DarrenBarefoot.com

This follow-up is kind of late, but I like closure. Back in April, I was one of the judges of Dave Pollard’s Great Canadian Song Contest. After much computation and discussion, we chose these 15 songs as most Canadian.

There was some wringing of hands among the judges regarding the list’s decidedly English-Canadian emphasis (the judges were all English-Canadian men, incidentally). As part of an email thread, I responded with these comments:

Well aren’t these essentially Canadian questions? How do we include the distinct society while still being true to the majority? Is it fair to judge songs from another culture and in another language by the same criteria as we judge our own? Should we include a French Canadian song or two out of a sense of nationalist obligation?

I suppose to properly reflect our nation’s diversity, we should have gotten a broad demographically representative group, based on ethnicity, provincial allegiance, first language, country of origin, etc. For now, though, my safest bet is to simply stick with what I like. I can try, but can’t hope to accurately reflect the entirety of Canada’s cultural experience. For example, there are nearly a million Chinese people in Canada–mostly first or second generation. We can’t hope to represent their choice, so why try with the French? Ironically, given that I grew up in Vancouver, I’m more equipped to comment on Chinese-Canadian song preference than French-Canadian.