Seite 35 [35]
MULTICULTURALISM AS A DISCOURSE OF DISGUISE: A POSSIBLE CANADIAN SOLUTION
ask guestions, to expect a safe environment for doing so, and to acguire
knowledge about differences, similarities and change. Asking whether God
exists is a legitimate guestion in school, in the playground, on the street or
on a canoe trip.
Is There an Idea of Canada, A Canadian Identity?
Leslie Armour wrote the Idea of Canada in 1981, just before the multicultural
declaration of Pierre Trudeau and the challenges to the idea of Canada were
underway. Armour concludes: “We also need to make sure that the Canadian
traditions — in music, in literature, in philosophy, in the social sciences — are
seriously pursued in every institution.” This has not happened as a dominant
policy. Can an idea of Canada and Canadian identity find expression?
If we return to the logic of Hegel, a ‘self’ and a ‘not-self,’ that which enables
us to know our own distinctions, we will be locked down in a dialectical
opposition. Hegel also developed the concept of a synthesis, ‘being and not¬
being’ required ‘becoming.’ ‘Self and other’ required community.
We need a synthesis between concepts of multicultural differences and
Canadian identity that can accommodate different meanings while providing
for conceptual stability and change. We need to adapt the idea of Canadian
identity to accommodate differences, to rethink its traditional references,
perhaps to abandon the idea of ‘self and other,’ and consider identity through
concepts of possibilities, not descriptions.
Identity can suggest personal characteristics, such as developing a character
with predictable responses. In the American identity, the individual reigns
supreme. Identity can be associated with events (e.g., singing in a choir), and with
activities (e.g., playing the guitar or making sushi). Identity can be fostered by
careers, (e.g., being a physicist, or an actor), or with a type of product (e.g., craft
beer made in Canada). A common bond is felt with those who share agendas and
interests. Canadian craft beer lovers are just as much “at home” in small town
Luciara Nardon, Working in a Multicultural World, Toronto, University of Toronto, 2017,
86-89, focuses on intercultural connections in business and the challenge of multiple
meanings.
°° Leslie Armour, The Idea of Canada, and the Crisis of Community, Ottawa, Steel Rail
Publishing, 1981, 140-142.
§7 During my final three or four years of teaching at Ryerson I often asked my students questions
about Canada. They were not uniformly newcomers, many were second and third generation
of their particular culture, and had come though the Ontario education system. The results
were disheartening. Not a single student could name a former Prime Minister, a major river,
a town north of Barrie, Ontario. They did not know how big Canada was. They could not
identify a muskox, or name a Canadian author, musician or musical group, poet, painter,
dancer or dance group. They could not identify John A. Macdonald, a loon or fiddlehead, nor
could they name the provinces and territories. Well, enough, though I could go on.
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