Is It The Commentator or The Commentatour?

The opening paragraph of Editing Canadian English (1988) - it's terribly wild - goes like this:

Canadian English, reflecting our country's historical ties to Britain and its geographical proximity to the the United States, has been influenced by both British and American cultures. It is no surprise, then, that Canadian use a hybrid of English that derives from the two spelling traditions.

Tell me about it. One of the toughest things is deciding when to use "colour" and "color." To "U" or not to "U!"

God dang it, is it "center" or "centre?" "Defense" or "defence?" The problem is only further deepened given Canadian editors really only have two dictionaries as sources: Oxford (Britain) and Webster's (USA). Apparently, we couldn't be bothered to create our own constantly updated dictionary. How hard can it be to keep up with Atlantic dialects and Franglais?

I guess establishing an indigenous Canadian editing style is like the car industry. Why create your own when you can use the Americans?

Truth is, this is the core of Canadian history. As much as we strenuously accentuate our distinct differences from both, we're every bit similar. Throughout our history nationalists have framed the question about our national identity as "do we go with the British or American model?" We opted for a hybrid and ended up, well, look at us. Our historical ties compelled us to go British with our political institutions (though legally Quebec chose the Civil Code as opposed to Common law as practiced among les autres in other provinces) and our economic and geographic realities aligned us (including Quebec) with American cultural interests. In between it all a Canadian voice struggles to be heard. Eh?

It's not easy being Canadian sometimes. Sniff.