No matter how bad things may be in your life, it could be worse. You could be one of those people who, in the heady post-election days of indignant nationalism, pre-ordered Elbows Up!. The self-proclaimed collection of “Canadian Voices of Resilience and Resistance” is now finally ready for delivery, months after the new government caved to reality and tucked its elbows firmly back against its sides. Like a love letter to a summer fling delivered in the bracing reality of the post-breakup fall, the volume lands awkwardly, to say the least.

It was always going to be this way. Even Mark Carney, in honest moments on the campaign trail, conceded that no one can handle Donald Trump. Of course, those admissions were ignored by the media and downplayed by his team, who instead rushed the American comedian Mike Myers up to shoot another round of ads. If you think voting for Carney has made a difference—a positive difference, that is—for Canadian foreign policy, I can’t help you, but this volume might bring back the warm glow of superiority you felt on election day.

The most interesting pieces in the collection are recycled from The New Romans, a 1968 collection of anti-Americana that inspired the current volume. I say “the most interesting” rather than “best,” because they show how consistent our national superiority-inferiority complex has been. As for quality, I have no idea why better pieces from the original volume were not chosen (just look at that list of contributors, including, unlike the update, several conservatives); perhaps they would have further shamed the current offering by comparison.

Take the Margaret Atwood poem from the earlier book that opens this collection. I have long maintained that Atwood is a more interesting poet than novelist, but this hackneyed pastiche of Wild West and Canadian cultural clichés puts that conceit to rest. Her new essay is no better. Slapdash and condescending not just to the Yanks, as expected, but to her Canadian readers, it is a sad relic of the days when precocious young Canadians used generous American scholarships to amass a catalogue of grievances against their hosts that, in a process of cultural arbitrage, they resold for profit upon return to Toronto.

At least Atwood sticks to the topic. The book’s ostensible theme is resisting America, but the overwhelming urge that pulses from its pages is to destroy Canada, or at least its traditional image and stories. For many of the authors, anger at Trump and America is of a part with their desire to explode the “myth” of Canada and deny the dominant narratives of our own history (I counted five references to “Turtle Island”). Resistance, for these rebels, begins at home, even if it means sapping our own defences. With patriots like these, who needs Trump?

Two of the pieces express relief that Canadians didn’t vote for Pierre Poilievre—most of the others just imply it. In this vein, Jessica Johnson begins promisingly with an objection to the sterile “Instagram” vision of Canada before sinking into the equally unrepresentative tropes of the Canadian culture industry. “If you don’t like the CBC, it kind of means you don’t like Canada,” she says, a statement more of defiance than conviction that will come as a surprise to the tens of millions of Canadians who don’t watch or listen to it.


A digression into American civil rights struggles by Margaret Laurence belongs somewhere else, as does an exhilarating but pointless reminiscence about Canada’s victory over the Americans in the NHL’s 4 Nations Face-Off by Dave Bidini. Jeanne Beker prattling parochially about fashion had me skimming (and wondering what it had to do with resistance, resilience, or, frankly, anything else), and I chalked up a rambling bit of autobiographical paranoia from Atom Egoyan to jet-lag (he says he is writing from Berlin). And these are far from the worst.

That would be a screed from someone called, improbably, Ivan Coyote, which Rabble would reject as being a bit de trop (sample, referring to the CPC: “the fascist-adjacent, residential-school-denying, homophobic, trans-hating, anti-abortion dog-whistling, white supremacist party of Canada”), and an earnest fantasy of linguistic resistance to an Anglophone American invasion (as though New York or Los Angeles were any more unilingual than Toronto or Vancouver), by Catherine Leroux.

Several of the authors are eager to refight the 1988 NAFTA election, just one of the stale notes that wafts up from these fresh pages, a mouldering odour of old arguments that haven’t improved with age. Farley Mowat pining for a Castroite revolution isn’t going to win any converts in 2025 who weren’t duped by the idea the first time round. And Carol Off’s 20-page plea for stricter CanCon rules in the age of TikTok isn’t even wrong, it’s just wildly anachronistic. White Russian exiles in London demanding the restoration of their estates in Rostov and Vologda were not less realistic.


Ironically, but perhaps not surprisingly, the most interesting contributions are the least incensed. I would include here Omar El Akkad’s candid and wistful realism about a life lived between three countries and cultures. And while Anne-Marie Macdonald’s polished sneer just comes across as juvenile, David Moscrop achieves the same effect with a style and a subtlety that is welcome in a collection that often feels like being beaten repeatedly with a cold Beaver Tail. Jay Baruchel’s contribution, by contrast, attempts profundity but ends up simultaneously overwrought and dull, a sort of fluorescent beige effect.

Is this really the best we can do? And if it is, what are we fighting for? Other than more Canadian Heritage grants, I mean. Though the volume is slim, by the end I was wishing fervently that, instead of recycling a refreshingly grumpy Richler piece from the original collection, the editor could have resurrected the old bugger himself to comment on their work. With his allergy to earnestness and intolerance for pious humbug, I have no doubt he would have written a much funnier, and much, much more vicious review than this.


Howard Anglin

Howard Anglin is a doctoral student at Oxford University. He was previously Deputy Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Principal…
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