Why I Hate Canadians

Rating:
Summary: Great book, lots of laughs
Review: I really enjoyed this book and at times belly-aching-hilarious. Canada is a great place to live and the people are wonderful regardless of what reviewer KIRKLAND, WA says. I don't hear many countries call Canadians greedy and arrogant.
Pick the book up, great reading.

Rating:
Summary: Great book, lots of laughs
Review: I really enjoyed this book and at times belly-aching-hilarious. Canada is a great place to live and the people are wonderful regardless of what reviewer KIRKLAND, WA says. I don't hear many countries call Canadians greedy and arrogant.
Pick the book up, great reading.

Rating:
Summary: Why I Agree With Will Ferguson
Review: It's about time somebody asked the right questions, poking holes in all of the delusions that Canadians base their identity upon. If you define your identity as a Canadian by negation (I am not American, I am not British, I am not that cold, I don't live in an igloo) then this book may offend you deeply.
The author is not entirely insensitive. In fact, he's probably more proudly Canadian for the right reasons than any of us. It is our delusions that he attacks and, as is evident in our beer commercials, our delusions are held onto fiercely.
Ghandi said, "I like your Christ, just not your Christians."
Ferguson seems to say, "I love Canada, but I hate Canadians."
Are we worthy of the beautiful country we live in?
Are we as "nice" as we think we are?
Hockey, The Royal Family, Beer, Guns, keeping the Americans out, the French in, and making the Natives disappear. All of the nastier sides of Canadianism, Ferguson brings to the surface and forces us to face the demons of past and present.
Definately worth the read.
If you get a chance, check out Ferguson's article in a recent Maclean's. Camping with his son in the great Canadian wilderness.

Rating:
Summary: Starts off well, but.....
Review: The first few chapters of this book are flat-out brilliant, and often laugh out loud hilarious. Ferguson lists all the classic myths Canadians tell themselves, often with hilarious, Dave Barry-esque exaggeration (the bit about terrorists storming the bus and offering the Canadians tea and crumpets had me near tears with laugher).

During the first few chapters of the book you'll find yourself nodding a lot, repeatedly saying "that's so true" in your head. Ferguson gets off to a great start, but then sadly he begins to lapse into the very same cliched "What it means to be Canadian" dribble that he supposedly detests so much. I didn't really care, or learn anything from his long rambling stories about Quebec, or student-exchange programs, or old friends of his.

By the end of "Why I hate Canadians" I felt like I was reading an entirely different book. The humor had slowly disappeared, and the traditional Canadian self-gratifying sentimentality had increased. In fact, the very last sentences of the book seem to blatantly contradict everything he says in the first few chapters.

This book is well-written, and contains many excellent points and debate topics. But Ferguson lost me when he went to great lengths to praise Canadians and their values, which, quite frankly, was not exactly what I wanted from a book with the phrase "I hate Canadians" in the title.

Rating:
Summary: a deeper look at canadians
Review: There's something very refreshing about the way Will Ferguson looks at Canadians. Here is a writer who isn't afraid to tackle both sides of our national character -- to acknowledge the bad along with the good. Like any other country in the world, we've got plenty of black spots on our record ... and we're terribly bad at admitting that they exist.

Ferguson raises a number of questions about our national fixations and delusions. Why do we think we're so nice, and why are we so proud of it? Why are we so obsessed with how much land we've got? Why do we persist in claiming that "Superman is Canadian!"? And when are we going to stop constantly comparing ourselves to the United States?

If you are Canadian, or if you know a lot of Canadians, odds are that you will find yourself, over and over again, shaking your head, laughing out loud, and saying to yourself, "that's so true!" The frank, honest humour in Ferguson's writing makes the terrible truth about ourselves surprisingly easy to accept.

Despite the title, it's quite clear that Ferguson is, in his own way, very patriotic. This book is not all about saying "Canadians suck." We have it in us to be a great people, and there are plenty of things we really SHOULD be proud of. Ferguson doesn't hesitate to point these things out. We are one of the few countries in the world to be born without a bloody revolution. We are the founders of peacekeeping and the home of multiculturalism. So why is it that we always point to the fact that we're not American when we want to demonstrate how great we are?

"Canada is Canada," says Ferguson. "You can't understand it. Don't try." But try he does, and succeeds better than any other writer I've read.

Rating:
Summary: I laughed
Review: This was a great book. If you want a satirical opinion of Canada it's great. It critcizes the right points. The author goes off on tangents at points, but they serve as history lessons or huge wealths of information.

Rating:
Summary: A funny, wise work of genius
Review: This was given to me by a Canadian, and I'm eternally in her debt as a result, because this is one of the best non-fiction books I've ever read. Ranging from laugh-out-loud funny to non-schmaltzy poignance, this is Will Ferguson at his best: dismantling myth piece by piece to give us a better view of what really lies at Canada's heart.

A Canadian himself, Will decries Canadian 'niceness', skewers Canadian attitudes towards America, despairs at the country's politics, and (in my favourite section) takes a merciless and hilarious look at Canadian popular culture. He doesn't hate Canadians - he loves them, and it shows.

Beautifully written, insightful, touching, and entertaining, this book should be read by everyone interested in what nationhood really means.

Rating:
Summary: His humor tends to be sophomoric
Review: Will Ferguson had a good idea, attack the unassailable image Canadians have of themselves. It takes a traveled ex pat to see that Canadians swallow a lot of their own propaganda without applying a critical eye, or at least the same critical eye they apply to Americans who stumble north. Ask an American, German, or Japanese why their country is the greatest nation on earth and they'll make references to contributions to industry/science/history/culture. Ask a Canadian and he'll point to a UN survey. Or worse, he'll phrase it in the form of "we're great because we're not like the USA in these ways..." It's a little sad and telling that the biggest example of Canadian patriotism in the last 20 years is the "I Am Canadian" beer commercial, which itself is little more than an inventory of how Canadians are different from Americans.

There's probably a very good Globe & Mail Fifth Column piece hiding in this book. As a book, however, it's over long. Ferguson pads it with utterly boring personal anecdotes that, at best, make him seem like he spent much of his youth whining to people ("If they had just all done it my way, that play would have been a success!"). His anecdote about having a goatee and a woman thinking he was a Barenaked Lady is a somewhat painful retelling of the Abbott & Costello "Who's on First?" shtick. His humor tends to be sophomoric, awkward, and unoriginal. The book could have benefited from an editor willing to force Ferguson to tighten up his work. You begin to wonder why some chapters are even in this book. What do we care about Sudbury other than it gives Ferguson a chance to make some inside jokes? *Shrug* His chapter about the beaver leaves you wondering how it works into his thesis about Canadians.

It's not all bad, of course. Ferguson does provide some rare wisdom and insight. I enjoyed how he made the connection between Pearson's peace keeping efforts and Canada's quest for a new Canadian flag. His sub thesis that Canada was founded by three defeated people (French, Indians, and the patient Empire Loyalists) gives one pause for thought.

Similar to how people used to describe Ed Broadbent as the right politician belonging to the wrong party, Why I Hate Canadians is the right book, just the wrong author.

Rating:
Summary: Very Entertational!
Review: Will Ferguson is an important voice emerging from my generation. This book was unputdownable, and I think the big reason was that the author put to paper my adolescence and young adulthood (he and I are the same age and remember exactly the same things, it seems).

Don't let the title of this book fool you - Mr. Ferguson actually has a secret love affair with his home country going on in the background... and all the warning signs are revealed as one reads through the pages of this book.

In the oh-so-atypical-typical self-deprecating style of that which makes Canadians so Canadian, Will has deftly revealed the heart'n'soul of his fellow countrymen through our bizarre osmosis-style of taking in pop culture and deviant political practices from other countries and making them uniquely our own. But Canada has also generated some original 'content' as well, and Ferguson lovingly rips those things to shreds as well.

His humour is sharp, his wit equally sharp, and his observation of all things Canadian is dead on the mark.

A great read, this book... and it's started me on a literary oddyssey with Mr. Ferguson's work. I always browse the shelves for his latest tomes and never hesitate to pick up a copy for myself.

Great read - go get yourself a copy!