Here’s an interesting report on post-Sept. 11 reactions in Canada:
In the year since suspected al-Qaida hijackers commandeered four fuel-laden commercial jetliners and successfully piloted three of them into targets in New York and Washington, many have described the world as a changed and dangerous place.
To the chagrin of pollsters and counter-terrorism experts, however, Canadians remain resolutely unmoved, if not irrationally upbeat.
Call us wilfully blind, goodnaturedly defiant, self-serving contrarians – whatever – but under the scarlet maple leaf, Canadians collectively are happily refusing to give a damn.
Consumer spending continues to boom along, fuelling the Canadian economy even as our all-important American trading partner sputters.
Builders can’t keep up with the demand for new houses, the job market remains strong, auto sales have been roaring. There’s even an anecdotal baby boom.
“We have some of the highest levels of optimism that we’ve seen in 15 years of polling in this company,” said pollster John Wright of Ipsos Reid, whose expectant wife’s due date for their second child is Sept. 11.
“Personal optimism, job optimism. I remember doing the polling in 1991 and ’92 and (the current atmosphere) bears absolutely no resemblance to that period when we were heading into a recession.”
When the Canadian Council on Social Development released its fourth annual personal security survey in mid July, it was nonplussed to report Sept. 11 had barely registered.
“Canadians reported that the terrorist attacks had only a marginal impact on their financial, health and physical security – findings that surprised us given the fallout on so many fronts from that event,” council president Marcel Lauziere remarked at the time.
It is in stark contrast to U.S. citizens, who remain rattled and fearful of another major attack.
Michael Marzolini, head of the Pollara polling firm, has been tracking Canadian attitudes for the federal government continuously since Sept. 11 and has watched a dramatic shift in public temperament.
“We were basically in the same shock as the Americans, the same reaction, from September to the end of November,” Marzolini said in an interview.
By the beginning of January, Canadians were recovering their equilibrium and by March there “was almost a backlash against (post Sept. 11) attitudes that we’d had.”
He pointed to Pollara polling done for the federal Citizenship and Immigration Department, released under Access to Information, which showed Canadians wanted the door closed on immigration immediately after Sept. 11.
By March, that sentiment had not only disappeared, Canadians “wanted to open the door even wider than it had been before Sept. 11,” said Marzolini.
Others have also noted the seemingly benign public reaction.
Dr. Richard Swinson, chair of psychiatry and behavioural neurosciences at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont., held an open house for the public last autumn through his directorship of an anxiety and depression resource centre at a local hospital.
“We wondered if there would be a big surge of people coming forward . . . and whether Sept. 11 or terrorism was a big issue,” said Swinson. “And it wasn’t.
“People were much more concerned about the anxieties they’d had before Sept. 11.”
There was some evidence of an increase in church attendance immediately after the attacks, but if the phenomenon has continued it has gone largely unremarked and untracked in the months since. Attendance for the Pope’s summer visit to Toronto was underwhelming.
Perhaps no phrase has been more abused and lampooned in the past 12 months than the ubiquitous, “If we . . . then the terrorists have won.”
John Manley, then Canada’s foreign minister and since elevated to finance and deputy prime minister, implored Canadians last Oct. 10 not to “live in a cave or hide under our beds while we wonder if something might happen.
“In fact, if we do that, the terrorists win,” said Manley. “It’s time for us to get about our business.”
Canadians, it would seem, rose to the challenge with the kind of vigour enjoined by a cartoon in the New Yorker magazine: “If I don’t have that third martini, then the terrorists have won,” read the caption.
In a Pollara poll of 1,700 Canadians at the end of May, 77 per cent of respondents felt a terrorist attack simply could not happen in Canada.
In fact, since January the polls have consistently shown that the highest level of optimism among Canadians on any issue – economic or otherwise – has been in our increased security from terrorism.
“It couldn’t happen beforehand and it’s even more unlikely to happen now that security’s been tightened,” is Marzolini’s interpretation.
“There’s a total it-can’t-happen-here mentality.”
For some, the attacks have evolved from an event of stark terror into more mundane fare, such as a grudgingly accepted rationale for limits on civil liberties and freedom of movement.
Lisa Grogan, a 42-year-old business manager and mother of two, usually flies twice a month to trade shows in the United States and Europe.
An American who has lived in Montreal for 15 years, Grogan spent several sleepless nights in Amsterdam and Paris last September but continued her busy travel schedule almost immediately after the attacks.
“Other than allowing for extra time at the airport – and it is annoying when you get called over for a random search – I haven’t really changed my plans,” she said.
Grogan believes air travel is safer than ever, noting the increased scrutiny of her employer’s equipment manifests, and she shares the view that Canada is relatively safe from attack.
“People love Canadians, but not necessarily Americans,” said the Boston-area native, adding she always uses her Canadian passport to travel.
“I really wouldn’t imagine there would be an attack on Canadian soil. On American soil yes, I think something else will happen.”
That common perception worries people who study terrorism, such as John Thompson, director of the Mackenzie Institute in Toronto.
He believes Canadians’ rapid return to normality is less an act of calculated defiance than of ignorance.
“If we were aware of the security threat that’s hanging over us and chose to get back into our normal lives regardless, or as a form of fighting back against terrorism, those are very positive things,” said Thompson.
“But we’re going back to our normal lives because, as far as we’re concerned, it’s not a problem for us. That’s what is more dangerous.”
Many analysts have predicted Canadians could be vulnerable to hysteria should a major attack occur here and shatter our illusions.
Perhaps they underestimate us.
Just ask any of the myriad women having children this summer and autumn.
“We didn’t want (two-year-old) Jake being the only child in our family – didn’t want him to ever feel alone once we’re gone,” Lisa Praught, 35, said from her home outside Peterborough, Ont., two days before she gave birth to her second child, a daughter, on Aug. 16.
“That’s not because of Sept. 11, but since that has happened, we probably feel stronger that it’s important he will have a sibling to lean on and talk with . . . . You just don’t know what’s going to happen to yourself or your spouse.”
Trevor Chiasson had a similarly calculated and uncynical response about his motivations for making his life-altering family move.
He has read a great deal about last September’s attacks and was deeply affected by family stories of some of the 2,819 people who died.
“How many people would just give everything to be able to say, let’s just go back to where we were, if we could just turn back the clock . . . . One realization is that this could have happened many times before and can happen many times again.”
Chiasson insists he doesn’t have his head stuck in the sand.
“I think people just have decided we can sit in fear wondering when it’s going to happen again and whether it will happen here, and where is this world going – or you can just say I’m going to live my life to the fullest, be optimistic and enjoy every day.
“Maybe people have recognized that. Maybe I’ve been affected in that way too.”