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smaller group ethnically, racially or culturally defined.” Access to familiar
foods and music is, he says, an “insidious trade-off.” ... “It is the trade-off of the
market place, an assurance of creature comforts in exchange for playing the
ethnic game,” one which produces divided loyalties and disguises measures
to ensure that separation, segregation, racism, can continue.
Bissoondath writes that culture is knowledge. A body of knowledge, learned
through stories and study, requires no particular location, no costumes, nor
conformist demands. Knowledge can be established beyond mental models:
“...it can be carried safely through space and time in the capricious pocket
of the mind... the body of knowledge, then, that no one can even steal or
play with or manipulate into the service of social engineering. Personal
knowledge and sensitivities are media for growth. They are not the basis for
public policy.”
Among immigrants, there is no common ground behind their reasons for
seeking admission to Canada. Some may immigrate to finda location in which
to remain the same (in a sense, refuse even hyphenation), with no thought
of recognizing the cultural mosaic of which they have become a part.®* As
long as there is no strong promotion of options for change, lest teachers and
politicians offend someone, and with market forces reminding them of who
they are, new arrivals may be being pressured to remain as they are.
Others may immigrate to find the freedom to abandon their historical
narratives and recreate themselves in new ways. All newcomers need to know
that they can change their understanding of what culture means upon arrival
in Canada. Culture can be understood as ‘a body of knowledge.’ Questions,
discussion, and change are possible; no one will deny them or their children
the freedom to ask questions. That is what the right to free expression means.
Free expression concerns knowledge — understood to be a developing public
good not a market commodity, in Canada. Once the concept of culture is
understood, not as a set of inherited mandates, but as knowledge, able to
be shared with others, adaptations are possible. Culture as knowledge
that can be learned is available to all for debate. Everyone has the right to
61 Neil Bissoondath, Selling Illusions, the Cult of Multiculturalism in Canada, Toronto,
Penguin Books, 1994, 214.
62 Tbid., 214.
63 Tbid., 214.
64 In 13-16 November 2019, The American Canadian Studies Association held their biennial
conference in Montreal. A presentation, by Janet Mancini Billson, Group Dimensions
International, was titled “The Kurdish in Canada: Struggling for Identity, Peace and
Freedom”. Kurdish immigrants wanted to keep their customs, treat women and children
as they always have, but in freedom and peace. There was no acknowledgement of multi¬
cultures or of being in a new country.
Not even scientific discourse is beyond interpretation. Roger S. Jones, Physics as Metaphor,
Minneapolis, University of Minnesota, 1982, explores the number of everyday scientific
concepts that we rely on, and how much they are a reflection of metaphoric interpretations.
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