National Identity

Leading up to and following the emergence of Canada as an independent political state in 1867, English Canada and English identity dominated the political and cultural landscape. The remaining French presence, in Quebec and throughout the eastern part of the country, while a strong cultural entity in itself, exercised only limited influence and effect at the national level. English symbols, the English language, and the values of loyalty to the English crown prevailed throughout the nation as the core underpinnings¹⁵ of national identity.

Ethnic Relations

The dominance of English Canada in terms of national identity, especially in a federal system in which binationalism and biculturalism were enshrined¹⁶ in the founding legislation of the country, exercised a powerful effect on ethnic relations, but that effect was not ethnic homogenization. Instead, the dominance of English Canada served as a major locus of ongoing tension between the two national identities of Canada, a tension which, in the period from the 1960s onward, has come to be expressed in growing French-Canadian nationalism and so far unsuccessful attempts on the part of French Canada to secede from the Canadian confederation. This tension – which is built into the principles of the confederation itself, which recognizes the duality of Canadian national identity – while regularly threatening the unity of the federation, has also had a mollifying effect on ethnic divisions more generally.

Canada has seen successive waves of immigration, from the Netherlands, Germany and Italy, England and Ireland, China and Japan, and more recently from south and east Asia and from many countries throughout Africa. While some of these migration waves have resulted in considerable political and social conflict, as in the large-scale migration of Chinese laborers brought into Canada to work on the national railroad, the overall pattern of in-migration and settlement has been characterized by relatively smooth transitions. This is in large part an effect of the legislated binationalism and biculturalism on which Canada is founded. Such a model of confederation, which institutionalizes cultural diversity, has meant the new cohorts of migrants have not experienced the kind of assimilationist and acculturationalist pressures which have characterized ethnic relations in the United States. Where, in the United States, there was considerable pressure on migrant cohorts to become “American,” in Canada these cohorts have more often than not retained their identity of birth. This has created a kind of mosaic-like quality in Canadian ethnic relations in which being Canadian does not necessarily take precedence over being Japanese or Italian or Somalian or Pakistani. Instead, the two identities can and often do carry the same social and political weight, creating in Canada a diversity of identity unlike that found in other large nation-states. This cooperative national identity, with its multiple cultural orientations, has not been without its tensions and conflicts. English Canadian cultural domination has created flash points of assimilationist sentiment, and the fact that Japanese-Canadians, for example, were seen as being both Japanese and Canadian, helped justify the imprisonment of people of Japanese ancestry throughout Canada during World War II. Overall, however, ethnic relations in Canada have tended to not be exclusionary and assimilationist.

The main exception to this has been the relationship between the dominant French-English state and aboriginal peoples. Colonial relations with indigenous ethnic groups worldwide have often been marked by violent conquest. While violence did play a role in these relationships in Canada, more often than not aboriginal peoples simply had their ethnic and cultural identities erased. The use of forced schooling, including the removal of children from their families, for example, sought to annul aboriginal cultural identities through a process of denial. Historically the policy in Canada has been to not recognize aboriginal cultural and ethnic identity as an identity at all. In more recent years, First Nations people throughout Canada have adopted a renewed expression of ethnic and cultural identity, as part of the process of asserting claims to sovereignty and their right of historical redress. These claims have been only moderately successful, in part because First Nations people are asserting an identity and a claim¹⁷ to ethnic coherence that had been denied them for more than one hundred years, and in part because the dominating ethic of multi-cultural cooperation in Canadian ethnic relations, which gives their claim to ethnic identity legitimacy in the Canadian system, also diminishes and undermines¹⁸ their claim to a special ethnic status. While First Nations peoples are indeed emerging as real ethnic, cultural, and political entities, they do so in a system that relegates them to the position of one among many. The future direction of First Nations ethnicity, and their position within this Canadian mosaic, is likely to be complex, contentious, and a long time in its resolution.