As Guy Plamondon, the Canadian cultural affairs consul in New York City, told the Ottawa Citizen, “Americans don’t know us as well as we know them.” Plamondon made the seemingly obvious remark in April 1981 as he launched a new initiative in the Lower Manhattan neighbourhood of SoHo. Known as 49th Parallel, the federally funded centre would feature experimental art, video installations, and even performances. The gallery closed in June 1992, having been plagued by skepticism. Was it a wise use of taxpayers’ money? Was it telling the right stories about Canada? Did anyone care? Indeed, Americans did not seem to know much more about their northern neighbour after a decade of exhibitions, save for perhaps an elite group of New Yorkers. Many other attempts to “show that we have people who compare easily” to their southern counterparts yielded equally slim results.
The use of art to explain Canada and to strengthen its culture was not new, of course. Ottawa had...
Tim Cook was the author or editor of nineteen books, including The Good Allies: How Canada and the United States Fought Together to Defeat Fascism During the Second World War.
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