Oh, and how would you feel if SOUTH AFRICA made the same claim? Australia? Mexico? Brazil?
What he means, in fact, is "the most genocidal of European colonies, the most utterly lacking in any culture, philosophy or political tradition of its own."
The revival of pro-genocide, pro-European-empire discourse in Canada (primarily by the Liberal Party) ought to be astonishing to everyone, but has been noticed and remarked upon by nobody but myself: the narrative of settling the prairies was reiterated many times in the Liberal leadership debates (and connected interviews).
And in these narratives, precisely what it is that Canadians are supposed to be so proud of accomplishing, in the process of "sweeping aside" the indigenous languages and cultures, is always left dangerously unspecified: we haven't exactly built the sphinx or the pyramids. We have absolutely nothing to boast of, even if compared to the Americans, and yet the boasting has become impossible to ignore: everyone in Canada must be reassured that we have some kind of ineffably special society that's worth fighting for —whereas the Americans are supposedly lacking these unspecified accomplishments that mark us for greatness.
And to return to the title for just one moment, let me say: if Montreal were a city in Western Europe, it would be one of the ugliest —keep in mind that the French consider Lyon to be drab and dull, but it outshines anything (and everything) Canada has to offer. There is not a single city in Canada more beautiful than the ugliest city in Spain, and even the ugliest city in Spain is more beautiful than the most beautiful city in Canada.
And the ugliness runs deep: Canada is an unspeakably depressing place to live for reasons that are not shallow enough to be solved through improvements to architecture or public transportation.
