[BRIEF NOTE] Canadian Ultranationalism

[rfmcdonald]

While I'm talking about an occasionally paranoid Canadian nationalism, I may as well bring up Ray Smith's 1969 story "Cape Breton Is The Thought Control Centre of Canada." I hadn't expected to encounter, in my English Canadian fiction class at UPEI, stories describing the mass-poisoning of American marines occupying Canada by the widows of the Canada Customs agents killed during the invasion, or the mass-mailing of American tourists' ears to the White House.

I think that Smith was joking, or trying to make some point in properly post-modern ironic fashion. I hope he was.

Civilization's a thin veneer, isn't it?