Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Well - as a person who has grown up in perhaps one of the most multicultural parts of a very multicultural city, I can say there are truly many wonderful examples of growing up in such an environment. Everything from learning to respect someone who is different from you and actually being comfortable with them.. Integrating with them and enjoying experiences etc is enriching..
I think in another forum we even examined the impact on a native culture and there are some valid points to that. I largely feel the pro's outweigh the cons but sure - there are challenges to it. In any event to what you said - its tough to recreate the strong culture of a place once it leaves its root.
An example - I have yet to find a bowl of Tom Yum soup that I can find in Thailand anywhere else outside Thailand.. I dream about that soup almost every single day lol..
I completely agree on this. Were our make-up still predominantly Anglo-Saxon we'd not even be able to claim a national identity; it would be merely someone else's in a new home they'd erected.
People of all ethnic backgrounds are giving us something akin to a commemorative quilt to display at the entrance to the county fairs.
I completely agree on this. Were our make-up still predominantly Anglo-Saxon we'd not even be able to claim a national identity; it would be merely someone else's in a new home they'd erected.
People of all ethnic backgrounds are giving us something akin to a commemorative quilt to display at the entrance to the county fairs.
I have a really hard time wrapping my head around why that would be the case?
There are plenty of places around the world where the demographic is clearly an offshoot of another country and yet the people have a very clear national identity that is distinct from the old country.
The United States, Australia, New Zealand and several Latin American countries were basically like that until they got immigration waves.
It would be totally false to say that any of these countries was without an identity prior to having large scale immigration from places other than the old country.
Even within Canada, both Quebec and Newfoundland arguably have very distinct and unique "national" identities even though their populations are still largely made up of French and British Isles origin people.
Somehow this thread on Quora (about "untold truths about Canada") was in my email feed today. First paragraph of the first answer:
I'm sorry, but that's not a national identity. Yes, national values do exist, and "respecting diversity is something we value" can be one of those, but they don't define a national identity, since many other nations can say the same. Sure, okay, "diversity" and "polite", but really, what is an Canadian?
.
That Quora page is almost laughable in the reasons people list for being proud to be Canadian.
I mean, Canada is great because we had access to the "good" KFC for 30 years and the Americans didn't?
^^^
I don't think anyone in here stated that Canada's identity is solely its multiculturalism or its diversity. Perhaps to some on another forum but in here I don't think so.. In that regard I'd say we are all in agreement. There is also agreement, even by your very post that you admit the country has an identity. So if we have established that multiculturalism isn't the be all and end all of an identity and the country has an identity - even if it might not be as strong as what it is in other nations i'm not sure what you trying to bring to the discussion? The point I was making earlier was that the national identities that A/J was referring to may not be so 'national' and more regional in nature which is probably particularly true in the case of Canada.
.
There are many countries in the world that have a minorities (either indigenous or immigrant) who opt out of the mainstream culture and identity, either partly or wholly.
Canada is not unique in this respect. But this does not and should not prevent the larger mainstream majority which would be the usual standardbearer for the country's identity from having one and defining one. I find it's a bit of a cop-out or at least it's making excuses in this case. It's taking the easy way out.
In any event, in most places in the world, that's not how the way things go.
Castellanos play a big role in defining what makes Spain Spanish, and they don't care about whatever the Catalans or Basques want to take on as their own or not. Well, they may in fact care, but that doesn't prevent the Castellanos from doing their own thing and exercising leadership as Spaniards.
So yes, Canada is unusual in this regard, and some Canadians don't seem to have a very good grasp of how unusual it is. I expect somebody to tell me that having one's national identity being defined in terms of "respecting diversity" and "being polite" is a feature, not a bug, and I can certainly agree that it's not a bad thing, but that really isn't how most nationalities would define themselves. And it's also not how I as a Quebecer (living in Winnipeg, but still forever a Quebecer wherever I'll be living) would define my national identity.
I'd say that this might also be related to how Canadians don't exactly realize how unusual Canadian national identity is. Most nations have their own national popular culture and that's perfectly fine. But a Canadian artist who's known only in Canada and not in the US and thus worldwide only has "regional" appeal and so is secondary. That's not the case for Quebec where you can have massive cultural impact (and even in other French-speaking countries) but still have nobody in the rest of Canada-America know about you. Does this make you secondary?
Honestly, while Canadians seem to think Quebec and its people are the weirdest thing ever and impossible to understand, what strikes me is how not unusual at all a nation Quebec is. It's very much a typical Western nation, with values similar to other Western nations but also its own distinctiveness. It's Canada that strikes me personally as strange in this regard. Not bad, I hasten to say, but different from other Western nations, including the other ones built around immigration, in how it defines itself.
It's almost freaky you should make this point.
Having grown up in Anglo-Canada, I also had this mindset that Quebec was such an oddball place that wanted to be different just for the sake of being different. I remember chatting with an Indo-Canadian cab driver in Toronto or Vancouver about right turns on red lights, and (which at the time was forbidden in Quebec), and when I mentioned that it was not allowed in Quebec, he said with his FOB accent: "Oh, that's Quebec. There I suppose they'd let you make a *left* turn on a red light! Hahaha!"
This was around the time I started travelling internationally. (I was still living in Ontario at the time BTW.) As I got to know other cultures and countries, it really dawned upon me that Quebec wasn't such a big outlier. In many cases I found that for various things, traits, traditions, etc. specific to the countries I was visiting, it was Quebec stuff - which I was somewhat familiar with, coming from a francophone family - that came to mind as "equivalents'' from my country, and I sometimes couldn't even find a "Canadian" one even if I tried.
This is more along the lines of what I was thinking.
I'd say that most fractious countries like Spain still have a stronger national mainstream culture. Sure the Catalans Basques Galicians etc are uppity and keen to distinguish themselves, but the Spanish heartland culture is still very strong unique and unmistakable.
You put the question in the context of travel. So your question is
" Do you think that Canada feels( seems ) as Canadian as Indonesia feels Indonesian, as the US feels American, as Germany feels German, as Venezuela feels Venezuelan, as Britain feels British? "
The answer is still yes. There is no where in the world that feels more Canadian than Canada. I don't come home and go " geesh, I wish we invented the croissant "( which is actually Austrian )
Canada is unique in a lot of ways that make it Canada. Certainly we have things in common with other countries, which is great, but the vast majority of visitors to Canada soon learn what makes Canada, Canada.
The question really should be directed at well travelled non-Canadians who come to Canada eh? ( eh for Mag )
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
