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ELIZABETH TROTT in every culture. Discussions about far more complicated ideas, such as the existence of God, are possible for every conscious mind. A multicultural nation/ state should expect and encourage such discussions not market separations. Followers of a spiritual leader, adherents to decades of story-telling in multiple forms also contribute to the possibility of multiple interpretations of, for example, what being human means. Judgements about human value and worth will reflect a particular culture’s treatment of others. Yet, despite our sharing common ground as conscious minds, differences of meanings for the same event continue to divide us. Even the impact of technological communications, which has moved everyone into closer contact and enabled new multicultural groups with shared interests (e.g. music) to emerge, has not resulted in major changes in historical and religious divisions. PART 3: MULTICULTURAL ROOTS OF DEVELOPMENT AND THE CANADIAN NATION STATE With different meanings for events, different stories to support belief systems, different value judgements about human beings, can it possibly make sense that such differences can survive as a collective, a culture that is multicultural? That is exactly what happened in early Canada. A collection of multiple cultures began to gather, each with a clear sense of the other, including attitudes of distrust, hate, ridicule, with each community having its own shared sense of self. Such arrivals bring with them histories and traditions, but there is no guarantee that this new place will enable them to rely on knowledge from the past to survive in the present. In the early years, the ‘other’ shifted from the logical category of human beings to the category of powerful natural forces. What individual communities shared was the need to survive in a world with forces of nature with which they had no experience. The ‘not self’ was unpredictable Nature and survival often meant setting aside cultural differences about whose God was right, and begrudgingly joining others to help everyone involved to survive. Help you could give one day was also help you might need the next day. Philosophers arriving in Canada at the new universities (some consisting of only a single building for many years) realized the standard interpretations of rational logic, of self and other and the concept of God needed adaptation and adjustment. In their adaptations, we find the roots of Canadian culture. There are many examples. We shall consider one, philosopher John Watson, author of 8 books, over two hundred articles, and Canada’s first Gifford Lecturer, 1908."° 16 The second being Charles Taylor, one hundred years later. Armour — Trott, The Faces of Reason. See Chapters 7, 8. +18 +
