Earle Gray Quotes

“For more than a century-and-a-half, Europeans had been killing North American Indians with firewater… Now, in the first decades of the nineteenth century, Canada’s pioneer settlers were killing themselves with their own medicine. About Canada. Toronto: Civil Sector Press, November, 2012. Alcohol, North American Indians, Settlers, Canada”

“Beneath their work the moral core of Canadian nationhood is found in the fact that Canada is a monarchy and in the nature of monarchial allegiance. As America is united at bottom by the covenant Canada is united at the top by allegiance. Because Canada is a nation founded on allegiance and not on compact there is no pressure for uniformity there is no Canadian way of life. Any one French Irish Ukrainian or Eskimo can be a subject of the Queen and a citizen of Canada without in any way changing or ceasing to be himself.”

“In Canada, when we speak of water, we're speaking of ourselves. Canadians are known to be unextravagant, and one explanation of this might be that we know that wasted water means a diminished collective soul; polluted waters mean a sickened soul. Water is the basis of our self-identity, and when we dream of canoes and thunderstorms and streams and even snowballs, we're dreaming about our innermost selves.”

“Other nations merely change governments as a lady changes dancing partners: Canada contrives to fall in a dead faint every time the music stops.”

“And what if the other kids laugh at me?” Kerry complained to her parents as she nibbled on a piece of toast that morning. “I have a Cape Breton accent! They’ll know I’m from Canada and they’ll start asking me if I lived in an igloo or ate maple syrup, bacon and seal meat every day!”“You’re really overreacting,” Susan chuckled, sipping on a glass of orange juice. “Canada is a lot like the States and the only thing separating both countries is an imaginary boarder! If anyone laughs at you, tell them it doesn’t snow year-round, you got free health care while you were there and that you never rode a polar bear to school. Besides, do you know how many popular movies and TV shows from the States were filmed in Canada?”“It’s not just the Canada stuff mom,” Kerry sighed worriedly. “I’m from Dym, it’s an industrial dump!”“Yeah, and have you looked at Pittsburgh lately?” Susan asked. “Full of coal mines and steel mills, just like Sydney was when we lived there! I actually rather came to like the pollution, I don’t think I’d ever want to leave it.”

“Scenery here in Canada is by the mile whereas in England it is by the foot. In England there is a great wealth of 'pretty bits'. In Canada there is a great lack of them. But there are grandeur vastness and expansive views.”

“We French-Canadians belong to one country Canada: Canada is for us the whole world: but the English-Canadians have two countries one here and one across the sea.”

“Canada will be a strong country when Canadians of all provinces feel at home in all parts of the country, and when they feel that all Canada belongs to them.”

“Canadian official multiculturalism has developed through the 1970s and '80s, and has become in the '90s a major part of Canadian political discourse in Canada rather than in the United States, which is also a multi-ethnic country, may be due to the lack of an assimilationist discourse so pervasive in the U.S. The melting pot thesis has not been popular in Canada, where the notion of a social and cultural mosaic has had a greater influence among liberal critics. This mosaic approach has not been compensated with an integrative politics of antiracism or of class struggle which is sensitive to the racialization involved in Canadian class formation. The organized labour movement in Canada has repeatedly displayed anti-immigrant sentiments. For any inspiration for an antiracist theorization and practice of class struggle Canadians have looked to the United States or the Caribbean.”

“My great hope would be that Quebec would realize itself fully as a distinct part of Canada, and stay Canadian, bringing to Canada a part of its richness.”