An irrational jealousy (is there a rational kind?) came over me when an extremely attractive American girl said she found New Zealand accents very sexy. She might have been English, it was long ago. I can’t even recall what she looked like, though I know I wanted to get close to her that night, until she said that.
I don’t find the New Zealand accent sexy. Nor does any of Australia’s fauna. New Zealanders are friendly and, particularly in their own country, incredibly helpful and inexplicably cheerful. That’s also my experience of Canadians, other than Norm Verdec, my high school chemistry teacher, who was a fat, box-headed imbecile.
Canadians and New Zealanders share other traits. They both have bigger and richer neighbours and lots of people who poke fun at them and their accents. Both have tried to reach agreements with those who occupied the country before European settlement and both seem willing to embrace policy for the furtherance of mushy, non-specific ends such as social justice.
Most importantly, Canadians and New Zealanders share irrepressible smugness.
They’re smug because of what they are not. Canada isn’t the USA and New Zealand isn’t Australia. Turning a negative to a positive is a common survival technique of the relatively weak. Note that they’re not elevated by superior virtue, intellect or management but by what they lack. That is, neither is materially or spiritually big enough to blunder like their neighbours. Any mistakes they do make cause barely a ripple. Their smugness at big brother’s excesses, in reality, is driven by inability and insecurity.
The people of these lands of lakes and mountains have a lot in common. To flip it, their differences seem few. Indeed, all that springs to mind is that seal isn’t on the menu in the New Zealand Parliament and New Zealand’s vice-regal representatives don't rip the hearts from baby seals. Oh, and moose are scarcer in New Zealand - at least, in the wild.
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