While this is largely a puff-piece, it reflects some of the rebranding taking place after the election. And in terms of the 17 Canadians it profiled in entertainment and fashion, 7 were women (41 percent) and 5 were visible minority (29 percent):
As Mr. Trudeau and his wife, Sophie Grégoire-Trudeau (along with their three young children, Xavier, Ella-Grace and Hadrien), create a Canadian Camelot, they are casting light on a wider eruption already in progress.
An expanse once stereotyped as the home to square-jawed Mounties and beer-swilling “hosers” has quietly morphed into a multicultural breeding ground that has given us the Weeknd, who can’t feel his face; the director Sarah Polley, who makes films of subtle power; and the upstart fashion designer Tanya Taylor, whose creations have been worn by Michelle Obama.
The rapper Drake, of Toronto, comes in for a little ribbing now and then, but none other than Jay Z called him the Kobe Bryant of hip–hop. And even the latest albumfrom Justin Bieber, the pride of Stratford, Ontario (population 33,430), is — gulp! — pretty terrific.
It’s all very exciting, eh? But still … Canada? The land of hyper–politeness and constant apology? The home of maple syrup, poutine, the gentle sport of curling and 10 percent of the world’s forests? The country that Spy magazine once said had “cultural Epstein-Barrness”?
As Joe Zee, 47, the Toronto-raised editor in chief of Yahoo Style, said: “There was always the feeling of being in the shadow of the U.S. For a treat we would take family trips to Niagara Falls, and I’d always want to cross the border and go to Buffalo, to go shopping! Buffalo, N.Y., was my rainbow growing up — it’s where the pot of gold was.”
“Even our national anthem sounds like a sigh: ‘O Canada,’” said the writer and editor Sarah Nicole Prickett, who was born in London, Ontario, and has written for T: The New York Times Style Magazine. “Drake, more than anyone, is the prophet who’s changing that, because, unlike a lot of talented Canadians before him, he accepts embarrassment as a cost of making big art.”
The niceness factor is something that may distinguish Canadian cultural producers. “The first month I lived in Manhattan, in the spring of 2012, I heard that I was ‘nice’ from seven people,” Ms. Prickett said. “That’s when I realized I was Canadian.” But like her confreres Grimes, Ms. Polley and the Weeknd, Ms. Prickett does not produce work that is meant to comfort.
True, Canada has delivered sultans of cool in the past. Amid the polite folk rock of Gordon Lightfoot and Anne Murray, there was the melancholy genius of Joni Mitchell, who was hip enough to win the blessing of Charles Mingus. And we would be foolish to forget the alternately sensitive and raucous Neil Young, who never met an expectation he did not defy. (“Obviously people are delighted with the change that has taken place,” Mr. Young, a California resident, said after Mr. Trudeau’s election. “It’s very positive news.”)
And let us not ignore the coolest cat in a hat, Leonard Cohen, still capable of multiple encores at 81.
Then there are the Canadian kings and queens of comedy like David Steinberg, Lorne Michaels, Mike Myers, Martin Short and Catherine O’Hara, who started out as foils to mainstream American pop culture and ended up shaping it.
Canadians have always been funny, according to the Toronto-born editor of Vanity Fair, Graydon Carter. “S.J. Perelman used to think that Stephen Leacock was the funniest writer in the world,” Mr. Carter said, referring to the multifaceted author who moved to Canada from his native England at age 6. “And he was. The trouble is, the self-deprecation so regularly on display is often lost on Americans. Now Marty Short is the funniest person in the world — although he’s far too modest to admit it.”
Mr. Zee agrees that Canada has not become hip all at once, with the election of the mediagenic Mr. Trudeau. It is partly a dawning of self-recognition.
“We’ve always had Frank Gehry,” he said.
