Formative Experiences

I've been thinking about siblings. You know how a sibling comes from the same sacks of DNA you do, and you can sometimes see yourself and your own (or your parents') mannerisms in a sibling? Especially those mannerisms that just. Make. You. Nuts. It's actually comforting in a scary way.

Yet at some point, you and your siblings leave off fighting in the back seat of the family station wagon and venture off on your own personal adventures. These adventures aren't necessarily traumatic. Some of you "go away" for formal education and some don't. Some of you cast about for a job or profession for awhile, while others get on a track and never look back.

Of course, formative experiences can also be horrid--sick children, broken families, accidents, loss.

Through it all, you're still siblings and indelibly connected, but your experiences give you different "hot buttons."

I was thinking about siblings in relation to the U.S. and Canada. You could argue that the two countries are actually distant cousins by now. Feel free to impose some other descriptor on the relationship. But for all that we both occupy North America, we as countries have different experiences.

Case in point: SARS. Remember that? Yeah, me neither, except in a "whew, bullet dodged" kind of way. But I have learned about it since moving here.

This past Friday, a passenger train en route from Vancouver to Toronto was stopped in Nowhere (actually Foleyet), Ontario. One passenger had died under mysterious circumstances, and several others were sick. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (aka "Mounties" or "Horsemen") were sent to investigate.

I "got" right away that this was a public health scare, not necessarily a terrorism scare. After a few minutes, I did finally remember SARS. But I didn't have the visceral "omigod" reaction that I saw in the newsreaders and reporters.

Being me, I had learned the little I now know about SARS in Canada through fiction--in this case, Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures, the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Award-winning collection of short stories by Vincent Lam. Lam is a physician in Toronto who helped treat SARS victims. Oh, and he writes.

Here's a SARS statistics refresher, courtesy of the World Health Organization. Between November 1, 2002, and August 7, 2003, 251 cases of SARS were confirmed in Canada. That's more than anywhere else, other than China itself, of course, where nearly 8000 cases were confirmed. Of those 251 cases in Canada, 41 people died. The U.S. had just 33 cases, and 0, zero, deaths.

Friday's event was seen both as a chance to practice lessons learned from the SARS outbreak and as a practice run for any future infection, such as avian flu. This situation ended well (except for the woman who died, of apparently natural causes, in her 40s). The other illnesses on board were determined not to be a public health threat--just a series of coincidences.

As these details came out over the weekend, news readers and reporters expressed concern and relief. I never heard or even had the sense that they felt "pff, much ado about nothing."

And I think that's because Canadians know, in a deep and meaningful way, that influenza outbreaks are frightening, deadly, and likely.

I don't mean to say (today) that Americans are insensitive. These formative experiences work both ways. The terrorist attacks in the U.S. in 2001 are a prime example of something Canadians can't quite grasp in the same personal way that Americans do. Yes, the Air India flight that exploded over Scotland in 1985 was also a terrorist plot that claimed many Canadians. But the CN tower in Toronto still stands. No planes were directed toward Ottawa.

Thus it's worth remembering that in spite of a long, undefended border and our shared (increasingly distant) past, we respond to different events differently.

Just like me and my own siblings--none of whom, fortunately, inherited our father's tendency to make loud crunching noises while chewing mashed potatoes. At least no one has demonstrated it so far.