Discussion

1. Would you like to visit Canada? Why? Where would you go first in Canada? Explain your choice.

2. What Canadian province or territory is most suitable to live in? What makes you think so?

3. What factors make Canada one of the most successful countries in the world? How often do you hear about Canada? Why?

4. Why is immigration essential for Canada? Is it really so easy to immigrate to Canada? Prove your point of view.

5. Who originally possessed the land of modern Canada? Could the history of Canada be different now but for the British Crown? Why?

Unit 7 Canadian Culture

Read the text. Study the explanatory notes. Answer the questions after the text.

Symbolism

Canada is often symbolically connected with three key images – hockey, the beaver¹, and the dress uniform of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police².

Hockey, often described as Canada’s national sport, is a vigorous, often violently competitive team sport and, as such, it carries the same kind of symbolic weight as baseball does for many Americans. Hockey is used, in its symbolic form, to signify national unity and a national sense of purpose and community. That most Canadians do not follow hockey in any serious way does not diminish³ its role as a key cultural symbol.

The beaver, which appears often on Canadian souvenirs, might seem to be an odd animal to have as a national symbol. It is a ratlike character, with a broad flat tail and, in caricature, a comical face highlighted by front chewing teeth of considerable prominence. What gives the beaver its special merit as a cultural symbol, however, are its industriousness, toiling⁴ to create elaborate nesting sites out of mud and twigs, and its triumph over the seasons. The beaver is humble, nonpredatory⁵, and diligent, values that form a fundamental core⁶ of Canadian self-identification.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), often represented in their dress uniform which includes a tight-fitting red coat, riding pants, high black boots, and broad-brimmed felt hat, also represent this Canadian concern with diligence and humility⁷. Canada was opened to European occupation not by a pioneering spirit fighting against all odds⁸ to push open a wild and dangerous frontier, as in the United States, but by a systematic effort to bring the vastness of the Canadian landscape under police control. The RCMP, along with agents of colonial economic interests such as the Hudson’s Bay Company, expanded the scope of colonial control and occupation of Canada in a systematic and orderly way, not so much by conquest as by coordination. That is, Canada was opened to European occupation and control almost as a bureaucratic exercise in extending the rule of law. Where the American frontier was a lawless and wild place, later brought under control by centralizing government bodies, the Canadian frontier never quite existed. Instead, Canada was colonized by law rather than by force.

The core values that inform these symbols are cooperation, industriousness, and patience – that is, a kind of national politeness. The Canadian symbolic order is dominated by a concern for order and stability, which marks Canadian identity as something communal⁹ rather than individualistic.