there is a shuttle that runs between the East and the West side. On the ceiling of that station were different colored lines that directed riders to the various subway lines. We weren’t aware of this and we stood there like a couple of yokels from Idaho, looking lost.
A little man, rushing by, noticed us and screamed, “Where yah goin’? Where yah goin’?” I said, “We’re looking for the BMT.”
He poked a finger in the air indicating direction, screamed, “That way, that way!” and rushed off.
My wife said, “Wasn’t he rude, shouting like that?” I held up a finger and said, “Just think for a minute. He was obviously in a rush but he noticed a couple of lost farmers and it bothered him. He needed to get somewhere but his conscience wouldn’t let him ignore them so he stopped to find out how to help. Being in a rush, he panted and shouted. He found out what they were looking for, showed them the way and ran on.”
My wife was surprised and now looked pensive. I went on, “His manner was not something you are used to, but he was the proverbial Good Samaritan. In Toronto, you could have stood looking lost for six days before anyone would have stopped to help you out.”
My wife looked at me, bit her lip and then nodded. I thought of that little man the other day, 62 years later. He was a fairly typical New Yorker. So is Donald Trump.
Donald’s manner puts women off. They prefer Hillary’s smooth manner and plastic smiles. The manner gives them comfort. Women and Canadians tend to pay more attention to veneer and Americans tend to examine bottom lines; at least a lot of them do.
Hopefully, it will be enough of them to bring in Donald Trump to make America great again.
