581 CHRONICLESnmore entrepreneurial and adventurousnthan Canadians, but most Canadiansnwork just as hard as the Americans. Tonsay that the US would acquire “millionsnof welfare bums” if Canada evernjoined the US is preposterous.nSimilarly, nearly all Gardner’s impressionsnabout Canadian culture arenmostly sour grousings of an intellectualnliving in a jerkwater town. Take this:n”Within the educated middle class,nonly one opinion is ever publicly expressed:n60’sism, the advocacy of anarchismnat home and Communismnabroad.” The most lively magazine ofnideas in the country. The Idler, isnculturally and politically conservative,nand is run by young men with viewsnmuch like those generally found innChronicles. The best-known Canadiannmagazine, Saturday Night, which correspondsnroughly to Harper’s, turnednconservative a couple of years ago andnis now owned by the politically conservativenCanadian media tycoon, ConradnBlack. The main business newspapernof the country, and in many respectsnthe best newspaper overall, is ThenFinancial Post, whose editorialists andncolumnists hold much the same opinionsnas their equivalents at The WallnStreet Journal. The most popular andnfinancially successful newspaper in Torontonis the Sun, a right-wing populistntabloid, one of whose journalists wasnkilled in Nicaragua by the Sandinistas.nCanada does indeed have “a few thousandnNew Yorker readers,” but it alsonhas a few thousand who read Commentary,nNational Review, and ThenAmerican Spectator — and who arenbeginning to notice Chronicles.nDoes this mean that Gardner’s impressionnof a country entirely undernthe control of the trendy hive is entirelynmistaken? No. Everything he saysnabout the malignant effect of the stateownednCanadian Broadcasting Corporation,nthe brainless ofHciousness ofnmuch of the political elite, the virulentnanti-Americanism that is propagated bynexpatriate and noisy American lefties,nis quite accurate. And while some ofnthese nuisances have their counterpartnin the US and Great Britain, I willnreadily admit that they are worse here,nfor historical reasons.nBut Gardner gets this wrong as well.nHe attaches a wildly disproportionatenimportance to Loyalist arrivals from thenAmerican Revolution (again, probablynbecause their descendants make upnmore of the base population of NovanScotia than of other regions of Canadan— even Ontario and Quebec, thenother areas of Loyalist settlement).nFurthermore, while some Loyalistsnwere indeed genteel and snobbish,nmost were just hardworking farmers,nand some were highly capable capitalistnentrepreneurs who helped launch theneconomic development of Canada innthe 19th century. To suggest that Loyalistnsnobbery and superiority “maynexplain why it took so long to settle thencountry” is just plain foolish.nThe slow and erratic settlement ofnCanada can be attributed mostly tonclimate and geography. Without thenCanadian agricultural scientists whondeveloped wheat that could be grownnupon thin topsoil, with little water andnin short growing seasons, without thentoughness and determination of immigrantngroups such as the Scots andnUkrainians, the Canadian West wouldnnot be thinly settled; it would be asnempty as most of the Canadian Northn(and Alaska, for that matter). Ontario,non the other hand, has ten millionnpeople with a per capita income highernthan the general US per capita incomen(though not as high as that of states likenCalifornia). The general populationngrowth of Canada has also been slowednby the circumstance that it only reallynbegan after the Loyalists came. Whennthe British conquered New France, thenentire Canadian population — FrenchnCanadian, Maritime, British military,nand Loyalist put together—was lessnthan one-twentieth that of the Americanncolonies. The US was not only anfar greater magnet for immigrants, itndrew people from Canada as well.nOnly the gradual “filling up” of thenUS allowed Canada to start attractingnheavy immigration.nGardner is correct in arguing thatnCanada began in an act of negation ofnthe American Revolution. Unfortunately,nlike most American conservatives,nhe finds it hard to realize that thisnnegation was the central act of conservativenaffirmation in the history ofnNorth America. “Better one tyrantnthree thousand miles away than threenthousand tyrants one mile away,” wasnhow a Loyalist who lost his farm bynopposing the Revolution explained hisnchoice. What kept alive this tradition ofnskeptical royalism and dislike of popu­nnnlist enthusiasm was not Gardner’snmythical “pattern of a genteel uppernclass and an unwashed lower classnrabble” — Canada’s actual class structurenis not much different from that ofnthe US—but the cautious and compromisingnpolitics required to holdnFrench-speaking Catholics and (largely)nProtestant English-speakers togethernin one nation.nOne of the reasons that Gardnerndoes not understand Canada has nothingnto do with this country at all. Likenmany Americans who now identifynthemselves as conservatives, he hasnforgotten, or never learned, that evennin the United States conservatism hasnbeen skeptical or hostile to free enterprisenand its confident but somewhatnphilistine expansionism. As we havencome to realize, however, that not justnMarxism, but the more piecemeal statistnexpansion of both Fabianism andnthe paternalist right are deadly threatsnto both freedom and order, we are allncoming more and more to agree withnFriedrich von Hayek. (This is a recentnand somewhat reluctant conversion.)nTo put it in more historical terms, thenhero of literate Canadian conservativesnhas been Dr. Johnson, not AdamnSmith. We understand perfectly wellnthat The Wealth of Nations provides anfar better formula for social dynamismnthan the perennial wisdom in Boswell’snbiography. But we are the people whondid not hold dynamism as the highestngood.nThis is what is most ironic aboutnGardner’s little exercise in packagednhistory. It is an attack on Ganadiannprovincialism and parochialism by annessentially provincial and parochial critic.nI dislike the ideology and the hegemonynof the hive just as much as hendoes, and I would guess the proportionnof Canadians across the country withnviews similar to my own is about thensame as in the United States. Many ofnus wish we had a Margaret Thatcher,nrather than a Brian Mulroney, inncharge of the Conservative Party andnthe country. But the fact we do not hasnnothing to do with us being a nation ofncowed louts, demoralized by Loyalistngentility. It has to do with a perfectlynreasonable desire to avoid playing out annorthern version of the American CivilnWar, with Quebec corresponding tonthe South.nIf Gardner wrote his essay as an