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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 notbeing’ 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. + 33 +
