Explanation:
Probably not, and, maybe from my point of view, thank G-d.
Who's The We Here?
Canadians, in and of itself, doesn't mean much. Canada has been, since before Confederation, a set of social class, regional, racial, ethnic and religious groups fighting to advance their own interests. You could apply Uchronic (alternate history tests) to imagine what would have happened if certain other groups had won. Our indigenous peoples might have been in seventh heaven if all the invaders of their part of Turtle Island had gotten back on the boat and gone away.
Say the British had cut a different deal with the incipient Quebecois, when they conquered New France in 1763. How about, a devoutly Roman Catholic, francophone unit, coast to coast? Less politically correct Quebecois might admit to you that, that would have been very satisfactory. (Say Tabernac in Le Vancouver and everybody gets it!)
As a friend of mine in Edmonton used to say, “Money Talks and Bulls—t walks.” Actually, that is pretty much how Canada works in our own timeline, but say for the sake of a terrifying argument, during the Depression, Bible Bill Aberhart ends up convincing all of Canada of his vision, sort of like an earlier day Jason Kenney. Think of the extermination camps, the vicious German Shepherds, the summary executing of Homosexuals, Troublesome Native people and single Moms, and the humane euthanasia of the mentally disabled.
Or, what if us Jews got to be as clever at plotting as Bible Bill and some modern Albertans would like to say. Watch us abolish Anglo and French Canada in 1955, us attacking from somewhere in North Winnipeg. Nightclubs stay open until dawn, with special tax breaks for club owners and show girls. We impose the most comprehensive social safety net, ever, and put Sweden to shame. Johnny Wayne and Frank Shuster, become, respectively, the Governor General and Prime Minister of Canada, for life. Men are admitted to drinking establishments only when accompanied by a woman, suitably attired in a slinky, film noir-type, outfit. Honest Ed Mirvish becomes Minister of Finance. We enforce new federal legislation, the Have Fun and Go Shopping Day Act. Local municipalities are required to promote casino licencing, every Canadian main street must offer Sunday Crazy Day shopping bargains, and you have to take your missus out for a good meal, chopped, chicken soup and latkes being mandatory on the menu. (UCP'ers, don't panic, I am just indulging myself on a quiet Sunday afternoon, in that anti-pipeline, anti-butch, den of iniquity, downtown Ottawa. However, Justin is just up the road from me, a ten minute walk to his headquarters, and, I know for a fact from our Ottawa grapevine, he is going to get you, and, definitely, bring you down, with the help of the Green Party!)
But, the real life, core denominators were the Fathers of Confederation, and the groups of people they represented. Their vision, a recreated, federal Scotland, with a sort of backward version of Normandy tacked on, is what they got, run by baronial types in the Montreal anglophone community and the up and coming, brash, Toronto. They sort of created the Canada they wanted, and made it stick, bits of sticky right up to today.
This year is the hundredth anniversary of the Winnipeg General Strike. The branch baronocracy of Winnipeg had gotten set itself set up, in the very poshest parts of a generally kind of dumpy Winnipeg. They were certainly getting the Winnipeg they wanted. A Manitoba political scientist could make a credible argument that they still largely do, after making a few concessions, like letting us into the Manitoba and Winnipeg Winter Clubs. Mostly, they still live in the same parts of town as in 1919, and their direct geographic extensions. (Wellington Crescent was the “it” street in classy Winnipeg. It still is. At the very western end, in the early part of the 1900's, some property developers established the town of Tuxedo, which is just what it sounds like. Until the late 1950's we weren't any more welcome there, than at the Manitoba Club.)
To a large extent, the Winnipeg General Strike was about us White Ethnics resisting the barony. We kept on resisting. Wellington Crescent really is a nice street, but I sure am glad we did.
