Many words have been written about what it means to be Canadian.  While the slightly perturbing growth in the number of those little Maple Leafs appearing on our luggage might be indicating otherwise, it’s been said that the definition of a Canadian is someone who carries moderation to an extreme.  Canadian novelist Mordecai Richler said that Canadians are the English-speaking world’s elected squares.  Native spokesperson Chief Dan George stated that “One of these days every person in Canada will be a Canadian.” Comedian Dave Broadfoot even claimed that Adam was a Canadian: “Nobody but a Canadian would stand in a perfect tropical garden beside a perfectly naked woman and worry about an apple.”
According to a British critic, “Canadians are very nice, very nice, and they expect everybody else to be very nice,” while Bruce Hutchison, author of The Unknown Country wrote:  “In short.. Canada risks a trap of its own invention.  It remains a country affluent, fortunate and wholesome but unfinished and still unknown to a majority of its natives because they have lately ignored the plain facts of their collective life.”  Perhaps the characteristic we share in common with most other countries is the fact that we’re a work in progress.