In view of what happened in the Quebec National Assemby (National Assembly turns away Sikhs - http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/National+Assembly+turns+away+Sikhs/4130758/story.html#ixzz1BYDY81fm and Barbara Kay's Multiculturalism ‘is not a Quebec value’ http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/01/19/barbara-kay-multiculturalism-is-not-a-quebec-value/#ixzz1BYDIP8Xc) I think it's important to copare these facts and articles with comments made in recent Episodes of The Agenda on the state of the Canadian State (see Still Lamenting a Nation, Ken Dryden - Becoming Canada, Who is Your Canada?, The trouble with Canada...still, see http://www.tvo.org/cfmx/tvoorg/theagenda) here are a few comments:
Ken Dryden's school example baffles.
If children congregate in tribal groups at lunchtime and not during class, if the luxury existing in the former is denied in the latter, the math is clear: the children are (FEEL) freer in the former than in the latter. They are themselves in the former and who-they-are-told-to-be in the latter.
The whole Canadian concept of multiculturalism and multicultural harmony (as it has been has been preached) is largely a fabrication with a nightmare boiling underneath and waiting to explode.
The only reason the Vesuvian nightmare has not erupted is because there are enough federal and provincial institutional COMA CENTRES that attempt to numb (and to some degree do numb) the senses, that (like the school Drydren mentions) contain the problem, minimize it's effects, with a ton of meaningless eye candy and by putting the focus on something else (other subject matters and chocolate covered dog bones).
Dryden's example is great for revealing what's NOT working in Canada. Any multiculturalism that excludes English and French Canadians is in fact not multiculturalism but 'otherculturalism'... a branch... a gigantic twig on the Bicultural Maple Leaf Tree.
Richard Gynn no doubt longs for the good old days.
The ridiculous notion that all Canadians have a fundamental self-confidence problem (and that feel-good projects such as the Vancouver Olympics with it's 'let's own the podium' battle cry will over time heal the self-inflicted pathology of inferiority) is NOT SHARED BY MOST CANADIANS of non-ethno-English backgrounds.
French Canadians have no problem wanting to own a podium. And the many diverse communities in Canada are not comprised of mainly fear-infested individuals who believe it is their birthright to underachieve. YET no one takes Richard Gwyn or that idea to task. Ever. Roberto Martella could have. Partly did. He was skating around that subject. But said more than the others.
There is unfortunately too often tacit agreement in group conversations on issues and labels that most non-English Canadians disagree with (and manifest differently) in reality, and in how they view, define and manifest the concepts of will and sense of self.
Institutionally? That's another story.
There is a perception problem.
Roberto Martella, by the way, was born in Canada NOT in Italy.
But that's not the perception problem.
Richard Gwyn's "Can I say a word in defense of the old Canada?"
Everything that official and institutional English Canada is and promulgates is in defense of an old Canada, the one that Gwyn and many others like him lament daily, a Canada largely surviving (maybe solely) on institutional privileges and protection, and, facsimile culture, borrowed culture, memory culture.
The old Canada didn't allow multiculturalism; it HAD to allow some semblance of it. Many of the immigrants that came to Canada in the early part of the 20th century were coming to America, not Canada, or to an almost America for those who could make the distinction between Canada and the US. Canada benefited greatly from the many immigrants who believed they had come to a promised land offering the same rights as in the States. That's why "multiculturalism"could happen here and not in Germany. A lot of people came to Canada and stayed. Germany was never America in the minds of emigrants. Canada was, or was close enough.
Once these people settled in Canada, had children, and did not return to the old country (as English Canada would have preferred during the first half of the 20th century) they naturally began to share - especially through their Canadian-born children, in the feeling (and right) of entitlement. But institutional Canada was not (is not) structured to accommodate more than two entitled tribes. Never was. The multicultural carrot was - is - less than a carrot. It's yet another imaginary nation within an imaginary nation. If a WASP Canadian were to be asked if he or she belonged to a multicultural community, he/she would respond: "No, I'm just Canadian."
Multiculturalism is an expensive dog bone and Richard Gwyn wants everyone to know that he belongs to the tribe that paid for the deluxe dog bone for 'ethnics', that unlike other countries' treatment of animals, their pet dogs and cats, Canada has allowed all animals to live in the house, on the bed, and gave them the very best dog food money could buy. What more could the animals possibly want, given where they came from?
Multiculturalism is a mirage... it's not real and it won't go away. It reflects a disturbing reality. A recurring dream or nightmare. It's Lady M's blood-spotted hands that appear but won't disappear no matter how hard she tries to rub them out. The fact that multiculturalism automatically excludes English and French Canadians tells you it's not what it purports to be.
The funny thing is this: Richard Gwyn says, "Can I say a word in defense of the old Canada?" as if he had been saying something else all along.
Dryden is correct in saying that the polite, nice, respectful, and clean Canada gave birth to multiculturalism. The problem is in the definition of what type of multiculturalism we have. It failed. In my opinion. Dryden and Gwyn on the other hand believe it's a success story.. and that it makes us world class in the eyes of the world. It's a dog bone with added sugar. Nothing more. It's a huge failure, as with many other social experiments in Canada. That is why people like Ken Dryden were embarrassed by Canada-defining descriptions and labels of 'polite', 'clean', 'nice', etc., not because they are bad qualities in and of themselves but because they reflect a general Anglo-Canada timidity with manifesting any type of will or opinion on any progressive front, and because Dryden knew instinctively (practically from birth) and via too many living examples around him, that those qualities produced - and could only produce - MEDIOCRITY.
The WE Steve Paikin mentions is the big difference. I'm glad he opened that can of worms. Dryden fumbled on that one. But here's an answer to Steve Paikin's question of WHO IS THE WE?
The following is from Andrew Cohen's essay: Imagining Canada's 153th birthday.
"No, this isn't your father's Canada. Nor is it the Canada of Sir John A. Macdonald, Mackenzie King, Lester Pearson, Brian Mulroney, Pierre Berton, Margaret Atwood, Michael Bliss, Douglas Coupland, or Avril Lavigne. They would not recognize it, and few in this new country would recognize them The nation roams around under a cloud of amnesia, as if nothing happened before yesterday: This summer holiday - what do they call it? This capital - what does it represent? This Parliament - what does it do? July 1 was once Canada Day (in prehistoric times, it was Dominion Day) and this was a national celebration. Ottawa was a national capital and Parliament was a national legislature. There is no 'national" anymore becaue there is no nation, at least not as we knew it. Canada is a country in little more than name. It has taken the 19th century idea of the nation-state and turned it on its head; Canada is now a collection of many nations (its ethnic minorities) who know only their own past, and many states (its provinces) that now know only their own interests...Now in 2020 we look around in despair. In the voiceless country there is no left to recall its past, no one left to celebrate its principles, and no one left to speak its name."
The above is a perfect description of present-day Canada, and the tribal Canada I've known my whole life. So what is Andrew Cohen talking about? The FUTURE? Is he insane? Is he out of touch with reality? Just a little maybe. There's no imagination required in what he says. That which he believes can and will be Canada's unfortunate future is actually present-day Canada.
But m important: WHO is Andrew Cohen talking to? Who is his WE?
Look at the books, who wrote them and why:
CANADA IN 2020
LAMENT FOR CANADA
THE TROUBLE WITH CANADA
IF YOU LOVE THIS COUNTRY
THE UNFINISHED CANADIAN
Who We Are: A Citizen's Manifesto
There is a common WE in these books. It's not the WE in Québéc and not the WE shared by the many people who came to these shores since the latter part of the 19th century. In many ways it's a WE that never was - never existed - across the entire nation, except within the reality and minds of Anglo-Canadians .
The MOSAIC WE is a Canadian ad campaign. It's also an outsider's view of Canada, of how a Canadian family celebrates birthdays. It does not carry the knowledge of what is driving a huge wedge between the family members, the cultures in Canada, and what dis-unites them.It's an opinion largely based on ignorance of facts and travel books and brochures.
It's a Father-Knows-Best "wish we could re-live '50s television again". Meanwhile Robert Young was busy trying to kill himself. His Wikipedia Bio is a perfect description of Canada. "Despite his trademark portrayal of happy, well-adjusted characters, Young's bitterness ... never diminished, and he suffered from depression and alcoholism, culminating in a suicide attempt in the early 1990s." Took him more than 83 years to muster the courage to end his life.And failed at that. Like Canada. Doesn't know how to live and it won't kill itself, but dying nevertheless..
WE are in trouble,
and the fact that many people in English-Canada (as Steve Paikin echoed in Still Lamenting a Nation) keep underlining the glorious nation-defining '60s ... when CANADA WAS (apparently) COOL, is insanity. It reflects Canada the ONE-SIDED country.
I have lived in Québéc, raised there, worked there, still do, and speak French. I have yet to hear people in English Canada describe the Québéc I know. The events of the last couple of days in Québéc remind us that the ethnocentricity of the Two Solitudes is alive and well.
In Québéc the '60s are seen as the years of reckoning, the years that finally settled some truths. It gave birth to an active, very vocal and loud French-Canadian voice too long suppressed in service of, to benefit and accommodate, Anglophones of Lower Canada. It ushered in the nationalization of Québéc companies. The FLQ manifesto read on the air during the October 1970 crisis - as a condition for releasing British Trade Envoy Cross - was partly responsible for escalating matters at the time. Why? Most French-Canadians had no problem with the FLQ's manifesto and its content. They agreed with it; they had a problem with the FLQ's tactics (murder).
Film maker Pierre Falardeau (deceased) was (is) very popular in Québéc. His funeral and the eulogy by his son (and another memorial speech by one of Québéc's well known actors) played like political rallies for the separatist movement. If it weren't for how the separatist movement (and Québéc) ignores the other cultures and the aboriginals there's very little wrong with it.
English Canada is in a dream world. French Canada is in a let's wait and see mode. Meanwhile the country is changing dramatically in both English and French Canada. Has been for years. And within this new reality the TWO-SOLITUDES Canadas fight even harder to keep a past alive as a present, they need to keep alive the Plains of Abraham in order to preserve the memory of the Canadas of Old... on both sides. That's what you get when you don't have a country with an idea of nationhood and rights that transcend cultural tribes. English and French Canada have given Canada the Canada it has. The other diverse communities ape the mainstream and keep to themselves, every lunchtime, just like the students in the school Dryden visited and talked about.
Tony Nardi
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