Canada and the World Backgrounder articles from January 1998

Canada and the World Backgrounder archives from January 1998

Pluralism and the Canadian mosaic.
January 1, 1998... Let's take a peek into the world of Empedocles. Who? Empedocles was a Greek philosopher, poet, and statesman. He lived between about 490 and 430 BC, and legend tells us that he leapt to his death into the crater of the volcano Etna. ...

Molding a nation of nations.(multiculturalism in Canada)
January 1, 1998... Long before the first European settlers arrived, Canada was a multicultural society. The country was home to hundreds of different tribes of Aboriginal people speaking many different languages. Some tribes got along with each other well, some...

Balancing act.(bilingualism in Canada)
January 1, 1998... The Official Languages Act of 1969 declared French and English to be the two languages of Canada. Entrenching bilingualism in the law in this way did not please everybody. Many Westerners saw bilingualism as yet another giveaway, at their...

An international nation.(multiculturalism in Canada)
January 1, 1998... The renowned British writer and economist Dr. Barbara Ward looked at Canada's experiment with multiculturalism in 1968 and liked what she saw. She described "A Canada prepared to pioneer... the role of the first `international nation' in...

World of McCulture.(protection of cultural diversity in Canada)
January 1, 1998... There are those who worry that the world is sliding ever more rapidly towards a global (American) culture. Those who fear this future see a world in which everybody eats Big Macs, wears blue jeans, and watches U.S. TV shows. Political...

The pure wool.(nationalism in Quebec)
January 1, 1998... Quebec nationalists repeat over and over that their desire for a separate state is rooted in the land. The separatists' line is that Quebec nationalism is geographical not ethnic. Despite constant assurances, non-francophones in Quebec don't...

Is it working?(multiculturalism in Canada)
January 1, 1998... If public opinion polls are to be believed Canadians are becoming more tolerant. The proportion of Canadians who say they feel "at ease" with East indians, Blacks, Natives, Orientals, and Jews has increased since the early 1970s. Since the...

An immigrant's view.(of Canada)
January 1, 1998... Rambod Behboodi came to Canada from a war-torn part of the Middle East. He has settled and prospered after graduating in law from the University of Toronto. He reminds those of us born here not to take Canada for granted. "There is something...

Toronto - the multicultural.(Toronto, Ontario)
January 1, 1998... There's a story, which may or may not be true, of a Canadian journalist questioning Leonid Brezhnev the leader of the Soviet Union. It was the height of the Cold War and the Canadian wanted to know how many nuclear missiles the Soviets had...

The gift of belonging: in our society, citizenship is viewed as a balance between rights and responsibilities.(Canada)
January 1, 1998... Historically, citizenship has had many different meanings. To the ancient Greeks, for example, not everybody who lived in a city state, such as Athens, was a citizen. Citizens held a special place in the community. They made a commitment to...

The soil and the blood.(citizenship requirements in Canada and other countries)
January 1, 1998... Some countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, consider a person to be a citizen by birth. Anyone born in those countries is a citizen automatically. This is known as jus soli, the law of the soil. Any person born...

Oath of citizenship.(Canada)
January 1, 1998... All immigrants who become Canadian citizens must swear the following oath: "I swear (or affirm) that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Canada, Her Heirs and Successors, and that...

Flunking citizenship.(1997 poll found that almost half of Canadians would fail citizenship exam)
January 1, 1998... People applying to become Canadian citizens must pass an examination which tests their knowledge of the country. However, a poll in 1997 found that almost one out of two Canadians would fail the citizenship exam. Only 8% correctly named the...

Lost direction.(loss of public support for multiculturalism in Canada)
January 1, 1998... Reginald Bibby is a sociologist who has been studying Canadian trends for many years. In The Bibby Report, published in 1995, he writes: "Back in 1985, 56% of Canadians supported the mosaic and only 28% the melting pot. But in 1995, 44%...

Failure to communicate.(study finds most Canadians misunderstand multicultural programs)
January 1, 1998... Ottawa has failed to sell the concept of multiculturalism to Canadians. That's the conclusion of a report completed in 1996 for Heritage Canada. The report says most Canadians support multiculturalism but still feel it threatens the country's...

Favoured destination.(immigration statistics by source country for three largest Canadian cities)(Illustration)
January 1, 1998... Immigrants to Canada overwhelmingly move to our three biggest cities. Below, are the top five source countries for immigrants settling here in 1993: VANCOUVER Hong Kong 10,830 Taiwan 5,860 India ...

The view from the right.(Pat Buchanan's opposition to multiculturalism)
January 1, 1998... Pat Buchanan has run for the presidency of the United States a couple of times. He is a political conservative who believes firmly in the melting-pot vision of nationality; one people, one common language, and traditions and values held in...

Foggy objectives.(vagueness of Canada's Multiculturalism Act)
January 1, 1998... A lot of the criticism of multiculturalism is based on misunderstanding. But, you can't blame Canadians for this; the problem stems from the Multiculturalism Act itself. Much of what the Act says is vague and open to wide interpretation. It...

Culture shock: immigrants come to Canada with the hope of improving life for themselves and future generations but fitting into an entirely new culture isn't easy.
January 1, 1998... Immigrants often find themselves emotionally torn apart by conflicting cultural and religious values in Canada's multi-ethnic society. So, there's a branch of family therapy which deals specifically with helping immigrants bridge the...

Pageants as culture.(popularity of beauty pageants among ethnic Canadians)
January 1, 1998... North American feminist groups are scathing in their attacks on beauty pageants saying they contribute to the sexual objectification of women. But, some ethnic communities across Canada think they're great. Many ethnic Canadians see them not...

Left behind.(problems of wives of Chinese who emigrate to Canada)
January 1, 1998... The issue of wives and families abandoned in China, while the husbands set up homes here, is a tragic side of Chinese emigration to Canada. For a wife left in China, a Canadian divorce is a disaster. it is not always recognized by Chinese...

Parents honour heritage.(Canadians who adopted Chinese baby girls raise them to respect Chinese culture)
January 1, 1998... In 1996, a group of Ontario parents got together to celebrate the coming Chinese Year of the Rat (the Chinese name each new year, which starts with the first new moon over China between January 21 and February 19). The idea was to acquaint...

Troubled baggage.(violence in ethnic communities in Canada)
January 1, 1998... On 23 June 1985, Air India Flight 182 out of Toronto exploded in midair off the coast of Ireland. All 329 people aboard, most of them Canadians, were killed. About an hour earlier, two baggage handlers at Tokyo's Narita airport died when a...

A road less travelled.(abuses by immigration consultants in Canada)
January 1, 1998... Members of an ethnic Chinese family from Malaysia who run an international immigration consulting business in the heart of Toronto's downtown Chinatown were charged in 1996 with bribing an undercover immigration officer. The case focused...

The Canadian quilt.(immigrants to Canada who founded businesses)
January 1, 1998... An enduring myth among Canadians is that immigrants take jobs away from people already here. Study after study, shows that immigrants create more jobs than they take and are less likely than native-born Canadians to be on welfare. Still, the...

Pier 21.(history of Canadian central immigrant processing center in Halifax, Nova Scotia)
January 1, 1998... Long before the days of jet travel, most immigrants came to Canada by sea. For more than 1.5 million of these people their first sight of their new homeland was a large and dreary shed on the Halifax waterfront called Pier 21. In 1928, Pier 21...

Doukhobors.(persecuted Russian sect that emigrated to Canada)
January 1, 1998... Canada has become home to many groups whose religious beliefs caused them problems in their homeland. One such group to settle here were the Doukhobors. Members of this sect came from Russia where they challenged the doctrines of the Orthodox...

New years.(some non-Christian Canadians follow their own calendars)
January 1, 1998... We live in a world that runs by the Gregorian calendar. Years are dated, roughly, from the birth of Christ and a new year begins at the end of December. But, hundreds of thousands of Canadians are not Christians and some of them like to hold...

The Keystone Settlers.(black pioneers who settled Canada's Prairie Provinces)
January 1, 1998... From reading history books you might get the idea that opening up Canada's Prairies was a job done entirely by white people. Not so. John Ware was a former slave from North Carolina who settled near Brooks, Alberta. He learned the cowboy...

Lithuanian links.(Lithuanian emigration to Canada)
January 1, 1998... Many immigrants came to Canada to escape political oppression; almost 50,000 came here from the Baltic states for that reason. In 1940, the Soviet Union annexed Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. Huge numbers of people fled westwards to escape...

Grosse Ile.(former Canadian quarantine station for immigrants in St. Lawrence Estuary)
January 1, 1998... A small island in the St. Lawrence Estuary serves as the last resting place for thousands of would-be immigrants to Canada. Also known as Quarantine Island, Grosse Ile is 50 km downstream from Quebec City. In 1832, the deserted island became a...

Enemy aliens.(Canadian internment of Ukrainian immigrants in World War I)
January 1, 1998... As the Prairies were opened up the need for people to work the land was quickly realized. This was a job for tough people who were used to hardship. Canada found these hardy pioneers in Ukraine. Between 1891 and 1914, 170,000 peasants came to...

The ethnic consumer.(ethnic marketing in Canada)
January 1, 1998... Honest Ed's has been a Toronto landmark for decades. The rambling department store just west of downtown is in the heart of an area that has seen wave after wave of recently arrived immigrants pass through. Ed Mirvish has made a fortune by...