Imagine a West Wing episode come to life, and that’s basically Justin Trudeau. The winsome Canadian Prime Minister blew up the internet again last week via an old photo of him larking about for the cameras, balancing his entire weight on his wrists on the edge of a desk in trademark manly-but-sensitive fashion.
One more for a photo album that so far includes Trudeau cuddling pandas, Trudeau proudly proclaiming himself a feminist, Trudeau wearing a Barbie-pink sweatshirt in solidarity with children bullied for looking different — and of course a newly elected Trudeau last autumn answering questions about why half his new cabinet was female, with the words “because it’s 2015”, and a shrug that clearly meant “so deal with it”.
Week before last even saw the emergence of a Trudeau-based homage to the old internet meme of feminist Ryan Gosling, which used to feature smouldering pictures of the actor overlaid with worthy feminist texts. The online news organisation Vox produced a version featuring cheesy pictures of the prime minister with captions such as “Hey girl, I may be dreamy but Canada has a long way to go to close the wage gap!”
Even if this does turn out to be an act cynically laid on with a trowel, personally I’d take that over someone methodically fishing for the misogynist rage vote. These days it’s a relief just to know someone still thinks women’s votes are worth having. And so Canada, land of wholesome outdoor sports and apologising profusely for things that weren’t your fault, is undeniably having a moment.
The rest are finally catching up with what keen skiers and those bearded London hipsters who spent most of last year dressing like lumberjacks must surely have known forever: Canada is nowhere near as boring as it looks.
Like United States President Barack Obama before him, there’s something made-for-social-media about Trudeau. And as with Obama, there is a fear that it can only end in crushing disappointment — that it’s all too good to be true, that there may be little of substance behind the slick photo opportunities, that as the son of a former prime minister himself, Trudeau makes a strange kind of poster boy for a more egalitarian Canada. But Trudeaumania isn’t just about him, it’s about the country he represents. Who else is still pulling off the whole hopey-changey thing, still surfing a wave of sunny progressive feeling when the US and much of Europe are increasingly convulsed with rage against either poor migrants or privileged elites, or both?
While Britons contemplate a supposedly “kinder, gentler politics” of the Left that turns out to come garnished with vicious personal attacks and repulsively anti-semitic undercurrents, lucky old Canada gets a photogenic ex-snowboarding instructor calmly explaining why it’s not so mad to run a deficit.
What’s puzzling is that Canada has been through most of the same grim experiences — the banking crash, recession, a series of thwarted terrorist attacks, followed by a shootout inside its parliament building — that elsewhere are blamed for feeding the politics of hate.
Minimum of fuss
Yet, it seems to be cheerfully carrying on as if it didn’t quite get that memo, taking in 25,000 Syrian refugees with a minimum of fuss although its population is half the size of Britain’s.
Naturally, Trudeau was filmed just before Christmas personally helping refugees into warm coats, while declaring, “You’re safe at home now”. Perhaps it feels different if you live there. But from the outside at least, Canada seems to be pulling off the elusive trick of remaining tolerant, relaxed and at ease with itself in challenging circumstances with more aplomb than most.
You’d think all progressives would be hammering on the door to find out how they do it. But while any leftish policy wonk can give you chapter and verse on Scandinavia, few have made a life’s work of studying Canada, even though its quietly self-effacing culture seems in some ways a more realistic vision of what a future progressive Britain could be. It’s a shame because while the US boasts of offering its citizens “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, it’s Canada that actually delivers on all three.
According to the global happiness index produced annually by three academics specialising in the study of well-being, Canada is the fifth happiest country in the world and beats its noisily libertarian neighbour both on healthy life expectancy and “freedom to make life choices”.
And like the solid but rather earnest man you realise too late you actually should have married, it’s finally starting to get noticed. It began as a joke, a stunt by a Canadian radio DJ to promote the little-known island just off Nova Scotia he calls home. But then the tongue-in-cheek website Rob Calabrese set up, urging Americans to emigrate to Cape Breton if Trump becomes president, started getting hundreds of thousands of hits.
Before long, he was swamped with inquiries from south of the border about life on an island offering not just the prospect of kayaking in bracingly cold waters, but a society where, as his website puts it, “women can get abortions, people can roam freely and the only walls are holding up the roofs of our extremely affordable houses”. But it’s not Donald Trump that has got people day-dreaming about life on an admittedly pretty island with few jobs and not much excitement unless you happen to like tuna fishing.
The emails from wistful Americans barely mention politics, according to Calabrese. Rather, they seem to be drawn to the idea of healthy rural living with “good neighbours, rich culture, safety, peace” — not a tremendously thrilling life, perhaps, but arguably not a bad one.
Since Americans threaten to move to Canada at pretty much every election and there’s precious little evidence most go through with it, Cape Breton perhaps shouldn’t get its hopes up.
But there’s something undeniably appealing right now about a country whose most violent export is Justin Bieber fans relentlessly patrolling the internet for anyone dissing their hero. So what if its winters last forever and it’s inexplicably keen on hockey? Nice but dull can have its advantages, in a world that feels ever more nasty and extreme.
— Guardian News & Media Ltd
Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist and former political editor of the Observer.
