We seem to be a nation in defiance. Defying the hard geography and climate of our land. Defying being likened to Americans. It’s exhausting and we’d rather relax but then we suddenly must explain to our friend of 150 years that we’re not for sale because we’re our own thing.

We know we’re not the same as Americans. That’s the conclusion journalist Pierre Burton came to in his book Why We Act Like Canadians. We’re embarrassed to love our country, he wrote in 1982, “yet it may well be that love of country that is what really holds us together. For we are learning to love it perhaps because for the first time we see its future threatened.”

So, what is a Canadian? Writer Mavis Gallant quipped it was “someone with a logical reason to think he may be one.” A beer ad from 2000 declared it’s someone who thinks highly of the beaver, says “zed” and knows what a chesterfield is. Naturally. But what else? We asked UM community members to weigh in. Sorry it took so long to get to this point.