There’s an old joke about the typical Canadian who is nudged off the sidewalk by a passerby and immediately apologizes, a humorously rueful sign of the national character. The other side of the debased coin is the sense of national superiority, in particular to our putatively boorish neighbor south of the border, a cultural factor that came politically to the fore during the stridently anti-American Liberal government of Jean Chrétien. Neither tendency does us much credit.
