Canadian identity

Canadian identity refers to the unique culture, characteristics and condition of being Canadian, as well as the many symbols and expressions that set Canada and Canadians apart from other peoples and cultures of the world. Primary influences on the Canadian identity trace back to the arrival, beginning in the early seventeenth century, of French settlers in Acadia and the St. Lawrence River Valley, and of English, Scottish and Irish settlers in Newfoundland and the Maritimes, the British conquest of New France in 1759, the migration of United Empire Loyalists to Upper Canada and New Brunswick, and the ensuing dominance of French and British culture in the gradual development of both an imperial and national identity.

Throughout the 16th, 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, First Nations played a critical part in the development of European colonies in Canada, from their role in assisting exploration of the continent, the fur trade and inter-European power struggles to the creation of the Métis people. Carrying through the 20th century and to the present day, Canadian aboriginal art and culture continues to exert a marked influence on Canadian identity.

Today, Canada is a multicultural society and constitutional protection for policies that promote multiculturalism in lieu of a monolithic national myth based on any single ethnicity or language. Journalist and author Richard Gwyn has suggested that "tolerance" has replaced "loyalty" as the touchstone of Canadian identity. Canadians identify with the country's institutions of health care, military peacekeeping, the national park system and the ''Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms''. In 2013, more than 90% of Canadians believed that the ''Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms'' and the national flag were the top symbols of Canadian identity. Next highest were the national anthem, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and ice hockey.

The question of Canadian identity was traditionally dominated by two fundamental themes: first, the often conflicted relationship between English Canadians and French Canadians, stemming from the Francophone imperative for cultural and linguistic survival; secondly, the close ties between English Canadians and the British Empire, and the gradual political process towards complete independence from the "mother country". With the gradual loosening of political ties between Canada and the British Empire in the 20th century, immigrants from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean have helped to reshape Canadian identity, a process that continues with the ongoing settlement of large numbers of immigrants from diverse backgrounds, adding to the theme of multiculturalism to the debate.

Basic models

In defining a Canadian identity, some distinctive characteristics that have been emphasized are:

#The bicultural nature of Canada; the important ways in which English–French and Protestant-Catholic relations have shaped the Canadian experience since the 1760s.
#Canada's distinctive historical experience in resisting revolution and republicanism (in contrast to the United States) leading to a lesser societal emphasis on individualism and more support for communitarianism and government activism, such as wheat pools and the health care system.Lipset (1990)
#The relationship to the British parliamentary system and the British legal system, the toryism associated with the Loyalists and the pre-1960 French Canadians, have given Canada its ongoing collective commitment to "peace, order and good government".
#The social structure of multiple ethnic groups living amongst each other whilst maintaining their identities, producing a ''cultural mosaic'' as opposed to a ''melting pot''.
#The influence of geographical factors (vast area, coldness, northness; St. Lawrence spine), together with the proximity of a global superpower, have produced in the collective Canadian psyche what Northrop Frye has called the ''garrison mind'' or ''siege mentality'', and what novelist Margaret Atwood has argued is the Canadian preoccupation with ''survival''. For Herschel Hardin, because of the remarkable hold of the ''siege mentality'' and the concern with survival, Canada in its essentials is "a public enterprise country." According to Hardin, the "fundamental mode of Canadian life" has always been, "the un-American mechanism of redistribution as opposed to the mystic American mechanism of market rule." Most Canadians, in other words, whether on the right or left in politics, expect their governments to be actively involved in the economic and social life of the nation.

Historical development

Introduction

Canada's large geographic size, the presence and survival of a significant number of indigenous peoples, the conquest of one European linguistic population by another, and relatively open immigration policy have led to an extremely diverse society.

Indigenous peoples

The indigenous peoples of Canada are divided among a large number of different ethnolinguistic groups, including the Inuit in the northern territory of Nunavut, the Algonquian language groups in eastern Canada (Mi'kmaq in the Maritime Provinces, Abenaki of Quebec and Ojibway of the central region), the Iroquois of central Canada, the Cree of northern Ontario, Quebec and the Great Plains, peoples speaking the Athabaskan languages of Canada's northwest, the Salishan language groups of British Columbia and other peoples of the Pacific coast such as the Tsimshian, Haida, Kwakwaka'wakw and Nuu-chah-nulth. Each of the indigenous peoples developed vibrant societies with complex economies, political structures and cultural traditions that were subsequently affected profoundly by interaction with the European populations. The Métis are an indigenous people whose culture and identity was produced by a fusion of First Nations with the French, Irish and Scottish fur trade society of the north and west.

French settlement and the struggle for francophone identity in Canada

From the founding by Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Mons of Port Royal in 1605, (the beginnings of French settlement of Acadia) and the founding of Quebec City in 1608 by Samuel de Champlain, Canada was ruled from and settled almost exclusively by French colonists. John Ralston Saul, among others, has noted that the east–west shape of modern Canada had its origins in decisions regarding alliances with the indigenous peoples made by early French colonizers or explorers such as Champlain or Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye. By allying with the Algonquins, for example, Champlain gained an alliance with the Wyandot or Huron of today's Ontario, and the enmity of the Iroquois of what is now northern New York State.

Although English settlement began in Newfoundland in 1610, and the Hudson's Bay Company was chartered in 1670, it was only with the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 that France ceded to Great Britain its claims to mainland Nova Scotia and significant British settlement of what would become mainland Canada would begin. Even then, prior to the American Revolution, Nova Scotia was settled largely by planters from New England who took up lands following the deportation of the French-speaking Acadian population, in 1755 in an event known in French to Acadians as ''Le Grand Dérangement'', one of the critical events in the formation of the Canadian identity. During the period of French hegemony over New France the term ''Canadien'' referred to the French-speaking inhabitants of Canada.

The Seven Years' War between Great Britain and France resulted in the conquest of New France by the British in 1759 at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, an event that reverberates profoundly even today in the national consciousness of Quebecers. Although there were a number of attempts made by the British authorities to assimilate the French speaking population to the English language and culture, most notably the 1840 Act of Union that followed the seminal report of Lord Durham, British colonial policy for Canada on the whole was one which acknowledged and permitted the continued existence of French language and culture. Nevertheless, the efforts at assimilation of French Canadians, the fate of the French-speaking Acadian