Ideals
An American Colleague: "I gotta admit; before I came here, I thought Canada had sort of traded guns and Manifest Destiny Badassery for Star Trek's Humanist values. I, uh... I'm kinda disappointed."
Me: "Yeah, we're a lot closer to Marvel's idea of Canada than anything Gene Roddenberry would've pencilled in."
AAC: "What do you mean? What's Marvel's idea of Canada?"
Me, sipping coffee on Slack's video-call module: "The land of bilingual smiles and friendliness that actually hides deeply troubling war crimes behind a thin veneer of seemingly-universal acceptability. Think residential schools, widespread clear-cutting to attract corpo investors, the Weapon X program..."
AAC: "Wait, what?! Canada made the Weapon X program?!"
Me: (nodding) "And Deadpool and Sabertooth, in some continuities. Plus, Wolverine is pretty much the Fantasy Canadian par excellence; no funny way of saying about but he does call people bub. Ryan Reynolds should've worked with Hugh Jackman to actually develop a correct Wolverine alternate, where his primal instincts are at odds with the niceness of your average Albertan and he turns apologetic as soon as he skewers someone with his claws. Also, that particular Wolverine alternate needs to have put in a year or two in Second-Language French, and to only recall bits and bobs of the language."
AAC: "Huh. Wolvie isn't terribly Canadian, now that I think of it..."
Me: "Which is why Alpha Flight feels like a big, clumsy and well-meaning representational Band-Aid..."
