Member-only story
What Does it Mean to be a Canadian?
A reflection on culture, history and sovereignty
My fourth grade teacher gave us each a piece of paper and asked us to draw a Canadian. A few of us raised our hands, “but we don’t all look the same!”
Despite my home province of Nova Scotia not being the most diverse place in Canada during the 1990s, my neighbourhood was very diverse. My class had around 30 students; at least 10 were black, 5 or 6 from Iraq or Afghanistan, and couple of students from Chinese immigrant families. The rest of us were white, mainly with last names of Scottish or English origin.
The conversation that followed that day in class planted the seed in my young mind that Canadian was not an ethnicity, but a nation founded more on dreams and shared values.
This mentality was reflected in our own government’s attempts at a in 1971. I remember teachers and the media frequently stating that Canada was not a cultural melting pot, but a cultural mosaic made of hundreds of cultures and ethnicities.
So what does it mean to be a Canadian? We don’t have thousands of years of shared cultural history; we have no ancient castles, no pyramids, no holy texts or defining ethnic features.
