Rather, this is a post in response to something I saw on the CTV National News last night. Ben and Dave’s blogs have inspired me to write more and hopefully generate some discussion and debate. The header up top says photography AND thoughts – I guess I need to write more thoughts!
Moving along: The news story that they were talking about was in Quebec. Apparently many communities and even the province is thinking about adopting certain legislation that would enforce immigrants to learn the French language in a certain amount of time, and if they didn’t, then, for starters, they would not be allowed to sit on any public board (all the way from government down to your local school board). This legislation is in response to the growing number of immigrants coming to Quebec.
The reason I find this so interesting is because this is the second time in recent weeks that the whole issue of immigrant adaptation as come up. For those of us in the Lower Mainland, we all heard about Bruce Allen’s comments about immigrants. His main line in his online rant was “Fit in and shut up. If you don’t like it, you can leave.”
Now I am definitely not wanting to start a debate or rant on the role of immigrants. I am stepping back from that and simply making this observation: Canada is going through puberty.
When you take a look at it, Canada is still an extremely young country, and the identity of a ‘Canadian’ has not yet been fully defined. Obviously immigrants have played a major part in that identity. Aside from the First Nations people, our families were all immigrants at one time.
However I think that gap is expanding to the point where young people only identify themselves as Canadian. For example, my one grandfather came from Truro, England, however my other 3 grandparents were all born and raised in Canada. Obviously a generation or two ago, that same statement couldn’t have been said. Today, I believe, there are more second, third, and fourth generation Canadians than ever before.
And so because of that, the Canadian identity is becoming clearer and clearer, but we are not there yet.
This is obviously a byproduct of ‘multiculturalism’. For anyone that took grade 5 social studies in Canad understands that ‘multiculturalism’ is the way Canada deals with immigrants, as opposed to the ‘melting pot’ idea in the US. But I wonder how much longer that ideal is going to last. As the definition of a Canadian becomes more evident, immigrants will have to adapt to what a Canadian is, as opposed to contributing to what a Canadian is.
