Canadian Culture Essay

Quebec is a distinct nation within Canada and it is important for Quebec to remain this uniqueness by continuing to be a dominant francophone culture. With the decline of French population Quebec fears a loss for their language, culture and identity. Quebec has enforced a rule in terms of immigration to protect their culture. For example, Herouxville, Quebec has issued a code of standard to inform immigrants that they must leave their culture, ethnicity, and language behind and must adapt to Quebec culture. Quebec is struggling to maintain their provinces French language and culture. If Canada’s population continues to grow from immigration the government may enforce laws to lighten up the immigration law within Quebec allowing all minorities.

Canada today is a respectful country, however it has not always been this way. Events happened in the past gradually shaped how people view Canada and people’s sense of Canada will continue to be affected by events happen in the

Canada’s identity comes in many shapes and forms. Multiculturalism has been adopted and is at the forefront of Canadian identity. Following the Second World War, Canada’s multiculturalism policies became more acceptable and even successful in, not only accepting, but inviting multiple ethnic cultures in. In contrast to other countries, multiculturalism adaptation works for the Canadian culture. Canadian policies on multiculturalism have shifted over the past few decades; policies are now implemented for integration, not discrimination.

Being Canadian is so much more than just the cliché stereotype of living in igloos, playing hockey 24/7, and drinking Tim Hortans coffee every day. Being a part of the Canadian culture means that all Canadians are unified as one big family. Culture is defined as “a set of human made objective and subjective elements that have increased the probability of survival, and resulted in satisfaction for the participants” (Samovar, 1991). Every culture has their own attitudes, customs and beliefs that differentiate one culture from another. Canadian culture can be very distinctive from other cultures. Usually the first impression of Canadians is that we are very polite and we live in an extremely friendly and accepting country. Being Canadian is about having big hearts and appreciating our diverse environment. Our country shares a wide variety of different ethnic backgrounds which makes being Canadian unique.

Culture can be defined as the behaviours and belief characteristics of a particular social, ethnic,

The great war was a big influential period for canada, a lot of things happened that affected canada in a positive way, without these monumental experiences it is very possible that canada would be different today in many ways. World war one will forever be a defining moment in canada's history but not just for canadians but for everyone who was affected directly by the war. Following our very important involvement in the war , canada economy improved, canadian women were granted more right and canada was seen and feared as a strong independent country.

Although Tremblay talks about the American culture’s influence on Canada as a whole, his main concern in this article is Quebec, which is in a separate league than the rest of Canada due to its different linguistics. Tremblay

Native Canadians play an important role in our national identity, unfortunately, the culture has been slowly dying out for the past century as advancing generations lose the spoken language. Less identify themselves as a true Native for the little knowledge they have of their culture, especially those who live in an urbanized city. One of the greatest contributing factors to this outcome were residential schools, a tragic and critical part of Canadian history.

Canada’s identity is tremendously challenging to delineate, due to encompassing a vast population of various cultures, traditions, and values spanning an enormous landmass. From various historical perspectives, Canadian identity has changed over the course of the last century - valuing discrete ideologies through various time periods. Due to various government policies and acts, as well as reformed beliefs and ideas regarding large social issues, Canada’s identity has shifted and constantly renewed its identity over the course of the past half century.

Every community in Canada, whether it is large or small, is a gold mine of diversity, tradition, culture and much history. It’s the familiarity, knowledge of their heritage, and sense of belonging at school, work, home, or their place of worship, that strengthens their identity or who they are as Canadians. If someone identified as Canadian, it means they are a part of Canada’s society. To be Canadian means freedom. Canadians have the freedom to think for themselves, speak what they believe, and live their life with no limits. Because of this freedom, they have certain character traits and qualities. Simply, Canadians contain a certain Canadian attitude, the recognition of Canadian multiculturalism and prominently, Canadian pride.

In my eyes Canada is a diverse country, filled with a variety of cultures since we are a multinational state. Our unique identity is difficult to depict clearly, but I believe that the things that make up the Canadian identity are our countries multiculturalism, patriotism, and civic responsibility.

While the rest of Canada employs the concept of multiculturalism, Quebec emphasizes on another theory: interculturalism, or the notion of support in cross-cultural dialogue and challenging self-segregation tendencies within cultures. In the province, the word multiculturalism announces pejorative meanings. This was due, in part, to the fact that “a federal commission which was charged several years ago with the task of developing policies for Canada, based on its bicultural and bilingual character emerged with a recommendation that Canada think of itself as a multicultural and bilingual country.3”. Francophones, on the other hand, felt that this concept placed them at the same level as minority ethnic groups, thus erasing their thoughts of being seen as one of the country's founding nations.

In terms of education, multiculturalism is becoming increasingly disruptive in Canadian society. It seems that there is a new issue in the media focus regarding education on a weekly basis. It's becoming increasingly apparent that most, if not all issues in recent years stem from the debate of whether to centralize or decentralize our current system of education. Proponents of centralization argue that a standard national system of education will provide all people with access to the same quality of education. On the other hand, proponent’s of decentralization claim that individual educational institutions will provide a level of education that is sensitive to

Canadian and American cultural views were different which was proved because one is multicultural and the other is not. Canada was known as “mosaic” which means immigrants from any ethnic group were accepted here and were allowed to practice their religion. Therefore, they have a double identity ,meaning they are their ethnic group before a Canadian citizen as in Japanese-Canadian, Asian Canadian and so on . Whereas ,American culture was known as the “melting pot “, where they accept other cultures however they encouraged their citizens to give up their original culture ( Wells ,10 and 11 ). Canadian’s usually describe themselves as “NOT AMERICAN“(Wells,35) . Many Americans view Canada as a positive nation and as a better environment to live in then the United States . A legal sectary from Gastonia ,North Carolina said “Canada’s such a terrific place, I’d move there tomorrow if I could” (Wells, 35). This proves that Americans want to come to Canada since it is a safer environment due to it’s unique culture. Canadians are recognized as more modest, less aggressive and more down to earth then their southern neighbors (Wells,35).

Canada is one of two countries located in North America and is the second largest country in the world. It is situated just north of the United States and constitutes the northern part of the country, excluding Alaska. Over the years Canada's culture has been influenced by European culture and traditions, mainly that of the French and British. Canadian culture has also been influenced by the countries' first people, the Aboriginals, as well as the newer immigrated population (Wikipedia, 2007). Canada consists of ten provinces and three northern territories, almost all of which are "rich in land and natural resources" (Bailey, par. 2). Canada is often referred to as a mosaic community because there is such a wide variety