Throughout history, Canada has been searching for a definition of Canadian identity without conclusive results. Identity means “who a person is, or the qualities of a person or group which make them different from others.” Canadian identity should refer to the group of characteristics, symbols and values that many Canadians regard as expressing who they are and their unique place and role in the world. However, it is not possible to think about Canada as a whole. This country has a diverse background of cultures and nationalities, and it is also a bilingual and multicultural nation, which “in certain respects, is an odd kind of nation-state.” (Resnick 11).Since the arrival of European people, this country has had many faces. The French explorer Jacques Cartier was the first to use the name Canada to describe Stadacona and he named Canadians the inhabitants he had seen there. Those Canadians were often labelled as “barbarian, primitive, savage, infidel, etc.” (Sugars & Moss 57). It is clear that the first European navigators, explorers and, later, settlers felt themselves as French. Cartier hoisted a thirty feet high cross, in which was written “Long Live the King of France.” (Cartier, Biggar & Cook). They had a strong French identity, while the Canadian identity was ambiguous and often associated with savagery.
Thereafter not only the Natives but also the French colonists were called Canadians. “We learned, in the evening, that the Canadians, with their usual thoughtlessness, had consumed above a third of their portions of meat.” [...] (Franklin 279). The British explorer John Franklin did not have much sympathy for those Canadians. He was a proud member of the British navy and the British settlers always remained loyal to their country. They did not feel Canadians in any way, although this term started to be applied to the loyalist colonies on the Great Lakes in the mid-nineteenth century and later to all of British North America.
From my point of view, building an identity in such circunstances is a complex task. Canada and the immensity of its territory were just a colony ruled by Europeans, whose most important connections with this new land were related to trade and exploration. Those settlers continued thinking as British or French, while aboriginal people were relegated in their own land.
Later, in the post-confederation period, Canada was described as a “child” of two adults, Britain and the United States. This idea is revealing because the identification of both adults as anglophone “emphasizes the way Canada was conceived as a British nation, even though the French were officially one of the founding groups at the time of Confederation”. (Sugars & Moss 277).
Since its official birth, Canada has been divided into two parts and, of course, this coexistence has not been easy. This division has made almost impossible to have a unique identity because the British Canada and the French Canada, each with its own particular identity, coexisted side by side within the same state. Neither could entirely comprehend the other, nor could either will the other out of existence.
However, to be a Canadian, at least until 1947, the year of the Canadian Citizenship Act, was to be a British subject in more than name. It was, on the English Canadian side, to imply a solidarity with empire that on three occasions (1899, 1914 and 1939) was to see Canadians engaged in war at Britain´s side. (Resnick). At that time, it emerged one of the most important paradoxes of the Canadian national identity: the more intense the desire for British external connections on the English Canadian side, the stronger the resistance from Quebec. The permanent tension between these two views of Canada, these two different senses of who Canadians are can be felt until today.
The communication theorist Marshall McLuhan was provocative when he said, “You can be a French Canadian or an English Canadian, but not a Canadian. We know how to live without an identity, and this is one of our marvellous resources.” I think that McLuhan tried to simplify an evident concern, but he forgot a key aspect: the strong influence of the United States.
For many years, the debate about Canadian identity has been focussed on the differences between this country and the United States. “What makes Canada a different kind of society from the USA?” This has been the big question for decades and nobody has been able to answer it completely.
“We need to know here, because here is where we live,” the writer Margaret Atwood said in the late 1960s, promoting the importance of Canadian cultural identity against the sense of inferiority that had come to dominate the Canadian mindset, particularly in comparison to the United States. The maple leaf flag appeared and Canadians tried to define their identity taking the USA as a main reference.
By the same time, Canadian immigration policy lost its racially exclusive character, with a point system coming to replace a policy that until then had been biased towards white immigrants. So that, Canada has become a more ethnically diverse and colour-blind society than it was before.
This policy added more challenges and problems in defining what Canadian identity is. We have a country divides historically into two identities, the British and the French, with many aboriginal identities, with an undeniable American influence and with thousands of immigrants who come yearly from different parts or the world and who add many other little “identities” to the search of Canadian identity. Finding a precise definition for the current Canadian identity is not possible.
Works cited
Resnick, Phillip. The European Roots of Canadian Identity. Broadview Press. 2005.
Sugars, Cynthia & Moss, Laura. Canadian Literature in English (volume I & II). Penguin Academics. 2009.
Cartier, Jacques; Biggar, Henry Percival; Cook, Ramsay. The Voyages of Jacques Cartier. University of Toronto. 1993.
Franklin, John. Thirty years on the Artic Regions. New York Public Library. 1859.
