Neil Young, McLuhan and the 'Dune' movies: how much Canada is in US culture!

Because of the cover by Jeff Buckley (American) and the soundtrack of the film Shrek (American), where another Canadian artist, Rufus Wainwright, sang it. As for covers of Hallelujah, truth be told, one is spoilt for choice: there are more than 180 versions. Some, when they gave Dylan the Nobel Prize, maligned that Cohen would deserve it even more. Cohen responded by defending his American friend: 'No kidding, the Nobel to Bob is like giving a medal to Everest'. Great poet and great gentleman.

A great lover too, in fact. Among his loves, there was for example Joni Mitchell, one of the world's greatest songwriting icons, a native of Fort MacLeod, Alberta, in the 1960s and 1970s an organic part of the Laurel Canyon scene. The only artist to have passed undisturbed between folk, rock and jazz, hailed by the critics, loved by the public and revered by countless illustrious colleagues (apart from Cohen also Graham Nash, David Crosby, James Taylor and Jackson Browne to name but a few). Some argue that, had she been a man, she would have overshadowed Dylan with the greatness of her songs. And they have a point. Try Blue (1971) and Hejira (1976) to believe.

The best known of the Canadian musicians of that generation is surely Neil Young. One who straddled the two borders, between the 1960s and 1970s, doing and undoing: founding bands and superbands (Buffalo Springfield, Crazy Horse, Crosby Stills Nash & Young), releasing milestones (After the Gold Rush, Harvest, Rust Never Sleeps), activating on the political front. The likes of Trump knows and avoids them: against white supremacists in unsuspected times he wrote Alabama and Southern Man, against anti-vaccinists - and Joe Rogan in particular - for two years he removed his songs from Spotify. He even filed a complaint against Trump himself five years ago, since he appropriated the anthem Rockin' in the Free World for the election campaign. In November he will be 80 years old, but he does not give an inch: these days, for instance, he announced that he will open his next European tour with a free concert in Ukraine.

In mainstream territory we find Christmas icon Michael Bublé, 90s teen idols (Alanis Morrisette of Ottawa), 2000s (Avril Lavigne of Belleville, Ontario) and 2000s (Justin Bieber of London, Ontario), while the indie world of the new millennium owes much to Montreal-based Arcade Fire. All-time pop bestsellers include Céline Dion (from Charlemagne, Quebec), while urban and contemporary R&B can count on Drake and The Weeknd, both from Toronto. Speaking of jazz: it's hard to imagine anything more authentically American than Gonna Fly Now, the trumpeting theme from the Rocky saga soundtrack. It was written by the Italian-American Bill Conti, but playing the trumpet was a certain Maynard Ferguson from Verdun, Quebec. One of the most prodigious trumpet players of all time.

If we move on to cinema, Canada boasts directors who are anything but banal, the likes of Atom Egoyan (beautiful The Sweet Tomorrow), the good-natured Jean-Marc Vallée (C.R.A.Z.Y. and Dallas Buyers Club his must-sees) and Jason Reitman, master of the politically incorrect with effervescent comedies such as Thank you for Smoking and Juno, but the most quoted is undoubtedly Denis Villeneuve, specialist in sci-fi re-boots. To say: after Blade Runner 2049, for Warner Bros he signed off on the two chapters of the new film adaptation of the Dune cycle, based on the novels by Frank Herbert. Again, it is hard to imagine anything more genuinely American. Considering the turbulent times we are going through, also highly recommended is the slow-burning tetralogy by Denys Arcand (from Montreal, class of 1941) that combines the films The Decline of the American Empire (1986), The Barbarian Invasions (2003), The Barbarian Age (2007) and The Fall of the American Empire (2018). We laugh, we cry and the personal becomes punctually political.

A land of masters of storytelling, Canada is the birthplace of Nobel Prize winners for Literature Saul Bellow, a Jew from Lachine, Quebec, author of the monumental Herzog, and Alice Munro, to whom we owe a title that plastically conveys the situation we are currently experiencing: Getting out alive. The best known of the Canadian novelists in Italy is undoubtedly Mordecai Richler, again a Quebec Jew (from Montreal, to be precise) who has given us pearls of cutting irony such as The Barney Version and the underrated Solomon Gursky was here.

Take Marshall McLuhan, the sociologist of The Gutenberg Galaxy and The Tools of Communication, the first to organically study the impact of mass media on mankind, the inventor of such fundamental expressions as 'global village', someone so pop that he was recruited by Woody Allen for a cameo in Me and Annie. One who had already sensed the dynamics of the Trump phenomenon despite having died 37 years before he took office in the White House for his first term. But perhaps Trump cares more about others of his fellow citizens. Like John Tenta, a 209-pound, 96-foot-tall bad boy, nom de guerre Canadian Earthquake. Because after all, wrestling is also culture in its own way.