No place like home by NeilBissoondath
No Place like Home
Neil Bissoondath uncovers the cracks in Canada's multicultural mosaic.
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THREE or four years into the new millennium, Toronto, Canada's largest city, will mark an unusual milestone. In a city of three million, the words 'minorities' and 'majority' will be turned on their heads and the former will become the latter.
Reputed to be the most ethnically diverse city in the world, Toronto has been utterly remade by immigration, just as Canada has been remade by a quarter-century of multiculturalism.
It is a policy which has been quietly disastrous for the country and for immigrants themselves.
The stated purpose of Canada's Multiculturalism Act (1971) is to recognize 'the existence of communities whose members share a common origin and their historic contribution to Canadian society'. It promises to 'enhance their development' and to 'promote the understanding and creativity that arise from the interaction between individuals and communities of different origins'. The bicultural (English and French) nature of the country is to be willfully refashioned into a multicultural 'mosaic'.
The architects of the policy - the Government of then-Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau - were blind to the fact that their exercise in social engineering was based on two essentially false premises. First, it assumed that 'culture' in the large sense could be transplanted. Second, that those who voluntarily sought a new life in a new country would wish to transport their cultures of origin.
But 'culture' is a most complex creature; in its essence, it represents the very breath of a people. For the purposes of multiculturalism, the concept has been reduced to the simplest theatre. Canadians, neatly divided into 'ethnic' and otherwise, encounter each other's mosaic tiles mainly at festivals. There's traditional music, traditional dancing, traditional food at distinctly untraditional prices, all of which is diverting as
Neil Bissoondath uncovers the cracks in Canada's multicultural mosaic.
________________________________________
THREE or four years into the new millennium, Toronto, Canada's largest city, will mark an unusual milestone. In a city of three million, the words 'minorities' and 'majority' will be turned on their heads and the former will become the latter.
Reputed to be the most ethnically diverse city in the world, Toronto has been utterly remade by immigration, just as Canada has been remade by a quarter-century of multiculturalism.
It is a policy which has been quietly disastrous for the country and for immigrants themselves.
The stated purpose of Canada's Multiculturalism Act (1971) is to recognize 'the existence of communities whose members share a common origin and their historic contribution to Canadian society'. It promises to 'enhance their development' and to 'promote the understanding and creativity that arise from the interaction between individuals and communities of different origins'. The bicultural (English and French) nature of the country is to be willfully refashioned into a multicultural 'mosaic'.
The architects of the policy - the Government of then-Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau - were blind to the fact that their exercise in social engineering was based on two essentially false premises. First, it assumed that 'culture' in the large sense could be transplanted. Second, that those who voluntarily sought a new life in a new country would wish to transport their cultures of origin.
But 'culture' is a most complex creature; in its essence, it represents the very breath of a people. For the purposes of multiculturalism, the concept has been reduced to the simplest theatre. Canadians, neatly divided into 'ethnic' and otherwise, encounter each other's mosaic tiles mainly at festivals. There's traditional music, traditional dancing, traditional food at distinctly untraditional prices, all of which is diverting as