The View From Canada on Thanksgiving Day

Commentary

American Thanksgiving arrives each year with the reassuring cadence of a great civic ritual: parades and football, family gatherings and feasts, all culminating in an annual reaffirmation of the American story.

Like many Canadians, I watch this holiday with a blend of affection and mild bewilderment. I cannot help but admire the spectacle, the warmth, and the unembarrassed patriotism of our American cousins.

Yet Thanksgiving also offers a perspective to consider how much the political traditions of our two nations have diverged. We share a continent, a language, and the world’s longest peaceful border, but our social imaginations were shaped by different histories and sustained by distinct mythologies. This contrast is most apparent in the contrasting nature of our unique conservative movements.

Canadian conservatism, despite its internal disagreements, remains largely rooted in the British constitutional tradition. It values moderation, gradual reform, respect for institutions, and holds a cautious but not openly hostile stance toward the state. Its intellectual roots trace back to the Confederation debates, the steady development of parliamentary democracy, and the belief that politics is about managing differences through compromise and conciliation rather than revolutions.

According to George Grant, Canada was founded as a community in which the government had the right to restrain the appetites of individuals in the name of the common good.

American conservatism, by contrast, has become closely linked with a much older and more volatile tradition: the Jacksonian spirit. These are the cultural heirs of the frontier: self-reliant, wary of elites, immersed in honor culture, guided more by instinct than ideology. They are the people who fill stadium rallies, fly their flags from the beds of pickup trucks, and speak of the Founding Fathers with a reverence akin to religion. Walter Russell Mead identified them, and American folklore mythologized them.

As Mead wrote, “Jacksonian America is a folk community with a strong sense of common values and common destiny.” Recent critics have called them “deplorables” or “clingers.” Colloquially, they are called “rednecks.” But whatever they are called, they now form the core of the American Right.

To a Canadian, this Jacksonian temperament is perplexing. Jacksonians oppose large government but support the world’s most costly military. They celebrate individual liberty while longing for a strong leader. They admire Thomas Jefferson, strive for small-town republican virtues, yet defend an empire that stretches across the globe. Their Christianity often blends with a political zeal that appears almost biblical in its fervor.

And yet, especially during Thanksgiving, one cannot help but notice the admirable qualities that flourish within this tradition: hospitality, neighborliness, charity, patriotism, and a deep gratitude for the blessings of family and community.

The Jacksonian spirit is frustratingly contradictory, which is to say human. As Walt Whitman put it, “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes).” Donald Trump is many things, but in this respect, he is the most vivid embodiment of  Whitmanesque multitudinous: expansive, self-contradictory, larger than life, and unmistakably, exuberantly, American.

The tension in America grows when examining the country’s ruling class. What was once called the establishment now acts as a managerial priesthood, a confident clerisy overseeing the machinery of government, media, finance, and digital platforms. Diverging opinions are labeled as “misinformation,” or “disinformation,” and dissenters from the consensus are viewed as “threats to democracy.”

The concern over Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter had little to do with a change in corporate ownership. What truly unsettled many was the much more radical idea that ordinary citizens might once again speak freely without the guardians of acceptable opinion watching over them.

To Canadians—who may complain about Ottawa but usually don’t see it as an enemy—this situation is confusing. Our conservatives might distrust central authority but rarely believe the civil service is plotting against them. American conservatives, however, view their administrative state with the suspicion Canadians once reserved for colonial governors. As Ronald Reagan famously quipped, the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”

The American Left adds another layer of complexity. It has adopted a moral absolutism that, for Canadians, feels both intense and exhausting. Its rituals of historical reflection, linguistic cleansing, and identity-based grievances seem more theological than political. Caught between a punitive Left and a technocratic center, the Jacksonians usually respond with passion rather than policy—another reminder of how the United States and Canada differ.

This divergence is particularly evident at Thanksgiving, when Americans revisit the stories that shape their national identity: the Pilgrims, the frontier, the Revolution, and the Republic saved and reborn under Abraham Lincoln.

These stories give meaning to the Jacksonian spirit. Canadians have never crafted a similar mythology. Our founding history is rooted in adaptation and continuity, not rupture. We inherited institutions and adapted them rather than building them anew. We value peace, order, and good governance; Americans cherish life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Hence, the two forms of conservatism follow distinct paths. Canadian conservatism may be cautious, sometimes hesitant, and occasionally dull, yet it remains coherent. It defends institutions while also aiming to improve them. It seldom causes upheaval.

American conservatism is volatile, passionate, dramatic, and susceptible to sudden political shifts. If it seems chaotic, it reflects the ongoing conflicts of a nation founded on both freedom and resistance.

As Americans gather around their Thanksgiving tables, Canadians are right to admire the sincerity and civic confidence the holiday so effortlessly displays. We can appreciate the gratitude, loyalty, hospitality, and astonishing generosity that animate the American character. Yet we do so with the quiet awareness that our own political culture—whatever its imperfections—is shaped more by incrementalism than insurgency, more by negotiation than by thunderclap.

This Thanksgiving, it is fitting to salute our American friends for the vitality, courage, and remarkable civic spirit that energize their public life, qualities that have shaped not only their own republic but, in no small measure, the fortunes of the wider free world.

And yet, from a Canadian vantage point, we remain content with our more measured conservatism and our steadier political rhythms. Two nations, two histories, each giving rise to its own political imagination, each offering something distinctive, and each, in its own way, a source of enduring pride.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.