VICTORIA, Canada — It used to be easy to identify Canadians. They were quiet, law-abiding folks, partial to Wayne Gretzky's hockey, Margaret Atwood's novels and Leonard Cohen's music. They shopped at Hudson's Bay Co. stores and knew who the Canadian prime minister was. They had Canadian passports.
To keep Canadian culture as Canadian as possible, the government erected a multitude of barriers. One was that a non-Canadian couldn't own a book publisher or distributor. The fear was that an outsider would promote the novels of John Grisham, say, over domestic talent.
Jeff Bezos, founder and controlling shareholder of Web retailer Amazon.com, was born in New Mexico and lives in Seattle. Yet ever since he launched a Canadian Web site in June, he's been one of the biggest booksellers in Canada.
Canadian booksellers are annoyed with Bezos but furious with their government, which they say is treating the billionaire entrepreneur like a native. They want a federal court to restore those once-sharp distinctions between what is local and foreign.
"Amazon has the best of both worlds," said Dave Hill of Munro's Books, one of the most prominent independent stores in the country. "It has the benefits and the power of being a Canadian company without any of the responsibilities."
The cultural laws were drawn up before Internet retailing was even a notion.
"Technology has blurred the edges of commerce," lamented Hill. "How does one define Canadian in the Internet era?"
The Net long has been a modernizing force in developing as well as politically repressive countries. China is finding it impossible to control the Net and the news and ideas it brings. Artisans around the world use Web sites to sell directly to U.S. and European consumers.
In industrialized countries, the Net is having an equally pronounced but less noticed effect.
"It's an extraordinarily powerful weapon for breaking down national cultures," said Mel Hurtig, author of "The Vanishing Country: Is It Too Late to Save Canada?" "Canadians like Americans, but they don't want to become Americans."
With one-tenth the population of the United States, most of its citizens speaking English and living within 100 miles of the border, Canada has had to fight to maintain any sort of home-grown culture.
Over the last three decades, a variety of measures have been put in place to fund local artists and arts organizations, including publishers, and to keep the blockbusters from Hollywood and the bestsellers from New York from complete domination.
