Donald Trump’s declaration that Canada could avoid a trade war with the US by merging to become the “Cherished 51st State” has resurfaced the country’s long-running existential crisis.

Although the suggestion was batted aside by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Trump is not the first person to question Canada’s sovereignty. A perceived lack of cultural identity and divisions between east and west, French and English speakers, have led many Canadians to assume that one day our country will simply disappear — either broken apart or swallowed up.

As the celebrated Canadian author Mordecai Richler once put it: “Nobody is quite sure what [Canadian] culture is, what distinguishes it from the British or American ones, or, indeed, if we even have a national culture at all.”