A Toast to Diversity

Celebrating Canada Day means celebrating the differences that make our country so hard to define, and thereby define us.

Canada Day! Summer and national pride are a heady mix. But what are we really celebrating on July 1? Perhaps we should be celebrating Canada’s best and most important feature: a deep and abiding respect for our cultural, political, regional, spiritual, and attitudinal diversity. It’s our variety of outlooks and beliefs that makes us Canadian.

The Canada of 2010 is very different from the Canada of 1867. Nonetheless, there’s a strong connection between the argument made in 1867 that two nations (the English and the French) could co-exist in a single country and the contemporary notion that diversity of all kinds should not just be accommodated, but embraced – that being the same is not only boring, but also a danger to freedom and democracy.

We’ve inherited some good things from the Fathers of Confederation, such as democratic elections, the rule of law, and a world-renowned tolerance for lousy weather from coast to coast (let’s face it: there’s a reason more people live in California than in Canada).

The founding fathers recognized that for Canada to work, it needed to be constructed in such a way that diversity would not be crushed under the weight of the new dominion. For this reason, they created a federal system and the Senate. Federalism allows different parts of the country to have control over key issues such as education and, although not very important in 1867, the now ultra-important area of health care. The Senate was, among other things, meant to ensure that the different regions of the country each had a voice, even if they were not as populous as the others.

Although it has been a bumpy ride, federalism has served Canada and its diversity pretty well. We have, however, failed to update the Senate such that it has been reduced to an illegitimate constitutional time bomb, but the dream that Canada’s regional diversity will be properly embedded within the national Parliament remains alive (at least among a few faithful disciples). Bottom line, we still have some work to do to make Parliament as diverse as the country it serves.

Other elements of the Canadian approach to nation building that have prioritized diversity include the huge role that immigration has played, and continues to play, in populating our vast territory. Notwithstanding the Aboriginal Peoples, who were here first, and their contribution to Canada’s diversity, most Canadians come from somewhere else, or their parents or grandparents did. You only have to go back at most a few generations to see that Canadians are from all over the world. We are a nation of immigrants. And it is this and other forms of diversity that truly define us.

Despite our strong foundation of common ground, Canadians do not all see the world the same way. Our backgrounds, our local communities, our values, our politics, our language, our jobs, our faiths work together to make us a very diverse and complex people. What binds us together is the acceptance of this cornucopia of cultures, beliefs, perspectives, attitudes, and aspirations. There is no single, one-size-fits-all Canadian Dream. “Different strokes for different folks” could be our national motto.

Some lament the complexity of Canada. Some wring their hands over our lack of a definitive identity. But being hard to define is what defines us. We are a country that embodies differences of opinion regarding just about every aspect of how we choose to live, and this is what makes us a truly great country.

We’re not “Canadian” because we have the same ancestors or because a feudal lord used to control our land. We are Canadian because we respect the idea that being Canadian is not something you can sum up in a beer ad (no offence to Molson’s Joe Canada). We’re not Canadian because we’re considered generally more polite than our American cousins or because we have a prime minister instead of a president or because hockey is a relatively popular sport in Canada or because our football is more exciting than the U.S. version.

We’re Canadian because our country allows us to be whoever we want to be. So this Canada Day, make a toast to Canada’s diversity and remember that celebrating our diversity is much better than repressing it.