A Celebration Migrates South
Assimilated Expatriates Will Raise a Molson Today

By William Wan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 1, 2006

With the arrival of July comes the patriotic fury, when citizens renew their ties with an anthem in their hearts and a flag in their hands. Around town, the colors are already going up, that glorious red, white and . . . red.

In the midst of Independence Day preparations, a hidden minority of well-meaning and largely indistinguishable people will have a patriotic celebration of its own today: Canada Day.

At the embassy in downtown Washington, there will be a pancake party. Along the Mall will be exhibits from the province of Alberta. And in the hearts of many expatriates, there will be pride mixed with a quiet sadness -- the conflicted feelings of strangers living in a not-so-strange land.

Like most expatriates, Canadians in Washington talk about the foods they miss, the people, the culture and, of course, the beer. But they also mention the twilight-zone quality of life in the United States.

"It would almost be easier if it were a place with a whole different language," said Jaime Lavallee, a Northern Virginia transplant from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. "Sometimes you'll go for weeks with everything just normal, and then something hits you -- like getting mail on Saturday or seeing the temperature in Fahrenheit -- and you remember."

Suddenly from within emerges the angst, the existential questions, the whole love/hate relationship fostered from centuries of cohabitation along the world's longest undefended border, an 8,893-kilometer divide (or 5,526 miles, for the metrically challenged).

A transformation occurs upon crossing this line. Canadians who spent their lives complaining about taxes and parliament find themselves wrapped in their maple leaf flag. They sport patriotic slogans on their cars and T-shirts. Maple leaves sprout everywhere.

Some recount crying upon hearing their national anthem at hockey games. Many speak of a strange compulsion to point out Canadian celebrities who, like them, have infiltrated American society. Mostly, however, they just blend in.

"You learn to avoid words that will blow your cover, like 'processed' and 'out' and 'about,' " said Lavallee, a contractor at the National Park Service. "And when that doesn't work, you try to pass off as Minnesotan."

It's easier that way to avoid the inevitable questions, the messy issues of identity. Unlike Asian Americans or African Americans, there is no questionnaire box for Canadian Americans to check.

Officially, the embassy has no position on expatriate angst. But there was such a longing for home that the government last year launched an online program to help expats find each other and has arranged meetings for drinks, hockey games and the Canadian election.

There are 821,000 residents in the United States from Canada, more than 10,000 in the Washington area.

Among them is Amanda Elliott, 27, who moved from Toronto in 2002 with a vision pasted together from TV shows and visits. "I came enamored with the whole American dream," she said. "I wanted it all: the house, the kids, the SUV."

Now a kindergarten teacher, renting a home in Alexandria with her American husband, she keeps a maple leaf sticker on her car, Canadian art on the walls and a second fridge solely devoted to Canadian beer.

At a Montessori school in Arlington County, she teaches a month-long unit indoctrinating her students in all things Canadian. The children, ages 3 to 5, memorize provinces off a giant map, play with a moose doll dressed as a Mountie, and paint flags to take home. "They don't retain everything," she said, "but at least it introduces them to their neighbor and biggest partner."

The parents, mostly supportive, hear tales of prime ministers and Saskatchewan from their children. And Elliott feels she has done some good, even though she came to this country for the wrong reasons, namely capitalism, she said.

This is a common concern among expatriates. "People worry about whether they've sold out," said Amit Saha, who works for a computer company in Silver Spring. "I do feel I've betrayed my country's socialism by moving here for the money and low taxes."

Saha spoke in the midst of a screaming crowd at a D.C. bar last week during the Stanley Cup finals between the Edmonton Oilers and the Carolina Hurricanes. The event, sponsored by the embassy, drew Canadians by the droves.

Between goals, Brian Tham and Jordan Feld -- strangers jammed together at the bar -- ruminated on the Canadian psyche. Fueled by Molson and a need to be understood, they talked of their country's "mild inferiority complex."

"Granted, we live on an empty frozen wasteland," said Tham, 30. "But people in the U.S. know so little about us, yet they assume we know so much about them."

Feld, 32, put it this way: "When you live in Rome amidst the Roman Empire, what is Dacia and Thrace to you?"

This penchant for existential inquiry and indirectly anti-American sentiment is deeply rooted in the Canadian psyche, experts say. It stems from as far back as the revolution when British loyalists became Canadian settlers.

"It's not something you can explain easily," said Robert Thacker, a professor and former editor of the American Review of Canadian Studies. "But this is how culture works. You don't question it when you're in its midst, but in a foreign land, you start realizing you're not in Kansas anymore."

For all the longing and loathing, there are benefits to living here, said Elliott, the kindergarten teacher -- the perpetual sales at the mall, for instance, and school closings with just a few inches of snow.

But four years into her quest for the American dream, she has decided to trade it in for home. In a suburb outside Toronto, she and her husband have finally bought the house that eluded them here -- a three-bedroom home for $240,000 (Canadian). So last week, after a final class in Arlington, the students and parents gave her tearful hugs and a giant map of the United States.

She is now creating another curriculum for her new school in Toronto. It will introduce strange holidays like the Fourth of July and exotic locales like Alexandria. And although she has never quite considered this place home, she said, perhaps she will feel a longing again for that other land just across the border.