{"id":231615,"date":"2025-10-22T10:10:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T10:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/231615\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T10:10:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T10:10:08","slug":"with-patriots-like-these-who-needs-trump-a-review-of-elbows-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/231615\/","title":{"rendered":"With patriots like these, who needs Trump? A review of Elbows Up!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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!<\/a>. The self-proclaimed collection of \u201cCanadian Voices of Resilience and Resistance\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2014a positive difference, that is\u2014for Canadian foreign policy, I can\u2019t help you, but this volume might bring back the warm glow of superiority you felt on election day.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cthe most interesting\u201d rather than \u201cbest,\u201d 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<\/a>, including, unlike the update, several conservatives); perhaps they would have further shamed the current offering by comparison.<\/p>\n

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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 clich\u00e9s 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.<\/p>\n

At least Atwood sticks to the topic. The book\u2019s 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 \u201cmyth\u201d of Canada and deny the dominant narratives of our own history (I counted five references to \u201cTurtle Island\u201d). Resistance, for these rebels, begins at home, even if it means sapping our own defences. With patriots like these, who needs Trump?<\/p>\n

Two of the pieces express relief that Canadians didn\u2019t vote for Pierre Poilievre\u2014most of the others just imply it. In this vein, Jessica Johnson begins promisingly with an objection to the sterile \u201cInstagram\u201d vision of Canada before sinking into the equally unrepresentative tropes of the Canadian culture industry. \u201cIf you don\u2019t like the CBC, it kind of means you don\u2019t like Canada,\u201d she says, a statement more of defiance than conviction that will come as a surprise to the tens of millions of Canadians who don\u2019t watch or listen to it.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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\n <\/a><\/p>\n

A digression into American civil rights struggles by Margaret Laurence belongs somewhere else, as does an exhilarating but pointless reminiscence about Canada\u2019s victory over the Americans in the NHL\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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: \u201cthe fascist-adjacent, residential-school-denying, homophobic, trans-hating, anti-abortion dog-whistling, white supremacist party of Canada\u201d), 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t improved with age. Farley Mowat pining for a Castroite revolution isn\u2019t going to win any converts in 2025 who weren\u2019t duped by the idea the first time round. And Carol Off\u2019s 20-page plea for stricter CanCon rules in the age of TikTok isn\u2019t even wrong, it\u2019s just wildly anachronistic. White Russian exiles in London demanding the restoration of their estates in Rostov and Vologda were not less realistic.<\/p>\n

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\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Ironically, but perhaps not surprisingly, the most interesting contributions are the least incensed. I would include here Omar El Akkad\u2019s candid and wistful realism about a life lived between three countries and cultures. And while Anne-Marie Macdonald\u2019s 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\u2019s contribution, by contrast, attempts profundity but ends up simultaneously overwrought and dull, a sort of fluorescent beige effect.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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\n <\/a><\/p>\n

Howard Anglin<\/a><\/p>\n

\n Howard Anglin is a doctoral student at Oxford University. He was previously Deputy Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Principal\u2026
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