Netherlands Diary – 2: Mutual Admiration

The Dutch like Canadians.  A lot.

Several reasons.  The most commonly referenced is our role in their liberation in World War II, particularly in places like Groningen, a university town in the north where we had to destroy some of the village in order to save it.  They don’t begrudge that.  Indeed, our military still work together in peace and war (most recently in Afghanistan).

It also helped that one of their royal family was born in war-time Ottawa.  It certainly helps that over one million Canadians are of Dutch descent.  At about three percent of our population, they may be one of our  most invisible minorities.

It helps even more that we buy, sell and invest so much in each other.  The Dutch, not the French, Germans or Italians, are our second largest customer in Europe.  They, in turn, are our second largest investor – significantly in those tar sands.

We speak a common language.  Yes, English – which the average Netherlander seems to command in vocabulary and accent better than many of us who claim it as one of our official languages.  And that might be true of the other one, too.  It’s no big deal for a Netherlander to speak three or four languages with confidence.  And confidence they have – when even the promotional motto for Amsterdam (“I Amsterdam”) is in a foreign language.

I was fortunate to spend a week in Holland at the invitation of the Dutch government, accompanied by their Vancouver-based consul, Johannes Vervloed.  I was treated very well, and learned a lot – some of which in the next few weeks I’ll be posting on this blog.  Mainly I learned that I like The Netherlands.*  A lot.

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