Canada as a Setting

After wrapping up A Jest of God, I'm curious as to whether or not anything can or should be said about the novel as a Canadian novel. Some of the thematic issues concerning Canadian literature were discussed a bit on the first day of class, and it occurred to me after Thursday's wrap-up discussion that we hadn't touched upon the "Canada effect." (Since this is a blog, am I allowed to fabricate lazy labels like that?)

Personally, I'm a little intrigued by the Canadian perspective. I frequently find it difficult to put myself in the psychological shoes of a Canadian. Strangely, I have only met a handful of Canadians--due in large part to the fact that I'm not actively involved in the entertainment industry--but occasionally there is a subtly noticeable difference: to a varying degree, Canadians will reflexively distinguish themselves as inherently different from Americans. This could be a completely presumptuous claim, and perhaps Prof. Irmscher would strongly disagree. As an example, I met a Canadian while in Europe, and at times he seemed anxious to distance himself from America--but I suppose no one would want to be associated with America in Europe. On the other hand, when I've met Canadians in the States, unless there's a strong accent, it can be difficult to make the distinction, maybe because admitting to being Canadian in the US isn't as much of an asset as it would be in Europe. Conversely, an American might try to portray to both Europeans and Canadians in their respective territories that he/she is indeed a lovable, unobjectionable Canadian.

In many cases, I think the differences are arbitrary--after, is it not just a line across the map that separates us? But in other ways, a national heritage is an indelible portion of everyone's psyche, so it must mean something, be it the values on which you were raised or simply the team you root for in the Olympics.

This is all a giant digression leading me back to my question: What makes A Jest of God Canadian? There were times while I was reading the novel that I began to imagine Manawaka as the small town in To Kill A Mockingbird, or Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County. It could be that my mind wandered a bit too far from the pages, but I sometimes found it easy to visualize Manawaka as a small southern town in America: it's rural, sheltered, segregated, and peopled with a number of modern-era tragic characters.

So I'm hard-pressed to find exactly why this novel would be remarkably different if it was set in America as opposed to Canada. I claim cultural ignorance as my road block right now, but maybe someone can explain to me what I need to understand better about the "Canada effect."