Canadian patriotism has surged since U.S. President Donald Trump took office and waged a trade war with his country’s northern neighbour. But while this flavour of patriotism has largely manifested in opposition to the United States (“Elbows up,” etc.), one Jewish social psychologist, neuroscientist and writer wonders if Canadians could change that perspective. What if, instead of defining itself as “not America”, Canadian patriotism celebrated its culture and achievements on their own merits?

That’s the thesis from Montreal-born Michael Inzlicht, who now teaches in the psychology department at the University of Toronto. Earlier this year, he wrote a post on his Substack, “How Quebec Taught Me to Love Canada“, outlining how Canadian pride has, in a few short months, seemingly caught up to what Quebec has been doing for decades.

To discuss this shift—especially from a Jewish perspective—Inzlicht joins his neighbour in Toronto’s Roncesvalles Village, Phoebe Maltz Bovy, for a discussion about the shift in politics and perception, from their own neighbourhood to the international border.

Transcript

**Phoebe Maltz Bovy:**So I have a T-shirt. It says on the T-shirt that it’s from 1994. I don’t know where I got this T-shirt. All I know is that I call it the Canada shirt. I’ve had it since before moving to Canada. It has a big maple leaf that’s kind of got superimposed on it, a fleur de lis. It says in English in the front, then in French in the back, “My country, Canada, my province, Quebec. What more could one wish?” So in a way, this episode of The Jewish Angle is going to be a close reading of this rather large and probably never so high quality to begin with T-shirt in my T-shirt collection. It’s inspired by the fact that I read a really interesting and well-written and fun essay called “How Quebec Taught Me to Love Canada” by Michael Inslicht, who is a research excellence faculty scholar at the University of Toronto. He is a professor in the department of Psychology and cross-appointed in the department of Marketing at the Rotman School of Management. Mickey is also a neighbor here in Roncesvalles, Toronto, as well as a past guest on the Bonjour High podcast and a past op-ed contributor at the CJN on our website. Mickey, welcome to The Jewish Angle.

**Michael Inzlicht:**Thanks so much. My God, I feel like we’re, like, it’s so close. There’s so much overlap. I’m surprised you invited me again. It’s like disgusting how much overlap there is.

**Phoebe Maltz Bovy:**Well, you know, when I first started at the CJN, this was, I believe, in 2022. I did some sort of offhand remark in a column or whatever, saying that I thought I was the only Jew in Roncesvalles and got all these emails like, “No, no, there’s another, there’s another.” And now it’s like to the point that they’re opening a Hebrew school in Roncesvalles.

**Michael Inzlicht:**I’ve also discovered this after the op-ed was published in the Canadian Jewish News. Well, first of all, I had a lot of, or a few at least, friends from high school. I went to Jewish high school, Herzliah High School in Montreal, and they contacted me. I’m like, “Oh, you live in Toronto too?” And then, of course, I actually got emails from a number of people I didn’t know previously who live in the neighborhood, who are Jewish, and who resonated with what I had to say. So I too was surprised that there are as many Jewish people here as there are.

**Phoebe Maltz Bovy:**So I’ll just give my own Montreal connection, which is that my maternal grandmother was born in Montreal, grew up in Montreal, moved to the States when she got married, and then lived the rest of her life in the states into her 90s, but never actually got US citizenship. She always stayed Canadian, was always kind of like very proud Canadian. Then I completely grew up in the States, and it was just happenstance of my husband’s work that I ended up in Canada. But now I feel like this kind of full-circle thing happening. So that’s my connection to Montreal. I feel like I know this Montreal Jewish world from this kind of remove. What’s yours? What’s your connection to Montreal, despite being down the street here in Toronto?

**Michael Inzlicht:**Well, I’m from Montreal. Born and raised in Montreal. Born in 1972, which is an interesting date because that’s when the Parti Quebecois was first elected. 1972 was a few years removed from the Montreal Expo, 1967, which is widely considered the zenith of Montreal’s cultural power in Canada. People were excited, famous people were going there. But even in 1967, it was clear that there were political rumblings happening. The Quiet Revolution was in full swing in Quebec, and it was just a matter of time before things started changing politically. I grew up in that era, the 1970s and then the 1980s in Montreal. I also resonate with what you said about your maternal grandmother feeling a strong connection to Montreal. I too have a strong connection to Montreal. Most Jewish people I know from Montreal just have it in their hearts. Even if they’ve been removed from it for generations.

**Phoebe Maltz Bovy:**Well, that’s something. I was recently at a party where some mutual friends— I was saying something about Montreal, and this woman was like, “Are you Jewish?” I’m like, “Yeah.” And she’s like, “So am I.” Because we both had this Montreal heritage. It was just this sort of weird thing where Montreal was almost like code for Jewish, which obviously demographically it can’t be. But I want to ask about your piece though because you describe that, at first, as an Anglo-Jewish Montrealer, you resented the language protection stuff. You had felt you had not been in favor, but you came around to it as a kind of cultural preservation. Right. French being a minority language in Canada, French Canadian culture, Quebecois culture being, you know, otherwise it would just disappear. But I’m wondering, though, where does this leave Montreal Anglo-Jewish culture? Because is it kind of like— I guess I just to some extent genuinely don’t know because I’ve only visited. But is it kind of a lost world or is it a smaller world? Where is that at now?

**Michael Inzlicht:**So, Montreal Jewish Anglo culture or…

**Phoebe Maltz Bovy:**Yeah, like the thing that exists in New York as Mile End, Deli, in kind of like a nostalgic way. But what is it as a living culture?

**Michael Inzlicht:**Yeah, well, I would say, maybe I’ll give a little background on some of what you said. I grew up in the 70s, and I’m actually not even Anglophone. I am Allophone. My mother’s Israeli via Yemen. My first language is Hebrew, so I’m considered Allophone in the census. I have to figure out, like, oh, I guess I’m neither Anglo nor Franco. Most Jews, you know, traditionally are English speaking. That changed with the massive influx of Sephardic Jews, especially from Morocco. A lot of Moroccan Jews in Montreal, but even Moroccan Jews ended up living in English-speaking neighborhoods. So the language of the street where I grew up was English. We grew up like every other Anglo community in Montreal, feeling besieged, feeling like our enemy was French people, was the Parti Quebecois specifically. The then leader of the Parti Quebecois was actually a very charismatic guy named René Lévesque, and we saw him as our enemy. It’s only much, much later when I was older and started having more empathy and escaping the kind of provincialism—of which the Montreal Jewish community can be provincial, can be insular a little bit. Escaping that and having friends that were not Jewish, started having friends who were Quebecois, I just started having deep sympathy. It’s not that different, what the Quebecois were fighting for, than what Jewish people want: self-determination, an ability to be themselves, be their own culture in, you know, I don’t say their land, but the place they’ve been for…

**Phoebe Maltz Bovy:**I guess what I’m wondering though is, was the Anglo-Jewish culture kind of collateral here, you know?

**Michael Inzlicht:**Yeah, I mean, it definitely was. So, as much as I empathize with Quebecois people, and I think I would have done the exact same thing if I was Quebecois. I’d agitate for having laws protecting my culture. It didn’t leave us feeling good or just.

**Phoebe Maltz Bovy:**I mean, I’m not even talking about just like sentiments, but like, I’m just thinking about where my family ended up, that like, they’re not in Montreal anymore, right?

**Michael Inzlicht:**Yes.

**Phoebe Maltz Bovy:**And whether they married in or married out, they are not. Some are in Toronto, most went to the States in one way or another, but yeah.

**Michael Inzlicht:**Oh, absolutely. I mean, there was. The last set of numbers I saw was about 400,000 anglophones left Montreal, mostly to Toronto, but I suspect all over Canada, the US as well. You know, of course, that’s not all Jews, but many Jews left as well. And there was a sense of a community being hollowed out. Not shrinking a little, but not hugely. But not growing. Certainly not growing, actually. I just saw actually in The CJN that for the first time in decades the Montreal Jewish community has grown. Not by a lot, I think it’s by 50 people, but at least it’s not going down.

**Phoebe Maltz Bovy:**Yeah. Something that’s just striking me about this is that, like, when I was growing up, so this would have been like late 80s into 90s, that I would have been hearing about this and aware of it. I was born in 1983, and I remember thinking of the Montreal Jewish world as like not quite the lost shtetl, but like something of another time that because the world hates Jews, disappeared. You know what I mean? Like in the my. I’m talking about like my sense of this. If you had asked me when I was like nine, how to make sense of this, but then the thing is, what I know now is francophone Jews exist. And it seems like that’s a very different thing. It’s not like in Poland of yore, a bunch of, you know, Polish-speaking Jews came in and then everything was fine for them. You know, like, it’s a very different situation, right?

**Michael Inzlicht:**Yeah, yeah. I mean, let’s not exaggerate. Montreal’s Jewish community is still large; it’s still thriving. But again, I was much more involved in the Montreal Jewish community growing up than I am in the Toronto Jewish community. My sense though is that they’re quite different, not just in terms of size, but even in terms of denomination. Like, I grew up, everyone that I knew and the entire Jewish community, as far as I knew, went to Orthodox synagogues. It was weird to go to a Reform synagogue. You were weird. The first time I went to a Reform synagogue was for a Bat Mitzvah. And I thought it was strange that the Bat Mitzvah girl was wearing a kippah, that there was a microphone. Like, it was just foreign. I know in Toronto that wasn’t the case and in New York, certainly in the US, it is not the case.

**Phoebe Maltz Bovy:**I think it’s more, I think my impression, and here I’m going to be a bit. This is a bit beyond me, but like, I think there is more just Reform in the States. Right. Just generally, I think, like my impression from having conversed with colleagues about this and podcasted with colleagues about this is that there is just more traditional Judaism in Canada generally than in the States.

**Michael Inzlicht:**Yes. And I think in Montreal especially, and I have a theory about why that might be.

**Phoebe Maltz Bovy:**Go for it.

**Michael Inzlicht:**Yeah. So I think it’s not just Jews who preserve their culture, more kind of Orthodoxy. It’s every immigrant group. So Greeks are more Greek, Italians are more Italian. By that, I mean, they even have accents that are from their mother tongues, and they preserve their native cultures a bit more. And I think it’s because in Montreal, or in Quebec more generally, but specifically Montreal, you have an example of the other. You already have two cultures, so you’re like, okay, well, I’ll just do my thing. Whereas I think in the rest of Canada, certainly in the US, it’s just one kind of English culture, and you kind of just assimilate a bit more. Certainly a melting pot in the US but also in the rest of Canada. So as a result, just the flavors are a bit different in Toronto for various ethnicities. And Montreal is no exception to that. I mean, Jews are no exception to that. Sorry.

**Phoebe Maltz Bovy:**So I want to bring up the point of your piece, like the thesis of it, you know, which is about Canadian patriotism and sort of using Quebec and the positivity of that as a model for Canadian patriotism that’s not rooted in negativity, but enthusiasm for Canada. So what does that look like, though, in a non-Montreal context?

**Michael Inzlicht:**Maybe just to kind of preface it for those who haven’t read my piece now, today in 2025, I’m living through the most patriotic time I’ve ever experienced in Canada. So growing up in Montreal, there was no patriotism to Canada, there was patriotism to Quebec. But like I mention in the piece, literally Canada Day, July 1st in Quebec is called Moving Day. I don’t know why leases expire this time, but literally, it seems like a quarter of the province moves on July 1. So Canada is a non-event or a very muted event. It’s not their excuse to have a holiday, basically. But now even Quebecers are expressing patriotism towards Canada. They’re singing the national anthem before hockey games, which is unheard of. And now in my neighborhood here in Toronto, you know, Toronto, Ontario, doesn’t have the same, I think, antipathy towards Canada, given the separatist project. But I wouldn’t, unless I’m in cottage country, I wouldn’t see Canadian flags waving about. I now see them in our progressive neighborhood where, you know, the people took down their Black Lives Matter flag, and now it’s a Canadian flag. And it’s just very odd to see. It’s odd for Canadians to be patriotic, at least in my experience. But now, in our patriotism, it tends to be a reactive, almost a negative patriotism. It’s like, we are Canadian because we’re not American. And you’ll say, what are you proud of? I’m proud of healthcare. I’m proud of not having guns. I’m proud of, you know, that we get along. You’re like, yeah, but France has all those things too, right? Yeah, but the Americans don’t. So it’s really a reaction to the Americans. And it makes sense. We’re culturally so similar. Culturally, we consume so much American media. It makes sense.

**Phoebe Maltz Bovy:**Well, I mean, wouldn’t one way be like a best of both worlds type approach? Like, yes, European countries have a lot of these things, but they also have this notion like a sort of nativist xenophobia, that Canada on paper, at least in principle, at least, is more like the U.S., of, like, anybody can be Canadian, you know, a little bit less than I would have thought for, like, when I did the citizenship test and I was reading about, you know, like, there’s the official booklet you have to read. And it’s very much about, like, we have this heritage in English, this and, you know, like Christian English and all this. It seemed like a little bit less. Everybody’s equally. The thing then maybe I, if I were the one writing that booklet, I would have designed it differently. But I did not make Canada. I merely live here and I’m Canadian now. But yeah, I mean, I think there is, though, this idea that like, you can get the kind of multiculturalism and everybody on a theoretically equal footing thing that you can’t get even in the more multicultural parts of Europe, while also maybe not being shot, maybe seeing a doctor unless it’s a specialist, and that may be a longer wait.

**Michael Inzlicht:**So. Okay, so you’re right. I mean, I don’t know what. I never had to do a citizenship test since I’ve got birthright citizenship. I suspect whoever wrote that is like, that’s what the official line is. It’s clearly like, everyone’s welcome. And in fact, I remember, like, being very proud. One thing that I am very proud of is our diversity. And we get along. I mean, I think lately with Israel-Palestine stuff, we’re seeing somehow that we.

**Phoebe Maltz Bovy:**Will get to that. We will get to that. Yeah, yeah.

**Michael Inzlicht:**But I think, you know, what I love most about Toronto is, and even, having spent years living in New York, I feel you see more integration of groups. You see, like, a gaggle of teenagers, and they’re like all colours, all nations, all languages. I felt in New York like I would see more—I don’t want to say ghettoized—but like, it was more separated. At least that’s how I felt. I see more mixing here, and I just love that. So, that’s a real positive. I think we need to cultivate a love of our own culture. I think we need to do that more. So instead of just running, our best and brightest go, at least in film and TV and movies. They go to the U.S., and it makes sense. We’re one continent, one language. That’s where most of the people, most of the money is. I get that. But there are the occasional musician, actor, what have you, who stay. And we love them. Tragically Hip, this band from the 90s, most Canadians love them, adore them, especially Gord Downie, who sadly died a few years ago by accident of circumstance. They did not get popular in the U.S., and I think that has been a net positive for Canadians in the relationship to them. They’re our special band that only we appreciate.

**Phoebe Maltz Bovy:**I came too late to Canada to know them.

**Michael Inzlicht:**Yeah, but it’s just like this. Even now, it’s played, and Canadians of a certain vintage will listen and blast it. They feel good about it. It’ll be nice to have a bit more of that. So like, Letterkenny now is this kind of quirky show Canadians actually appreciate, and it’s really Canadian, like Ontario-specific. It’d be nice if we just kind of appreciated what we are a bit more and not only kind of look south for inspiration. And Quebec is a great model of that now. Now they, of course, have this language barrier, and it makes it kind of a bit easier to appreciate your own. If you only speak French or that’s your main language of interest, of course, you’re gonna consume French, and not friends from France, but the friends that represent. That kind of represents you. It’s a bit easier, I think, in some way.

**Phoebe Maltz Bovy:**Well, certainly because France is far away and the U.S. is just, like, close by and all that. But I wanted to ask, though, to bring it to the dreary topic of people not getting along and, you know, conflicts from far away playing out. So I don’t know whether this is something you’re able to answer or whether anybody, whatever. But, like, when I heard about Montreal growing up, and again, to be clear, my grandmother, who is no longer living, was born in 1920. Okay, so this was not—none of these stories are from last week. It always sounded quite anti-Semitic there. Now that there is this population of Francophone Jews in Montreal, do they—what do they experience in terms of antisemitism today? Are they generally like—I know that often Jews of that background are quite pro-Israel. Is that—I mean, is there conflict even if they are Francophone? How’s everyone getting along? Because I feel like I only have a kind of indirect understanding of this from, like, when I read a French language publication from Quebec, which is not as often as I should—not never, but not often enough.

**Michael Inzlicht:**So first of all, I should say I haven’t lived in Montreal in 25 years now, although I visit often and I still kind of have a finger on it a little bit. So I’m not the best person to ask about what’s happening today. But I could say a little bit, and also could say a little bit about historically. Historically, I think your bubby was reflecting the general ignorance of French Canadians, who were, in the 1920s, this was well before the Quiet Revolution. Most Quebecers were discouraged from getting educated, mostly by the church, and they were looked down upon by English-speaking people in Montreal especially, but all over Quebec. So there was just a really much more “groupy” mentality, I think. And there were prominent clergy who were anti-Semitic, like Lionel Groulx, whose metro stop is named after him, much to the dismay of many Jews because he was quite anti-Semitic. So there were, in fact, incidents of antisemitism. My father tells a story—I don’t know if it’s true, I don’t know why he’d lie—but he had a storefront, this is in the 1960s, a storefront on St. Hubert Street where he was dealing with a French Canadian clientele, and one of them found out he was Jewish and literally asked him, “Where are your horns?” I know that sounds crude or crazy, but I’ve heard enough stories of kind of deep, misinformed stereotypes among French Canadians. I don’t think it’s untrue, but that’s a long time ago.

**Phoebe Maltz Bovy:**I mean, I have friends who are French Canadian, and it’s not like I claim to be something other than I am, you know what I mean? Like, it’s not—it doesn’t seem to be. I just wonder how it all plays out dynamics-wise. Because there used to be that divide where Jewish and Anglo were somewhat interchangeable, and there would have been maybe hostility towards this group, you know, but it’s not linguistic.

**Michael Inzlicht:**So, I mean, first of all, let’s make sure we’re still accurate. So there are a lot more French, like, Moroccan Jews, but it’s still mostly Ashkenazi, still mostly English-speaking as the first language. But most Jews now in Montreal, I would gather, are bilingual. Just by necessity, you have to be, right? So now maybe the antipathies are less French, you know, French versus English. But it could be French Canadian versus Jew. I think now it’s not even that. I think it’s really—there is a massive difference between the U.S. and Canada, and I would say it’s especially different in Quebec, is our Muslim population. The Muslim population is much, much larger relative to the Jewish population in Canada. I think it’s five times as large in Canada, in relative numbers, than in the U.S. In the U.S., you’re also talking about the largest fraction of Muslim people are African American, so they’re not like from the Middle East or the MENA. Whereas in Canada, it’s mostly from the Middle East, Pakistan, North Africa. And I think there, for cultural reasons, they’re just like these kind of baked-in antipathies.

**Phoebe Maltz Bovy:**It’s closer to what you get in France then.

**Michael Inzlicht:**It’s closer to what you get in France. Absolutely. And I think now the kinds of, especially since October 7, the kinds of out loud anti-Semitic things you’re seeing are just more typical of, you know, Arab people from that part of the world who have deep anti-Israel sentiment. And of course Jews, who typically, although not always, have deep pro-Israel sentiments. And that’s where the conflict occurs.

**Phoebe Maltz Bovy:**I’m going to bring it closer to home for my last question, which is really close—Roncesvalles Village, Toronto, where we both live. So I just was wondering, like, when we last were talking about all of this on the podcast. We were in this realm where, like, our neighbourhood was just all in for freeing Palestine, whatever that might mean; to each flyer poster, it could mean any number of things. We discussed this, but there has been this shift towards Canadian patriotism really all around. You know, like you’ve said, all these signs up everywhere, like Canadian flags up everywhere. The pet shop has a sign that they’re not a U.S. franchise, as if anybody thought they were. But whatever, you know, like that seems to have, like, the… The issue that’s visually so apparent, there still is one; it’s just a different one. How does that change your sort of day-to-day experience of life in this? We’re going to go hyper-provincial here intentionally in this bit of Toronto.

**Michael Inzlicht:**Yeah. So I think it has changed quite a bit in the past year, eight months, whatever it might be. I’m seeing fewer of the Free Palestine signs on people’s lawns, although they’re still there. In fact, one of my neighbors not only has one of these signs but has one embossed in wood, like a permanent Free Palestine sign in her window.

**Phoebe Maltz Bovy:**I shouldn’t laugh, but that is commitment. I would like for there to be peace in the region. I have not gotten anything engraved on any stance. But yes, that is commitment. Mickey, where can people find you and your work?

**Michael Inzlicht:**Yeah, so, well, I have… One of the benefits of having a unique last name is you can literally just Google my last name, and you’ll find me. It’s typically me. So Insect is my last name.

**Phoebe Maltz Bovy:**Yeah, yeah. We’ll have links to your Substack and your about page on our show page.

**Michael Inzlicht:**Yeah, thanks. I have this Substack that comes out every week called “Speak Now, Regret Later,” which, as the title gives away, reflects my kind of impulsive side. I just want to be able to speak freely. I end up writing about politics, culture, and these days, a lot more about psychology. You can look it up if you’re interested. Keep on reading; it’d be great.

**Phoebe Maltz Bovy:**Thanks so much. Thank you so much for coming on The Jewish Angle.

**Michael Inzlicht:**Thanks for having me, Phoebe.

Show Notes

Credits

• Host: Phoebe Maltz Bovy

• Producer and editor: Michael Fraiman

• Music: “Gypsy Waltz” by Frank Freeman, licensed from the Independent Music Licensing Collective Support our show

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