I harbor-harbour no resentments about this

“Why don’t you people use Canadian spelling in your articles?” asked a fuming female telephone caller of me when I was working at a newspaper.

“How do you mean?” I asked, ever so politely, knowing exactly where she was going.

“You use American spelling,” she said. “You spelled ‘harbour’ in an article h-a-r-b-o-r.”

“If I know the one you’re thinking of, it was a reference to Pearl Harbor, and Hawaii is in the United States, so it’s a perfectly acceptable spelling.”

“You do it all the time, like colour, for example. O-u-r is the Canadian spelling.”

“Well, actually it is the British spelling, so that’s no more Canadian than o-r. Anyway, we in the newspaper business follow a little guide called ‘CP (Canadian Press) Style’ and it asks, since newspapers are notoriously stingy, that we look towards frugality of space. Each extra letter asks for more ink, so we opt for the simpler.”

At which point she hung up on me.

The point of the whole thing is that my beloved compatriots are sometimes a bit on the paranoid side. I suspect that part of it arises from the fact that Canada has huge geography but a dinky population, whereas the US, right next door, has a smaller geography, but 10 times our population. So, certain Canadians are always suspicious about ‘encroaching Americanism,’ especially when it comes to cultural matters.

I’m not, particularly suspicious or paranoid, I don't think, therefore I don't get too obsessed over what some see as 'symbols' of loss of sovreinty. I love my country in the sense that I was born here, and as countries go, it’s better in terms of life-quality than 90 percent of the rest of the world. But, in so doing, I don’t feel I need to be antagonistic towards the US. I also happen to thoroughly like the US and Americans. I’ve travelled extensively south of the border, and have a number of beloved American relatives. In saying that, I do not feel even vaguely treasonous. As neighbors (oops, American spelling) go, Canadians couldn’t do better.

Anyway, excessive nationalism, I think, is a negative impulse. We are all accidents of geography and nothing more. We’re no better than anybody else, just different from. Too much nationalism in the world has put us in disagreeable states throughout history, and it continues to this day.

“I am a proud Afghani! (KERBOOM!!!)” If you get my drift.

But, back to Canadian spelling as a symbol. OK. Maybe we should have Canadian spelling. What does that look like? As it stands, with the English language, we basically have two options, and my fellow Canadians should realize that, despite the ‘o-u-r’ affectation and its so-called ‘Canadian-ness’, many of our accepted spellings are in the American form.

For example, we use ‘curb’ rather than ‘kerb’; an elevator is an elevator, not a lift; aluminum does not have the extra ‘i’; we live in apartments, not flats; and we fill our tanks with overpriced gas, not petrol.

True, we linger with theatre rather than theatre, and centre as opposed to center, and when we go crackers we seek counselling rather than counseling.

But, I return to my initial point, so-called ‘Canadian’ spelling and style is merely an amalgam of the linguistic offerings of the UK and the US, and there is scarcely a Canadianism in the lot.

Maybe it’s just not that damned important. Language is about communication and I’ll spell things either the way I damn well please, or as I am directed to by an editor. When I wrote a column in the UK while continuing with one in Canada back in the early 1980s, it called for a certain linguistic dexterity on my part to remember which audience I was writing for and whether to use ‘kerb’ or ‘curb.’
Somehow I always managed to sort it out with scarcely a gaffe (a French word, so I'm entirely off-the-hook here) in the lot.