Further fodder.

Well, my parental family have been here since 1778, we had special meals, camped all the time and vacationed in very canadian places. I therefore yearn to retire in Yorkshire in 10 years.

My thought is, that as much as it pains me a a Liberal to say it, multiculteralism is good for some things, such as ensuring diversity, retention of culture and ethnic restaurants, it does not stake one down to the country they currently inhabit. Instead, it connects with steel cable, ones mind to their nation of parental or grandparental birth.

That and we have no more cool TV shows like Beachcombers or Junior Forest Rangers or authors like Farley Mowat telling us that to be Canadian is to love the woods and wildlife and accept that fact that you just cannot drive 10 minutes out of the city and enjoy it without fear of being blown up back in the "homeland"

Sean,

You write,
"multiculteralism is good for some things, such as ensuring diversity, retention of culture and ethnic restaurants, it does not stake one down to the country they currently inhabit. Instead, it connects with steel cable, ones mind to their nation of parental or grandparental birth."

I pretty much disagree.

I'm 26, much of my family has been on this land since time immemorial, and the rest just a few days short of that, but I've grown up with several immigrants my own age who were born outside this country and whose parents lived most of their lives outside this country and they are among the people most connected to this place and its history that I know.

As for this:
"That and we have no more cool TV shows like Beachcombers or Junior Forest Rangers or authors like Farley Mowat telling us that to be Canadian is to love the woods and wildlife and accept that fact that you just cannot drive 10 minutes out of the city and enjoy it without fear of being blown up back in the "homeland""

Now, I don't know very much about you, so I don't want to presume things, but that really sounds like the remark of an aging, nostalgic, declininst, boomer. Oh things really were better back in the good old days, weren't they? When we had Farley Mowat and the Beechcombers - ah yes, an idylic Canada frozen in time with those paragons of CanCon to sustain and define us.

First. There has been plenty of good Canadian television on in the last ten years. Shows that recently come to mind in only the order that I've thought of them: "Slings and Arrows," "Twitch City," "J-Pod," "This is Wonderland," "Corner Gas."

As for CanLit, have you read anything lately? Look no farther than the most recent Giller Prize winner "Late Nights on Air" by Elizabeth Hay to be told that "to be Canadian is to love the woods and wildlife." That is still the most dominant theme in our literature, much to the chagrin of some.

Continued...

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Every year at this time we have to put up with this national identity crisis, of everyone telling everyone else that none of us know who we are. As if it isn't enough to have the Dominion Institute telling us all year long that we don't know ourselves. My experience is that Canadians have a pretty good sense of who they are.

As for starting history by talking about who lived first where you are - that is the best advice about history that could possibly be given.

Alan,

What the heck? Comments are limited to 2048 CHARACTERS!

Who does that? Is this one of those lifeguard rules? Are you instituting a policy of brevity? I don't like it.

Hi ya Matthew. Without jumping into an "oh yeah, well I have friends that are (insert group one is slagging to show how worldly you are) and they say... " argument, a few points:

I am a gen-xer, not a boomer thanks. 41, raised by flag waving hippies. Things WERE better back then (then being when I was a kid) in some ways although many of them were forced and faux (Caaaann aaaaah daaaah, weeeeee love YOUUUUU!).

I was not claiming that things were perfect and as much as I liked Beachcombers and wanted Bruno Gerusi as an uncle (my dad was pretty much his clone anyways) my comment about Junior Forest Rangers was for laughs. For the record, I am a Coupland fanatic who thinks that J-Pod sucked because of all of the things that had to be changed for the show (The Taint was McDonalds food, nothing else.. changing it meant a loss of the feeling of distain for corporate Disney infused food).

I do not read Can-lit just because it is canadian and I do not watch Can-con or listen to it simply because I am "supposed to" as a Canadian. If it is crap, I call it crap and ignore it. Pierre Berton, Farley Mowatt, S M Stirling, awesome, Margaret Atwood, angry angst ridden grumpy artsy boomer crap. Corner Gas awesome (mainly because I went to school with Paul Mather) Red Green, hilarous, Billable Hours, spectacular, but NOT because they are Canadian, but well written comedy.

My point was, we do not just allow, but insist people retain strong ties to the homeland wherever that is, yet we don't even try to give Canada an identity that is resounding for fear of affecting the multiculturalism we insist on. This just makes Canada a long-term cottage land, hence my wish to retire in Yorkshire and thousands of people maintaining dual citizenship, spending half of the year or more dodging landmines elsewhere yet begging we ship em back home when the bombs start to fall.

Sean,

1. I think that the "I have friends..." example is a perfectly legitimate way of expressing an opinion on the comments to a blog if not in actual formal argument.

2. A GenXer, I should have known, given where we are.

3. The time when one was a kid is probably always going to seem better than the present in some ways, so that's fine, even if the third paragraph of your first comment pretty much said we need Farley Mowat to tell us how to be Canadian, which I personally think is ridiculous.

4. As for the CanCon, I don't believe I was arguing that you should like CanCon because its good for you, or because you are supposed to, in fact it seemed like that was YOUR argument - at least with regard to the CanCon of your era. Also, I disagree with you on the J-Pod television show. I thought the show transferred the essence of the book quiet well to television, particularly the demeanor of the characters, without simply replicating the book, which would have been boring and pointless.

But, to the crux of the matter and multiculturalism. Perhaps I do not see what you see simply because my family has been in this country since the seventeenth century and I have zero connection to any other country in the world, even ones I've traveled to - I cheer for Canada in soccer for goodness sake.

I'm not saying I don't see your point at all. Sure, there were those Canadians in Lebanon two years ago, and the Chinese on Parliament Hill during the torch run supporting the tyranny of that state, but for the most part I think you're not giving Canada or Canadians enough credit.

I don't think Canada "insists that people retain strong ties to the homeland." I think that doing so is welcomed and encouraged but I think that over generations people come to love Canada more because of that.

Further, I think this has always been the case. The first Europeans who settled here had their gaze firmly fixed backwards across the ocean to France and England.

When the French lost the Seven Year's War and again after the Revolution, any Frenchman who could afford it left Quebec.

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries settlers of British origin went on constantly about the gloriousness of the British Constitution, and they severely looked down upon recent immigrants from the United States, going so far in Upper Canada as to deny the franchise to any one from the U.S who had not lived in Upper Canada for at least seven years continually.

When the First World War began, the majority of the original recruits from Canada were people who had been born in England returning to fight for their homeland. How is leaving Canada to fight in that senseless nationalist induced European slaughter all that different from first generation Canadians today who might leave the country to return home when there is some kind of conflict?

Over time people come to realize that Canada is their home and they choose to stay and be Canadians. And that is one of the commonalities of Canadian identity, outside the uniqueness of First Nations - that at some point, everyone, or someone in their family, chose this country for whatever reason and they made it their home. I'm not surprised or bothered that it takes people some time to loosen the ties to country that they came from.

What I could have said more succinctly, is that, every new Canadian, whether they came in the sixteenth century or the twenty-first, has always continued to hold an attachment to the land that they came from - how could they not?

That the French and British, Irish and some others have had more time to reconcile their allegiances does not mean we should expect todays new Canadians to conform on day one.

Sean, things were certainly different back then - and my back then is a decade longer - better in many ways as well. I don't particularly blame the silly sop of multiculturalism (thrown as a bone to angry Western Ukranians who thought the whole "two founding nations" of the B&B Commission was a crock).

The rot is very much deeper. We made it politically unacceptable to acknowledge the deep Anglo Saxon/British/Scots/Irish roots of English Canada. The teaching of history was made "inclusive", the idea of just war forbidden, the very idea of being proud of the sacrifices of our fathers and grandfathers became contested ground.

In effect we delegitimized any but the most sanatized version of the first 100 years of Canada's history as a nation.

con't

No amount of reading Ms. Atwood by the campfire on a canoe trip is going to pull us back from the political expedient of essentially denying our history. And while this was going on the other leg of a culture, its religion, more or less collapsed in both French and English Canada. Leave aside questions of faith, the practice of religion is a huge part of culture. It ties people to an idea of a community which is separate from the State.

To that mix we then added massive, non-European, immigration. Which can certainly be argued to have been a good thing (though the alternative has a case to be made for it). We had had significant immigration before - remember those Ukrainians - but it had been from Europe and carried with it the basic values of Western, Christian, culture. The immigration wave of the 70's onwards did not bring those values.

I'll give one example: when I grew up in Vancouver each of the public highschools on the Westside of the city fielded rugby teams from grade eight up. There are now no rugby teams.

I'd argue we have lost a lot; but have we gained as well?

con't

It would be nice to think that Canada has become a richer, more diverse, stronger society and that this more than makes up for the loss of religion and - at least in English Canada - cultural connection.

While we have seen housing prices go so high that family formation is imperiled the actual wealth of the nation has not dramatically risen. While downtown Vancouver and downtown Toronto are certainly more diverse I don't see a lot of mixing as between visible minorities and those of us who are officially invisible. And I certainly don't think that Canada is made any stronger by historical amnesia for fear of offence or the ongoing self-organization of ethnic ghettos in our major cities.

I agree, Alan, that patriotism arises from pride - sadly I don't see a great deal to be proud of. By all means tell your kids the stories, and I'll tell mine about their great grandfather winning the Military Cross - twice; but our kids will wander into a world in which WWI has been forgotten and our military rendered politically inconvenient.

We have lost a lot.

...When the French lost the Seven Year's War and again after the Revolution, any Frenchman who could afford it left Quebec...

Just on this point, there is some evidence that locally French emigre's were showing up here around 1790 to 1810 to get away from France. Cape Vincent and Chaumont New York are named after family members of French backers of the Revolution who had to show up to claim the debts. There were also Royalists settled north of Toronto.

I see the points made and do not entirely escape their impact, but I still say, Canada has become a cottage country. Its nice to be here, but you always feel after a while that it is time to pack up and drive home. I'm not there yet but I'm making a packing list.

That is sadly what CBC-esque Canada has created. A nation of banality.

But Yorkshire is just so nice a place to garden, drink beer at the local and snooze in a hammock... without blackflies or deerflies I may add.

Alan,
I don't deny that there were not still French arriving in Canada after the Revolution. My point was just that the ones who had been here earlier obviously still held pretty strong allegiances to France.

As for Sean and the larger discussion, we seem to be drawing this conversation to a close. You may have Yorkshire to return to but I have no where else to go.