David Frum has a nice tribute to his fellow Canadian, Peter Jennings:

National Review readers may remember Peter Jennings as the man who compared the 1994 congressional elections to a child’s temper tantrum. They may remember his ill-concealed partiality for the Arab side of the Arab-Israeli dispute. Or they may remember him as the last of the great anchormen from the now-fading days when network news reliably tilted public information in a liberal direction.

All these memories are true of course. But it was also true that Jennings was a man of consideration and gentlemanliness so exquisite it was almost shocking. His manners with women, his amusing and only-so-very-slightly indiscreet stories, his tact – talking with him was like talking to a character from another time and place.

Jennings scattered kindnesses, large and small over the landscape. He was shrewd and funny. I’d met him, if I remember right, only once or twice when he called me on the phone one day, said something nice about a television interview I had done the night before, and then added, “Oh by the way, a word of advice: never wear light-colored suits on television.” I never have.

His voice in private conversation was a tone higher than his voice on television. There was something self-invented about him – and it was perhaps in this way that he owed his success to his origins in Canada. Who after all studies American life and culture more closely than Canadians with their noses pressed to the glass? From Elizabeth Arden to Lorne Michaels, Canadians have made it their business to know their neighbors better than they know themselves. And like “Elizabeth Arden,” nee Florence Graham of Woodbridge, Ontario, they have recreated and reimagined themselves along the way.

Years ago, the New York Times ran a piece on the seemingly amazing amount of Canadian expatriates there were in American show business--and television news is certainly close enough a profession to qualify. God knows we beam bazillions of hours of American TV up to them--it certainly makes sense that they'd want to become part of our pop culture.

What of Canada herself? In the Great White North's Western Standard, Mark Steyn ponders why "one of the largest, wealthiest nations in the history of the world manages to remain entirely invisible" to both her northern neighbor, and to much of the world at large.